German DVD won't play.

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davids213 - 09 Oct 2007 20:08 GMT

I have a DVD produced by a company called videograph. It is marked on the
front with D/GB-VS. When I try to play the message in the lower left corner
of the Media Player screen says "Unknown DVD". Is there a way to play this?

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Corentin Cras-Méneur - 09 Oct 2007 21:49 GMT

> I have a DVD produced by a company called videograph. It is marked on the
> front with D/GB-VS. When I try to play the message in the lower left corner
> of the Media Player screen says "Unknown DVD". Is there a way to play this?

Hum...... WMP for Mac sure doesn't play DVDs. You might want to try DVD
player instead.

Corentin

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Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] - 09 Oct 2007 22:26 GMT

>I have a DVD produced by a company called videograph. It is marked on the
>front with D/GB-VS. When I try to play the message in the lower left corner
>of the Media Player screen says "Unknown DVD". Is there a way to play this?

Try and look for a region code on the DVD case. Then try to find a
standalone DVD player which accepts multiregion. If you can't access
one of those, the next shot would be to get a second DVD drive (only
about $20-30).

DVD drive hardware is "region coded", a monopolistic feature
introduced by movie companies to control distribution.

As a result, a region 2 DVD (Europe) will not play in a region 1
(USA/Canada) player without changing the disk hardware's region code.

Unfortunately this step can only be done a few times , usually between
3-5 before the hardware is locked to the last region selected - if
that hapened you wouldn't be able to play your region 1 coded disks.

The best resolution is usually to get a second disk in the PC, set it
to region 2, and leave it set like that so you can play disks from
either region.

HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2007
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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Corentin Cras-Méneur - 09 Oct 2007 22:38 GMT

> DVD drive hardware is "region coded", a monopolistic feature
> introduced by movie companies to control distribution.

That's usually true for movies, but I haven't seen region coding on any
other type of DVD so far (they are usually Region 0 which means readable
by anyone).

The concern most of the time is that Europe uses PAL encoding where the
US is in NTSC. You have to make sure you can play PAL.

Corentin

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Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] - 10 Oct 2007 22:40 GMT

>> DVD drive hardware is "region coded", a monopolistic feature
>> introduced by movie companies to control distribution.
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>The concern most of the time is that Europe uses PAL encoding where the
>US is in NTSC. You have to make sure you can play PAL.

The OP's PC media player should have no problem playing that. It's
only TV output where the format selection is important - PC monitors
and graphics cards (and Macs of course) can easily cope with the
different refresh rate and image dimensions without problem.

Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2007
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

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Corentin Cras-Méneur - 10 Oct 2007 22:54 GMT

> PC monitors
> and graphics cards (and Macs of course) can easily cope with the
> different refresh rate and image dimensions without problem.

Indeed. I can play PAL movies without any problem on my Mac,

Corentin

(can someone explain to me why I shouldn't be allowed to play my DVDs
*bought* in France now that I live in the US?? - I HATE region-coding)

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Mac Forum / Applications / Media Player / October 2007

German DVD won't play.