weird flickering on region free dvd player

[Guest Erik]

hi there

a friend gave us one of those cheapy, dvd players that you can hack to make region free so we could watch some foreign discs. So far the only thing we've played on it have been the british tv series Cold Feet, but what sucks is that the image, especially during pans, tends to flicker, like the player isn't handing all the data very gracefully.

My question is: Is this flickering due to:

1 - some Pal/NTSC problem not addressed in "region free" conversion

2 - crappy player (my guess)

3 - crappy discs

4 - other

regards

Erik H.

[Phil Connolly]

Hi Erik

 

 

If you are watching a PAL dvd in NTSC land, the player is having to do a real time conversion from 25 to 30 fps, different converters do this with different degress of sucess. If your player has a less good PAL to NTSC conversion, you would get noticable artifacts especially on pans.

 

Phil

[B.J. Allen]

hi there

a friend gave us one of those cheapy, dvd players that you can hack to make region free so we could watch some foreign discs. So far the only thing we've played on it have been the british tv series Cold Feet, but what sucks is that the image, especially during pans, tends to flicker, like the player isn't handing all the data very gracefully.

My question is: Is this flickering due to:

1 - some Pal/NTSC  problem not addressed in "region free" conversion

2 - crappy player (my guess)

3 - crappy discs

4 - other

regards

Erik H.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

There is a great Philips DVD player available on Amazon for less than $70, it plays just about anything after a quick adjustment.

 

Even the old Apex players do great with playing PAL discs though.

 

I suspect your first problem is seeing a fast pan shot with a slower frame rate than you're used to. They do get choppy sometimes even in PAL countries.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

Watch it on a computer; the frame rate will probably be handled more gracefully, especially if you set your monitor to scan at some multiple of it.

 

Phil

[Guest Erik]

Hi,

 

Watch it on a computer; the frame rate will probably be handled more gracefully, especially if you set your monitor to scan at some multiple of it.

 

Phil

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

interesting

are computers region free? I guess that makes sense....

EH

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

The computer itself is; the DVD player may not be. Most of them can be reflashed to defeat the region encoding; doing so is a illegal in the US.

 

As for the rest of it - an XGA graphics board and monitor is the same all over the world, and they're no more particularly suited to play back PAL or NTSC (Especially considering most scan at 72Hz!)

 

Phil