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General discussion

Beginner's Questions - goal is Region 0 DVD's

Apr 11, 2005 1:46AM PDT

Hi everyone. Time to make the step in to digital home movies.

I am looking at the following gear -

Sony DCR-PC109 - I want a small Camcorder, this one seems to fit the bill on price/size/quality and has the added bonus (for me) on being able to take analog in from the docking station to be able to convert my Hi-8 home videos to digital from my old camcorder.

Sony External DVD Burner DRX-710UL - Need external as I am a laptop user, my laptop has plenty of horsepower but when I configured it I opted out of the DVD burner for more internal memory, it runs XP Professional and is a Centrino with 1GB ram and about 40GB free hard disk.

THE QUESTION IS:

I want to make the DVD's I burn of the home videos Region 0, not Region 1. Will the software that comes with the above hardware let me do that (I believe it is Nero)? I haven't bought anything yet and wanted to check in to this first. I am not that bothered about DVD playback using the external drive but I do want my DVD's to be able to playback on my relatives DVD players in Brazil and the UK (can't remember their regions) as well as ours here in the US. I know most PC DVD player/burners end up locking a region for playback after a few uses but what about the other direction, for burning DVD's?

Help please!!

Thanks,

Adam

Discussion is locked

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(NT) (NT) Nero is ..."Region Free" Play anywhere.
Apr 11, 2005 7:53AM PDT
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Thumbs up to Nero then
Apr 11, 2005 11:08AM PDT

Thanks! So nothing to worry about. What do you think of the equipment selections? Anyone got any opinions on them?

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Well I have one issue.
Apr 11, 2005 9:39PM PDT

Reports still abound with people having issues with Nero making DVDs. I don't use that but the Ulead software and don't have the issue. I've seen the Nero stuff work but I think it fails on rendering "downloaded" content. People are too shy about what exactly they were doing during the failure but I am very sure it's that issue.

Bob

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ULead - produces Region Free?
Apr 11, 2005 11:46PM PDT

Does ULead and I guess other DVD burning software give you the option to set the Region on the DVD you are burning or is it always Region 0? Are you sure it doesn't get tied to the hardware selected Region setting on the burner itself?

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I can only share that..
Apr 12, 2005 12:06AM PDT

Ulead, MyDVD, Nero produced region free DVDs. But this is a NON-ISSUE since DVDSHRINK can remove the region protection in one pass.

Bob

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ULEAD Software
Apr 12, 2005 2:44AM PDT

I was taking a look at their website. They have two products that are able to edit and produce DVDs, Movie Factory Disc Creator and Video Studio. I sat through their demos and essentially both products appear to do the same thing! Any insight?!
By the way, both look great.

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Movie Factory is very easy.
Apr 12, 2005 3:13AM PDT

VideoStudio does more.

Bob

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How about the Camcorder?
Apr 12, 2005 10:21AM PDT

Sounds good, all I need now is my tax refund! Happy
How does the Sony PC109 sound? I know that there is a 3CCD Panasonic for about the same price but from what I have read it doesn't seem to really out-perform the similarly priced Sony and the Sony has the pass through digital conversion included.
Are there any other similarly priced camcorders that have the pass through digitial conversion that I am missing? I am a fan of Canon for photographic equipment but it looks like this is one feature their Camcorder's don't offer..

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(NT) (NT) I'd start a new topic.
Apr 12, 2005 10:24AM PDT
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Region Free DVD Video Player does not exist anymore
Apr 12, 2005 12:53PM PDT

The playability of a DVD-Video (which is a proprietory format of DVD Forum) disc is jointly determined by both the disc and the DVD-Video player. According to the industry standard it is legally binding for a manufacture that any DVD player must include specified in-bult mechanism which will stop playing a DVD-Video disc which is detected as region free. Otherway is illegal. However, before this industry standard was enforced, initially there were DVD-Video players which could play those no-region disc. Therefore, region free DVD-Video format and player no more exist, at least, in legal term. That, of course, does not mean that illegal systems do not exist.

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Setting the region
Apr 12, 2005 1:47PM PDT

So you are saying if I want to send my home movies to relatives in other regions I would need to burn their copy of the DVD's for their region code in order to work on a legal DVD player.

Do any of the burner software products let you do this, from what I understood above they burn using region 0?

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How can I convey this?
Apr 12, 2005 10:19PM PDT

If I make a DVD, it has NO REGION!

You seem to be under the impression that all DVDs must have a region code.

Bob

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Point Taken
Apr 12, 2005 11:14PM PDT

Ok, I didn't know that! I thought that a DVD that could play in a home DVD player (as opposed to data storage) had to have a region otherwise it would not "fit" the format the player needs to see, but one of those regions being an exception, Region 0, that any player that was already locked down to a specific region, could still play.
We will see if we have trouble or not once I start making DVD's of our home movies, I have relatives in Australia, Brazil and the UK, I think all are separate regions. In the past it has been either frustrating or expensive to convert a video to something any of them could watch on their TV's, the concept of DVD's make it so much more distibutable. It also appears that DVD's help out with the NTSC vs PAL format problems as what is originally NTSC (in our case) will end up on the PAL screen as a clipped image, something we can live with. By the way, do any of the video editing software add in top and bottom lines to an image if so desired to fill out NTSC to say the UK PAL format?

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I offered the tool to remove the region.
Apr 12, 2005 11:19PM PDT

You will have to match the PAL or NTSC, but this is NOT a region issue and I noted what software will remove the region if you find out it has it.

As to your last question. No.

Bob

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Region Code is a must for Players but an Option for a disc
Apr 13, 2005 11:51AM PDT

I think some anomaly in my hastly composed earlier posting created some confusion.
Region Code is a requirement for a DVD Player but an option for DVD disc. Therefore, you can certainly burn a multi-region (all region/ no region) DVD disc. But there cannot be a "standard" play-all player which will play all discs, disregarding their region coding, if there is any in the disc. Please note that there are more than one types of region coding and copy protection mechanisms (and their illegal cracks-as well).

You can read for more info in the comprehensive guide "DVD Primer" or "DV Primer" available free at www.adobe.com. By the way, I believe, Adobe publishes the best informative and comprehensive free guides for consumers/prosumers on digital videos and images. As a consumer/prosumer, reading those literature can make you feel very confident on the issues concerned.