Wetlook World Forum

I've done much research and reverse engineering in regards to both DVD and VCD in the last couple of years, thus can help you with your dilema. My explanation is a little long-winded, but here goes.

DVD was supposed to be a universal format, compatible with any player on any television system in any country. DVDs can contain MPEG 2 in any one of three different frame rates:

29.97 - Never The Same Color (twice)

25 - PAL

23.976 - 35mm motion picture film

The MPEG decoder chip in all players can properly handle all of these rates without any problem. The decoder chip then converts it to the rate you have specified for your television (PAL or NTSC) transparently. So given all these factors, there is absolutely no reason why a disc purchased in Germany (PAL) will not play on my player sold in Canada.

The movie studios were not amused by this whole concept because this could very well prevent them from making even more money. The problem is that many movies are released on video in North America, while they may only be hitting the theaters in Europe. Being the money grubbing bureaucrats that they are, feared that DVDs sold in North America would be shipped overseas, thus the entire European population would purchase them instead of theater tickets and popcorn. (did I mention that they are bureaucrats?)

The studios forced the Motion Picture Association/Motion Picture Association of America (MPA/MPAA) to prevent this widespread compatibility, hence, "region coding" was immediately born. All DVD player manufacturers were forced to implement region coding on ALL players made after December 31, 1999, or loose their DVD licensing plus  face large fines.

The concept behind region coding is quite simplistic. The world is broken up into 7 regions. All players are assigned one region code. Region coded DVDs are also be assigned a number. Every time you press "play", your DVD player compares its own region code to the one encoded on the disc. If the two do not match, the player will refuse to play the disc. A so-called "region free" DVD player, or one modified to be region free does not care what region the disc was assigned, it just plays it.

DVDs such as older re-released movies, instructional videos, and some music discs are not region coded, or are coded "region all". This allows them to be played in any player, regardless of where the disc and/or player were purchased.

For the curious, here are the defined region codes:

1 - The U.S., U.S. territories and Canada

2 - Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Egypt, South Africa, Greenland

3 - Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong

4 - Mexico, South America, Central America, Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Caribbean

5 - Russia (okay, former Russia), Eastern Europe, India, most of Africa, North Korea, Mongolia

6 - China

7 - Commercial Aircraft (in-flight movies--not available to the general public)

The studios also didn't want people easily making clear copies to their movies to video tape because of immediate wide-spread piracy (oh, did I forget to mention they are money grubbing bureaucrats?). Macrovision encoding present in all players prevents this. The player checks for a binary "yes" or "no" before playing the disc. If the player finds a "yes" it turns on the macrovision chip IN YOUR PLAYER. Regardless of the yes or no, the video stream present on the disc does NOT contain macrovision encoding. As with region coding, not all discs make use of the macrovision chip.

VCDs and super VCDs are not subject to these region limitations, nor do they utilize macrovision. When played in a VCD/SVCD capable DVD player, will also play regardless of disc or television framerates.

So in answer to your original question, since the disc in question is "region free", I'd recommend buying the DVD instead of the VCD as the resolution is much higher.