I have an Acer Aspire 5735 and its Arcade Deluxe DVD player is not playing some of my DVDs. All of the region changes are used up. The DVDs that I am playing are British and of the same region that my laptop is in at the moment. Why won’t it play these DVDs and how do I make it?
DVD Regions
DVDs are made for “DVD regions” with dedicated regions as follows:
0 - No Region Coding
1 - USA and Canada
2 - Europe, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan and South Africa
3 - Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo and Indonesia
4 - Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America
5 - India, Africa, Russia, and former USSR countries
6 - China
7 - Unused
8 - Cruise Ships and airlines
9 - Expansion
Blu-ray’s introduction has simplified regions somewhat with just three global regions for Blu-Ray players (A, B, and C). Since we’re talking DVDs, we’ll skip the details on Blu-ray.
NTSC vs. PAL vs. SECAM
The next issue in the equation is the video format. Three main formats for television and video are used around the world: NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. For example, in the United States, the video format is NTSC. In the UK, it is PAL. These formats are not compatible without conversion. As you may have noticed, each DVD region is made up of different countries. So a DVD created for UK users would need to be a Region 2 disc in the PAL format. However, just because a disc is Region 2, it might not work in the UK if the disc was designed for Japan which uses the NTSC video format.
Changing DVD Regions on a Computer
As you know, you can change the DVD region of your computer’s DVD drive. However, there’s a limit to this. Usually, the drive can be changed five times before becoming permanently locked on the fifth one. In your case it sounds as if your drive is locked on Region 2.
Since your Region 2 discs are not playing, check to find out if the discs are NTSC or PAL. Is your laptop NTSC or PAL? If the two formats don’t match, you’ll need to buy a NTSC to PAL or a PAL to NTSC converter for your laptop.
