Converting DVD from European Region to USA Region

[Jugglering]

Hello everybody.. I've posted this in Technology rather than TV cos it's more of a techie problem that who starred in what tv show... I bought a mate a DVD (a BBC production) - except he lives in the USA and I bought it here in the UK... On looking at the back, I realise I have been a bit of a dull girl - it is in 2+4 Colour PAL UK which I thinks means that it can only be played on DVDs that can read this format. Does anyone know I can get around this problem ?

[MTbowels]

First of all, I'd check that that his DVD player does only play NTSC discs. You may be in luck and find that it plays PAL discs too in which case there's no problem. There are multi-format players in the USA just as in the UK.

If not, you could try converting the disc to NTSC by using DVDFlick, which is available as a free download all over the internet. The project settings allow you to convert from PAL to NTSC but you should note that you'll be burning onto a blank DVD which means you won't have the original DVD labelling. That may or may not be acceptable to you. DVDFlick is fairly straightforward to use but you need to follow the instructions closely and copy the original disc onto your hard drive first.

[MTbowels]

Incidentally, DVDFlick contains it's own burning software, so you don't need Nero etc to burn the disc off after conversion.

[MrBounty]

I dont think it's necessarily to do with PAL and NTSC, more along the lines of the region the DVD is set to.

Europe is Region 2 and the USA is Region 1 - generally, you shouldnt be able to play, say, a Region 2 disk in a Region 1 player.

As MT has said, you'd need a program to remove the region coding - never used DVDFlick, so cannot comment on that one - but there are plenty of ripping software out there.

[Jugglering]

Many thanks to you both - I didn't even realise there was software *out there* that could do all this ! I will now happily send him the DVD and give him the details you have kindly supplied to me.