PAL DVD's playable on US computers?

January 12, 2009 2:20 PM

I'm accustomed to watching DVDs produced for the United States market on my laptop using the VLC software player. Using this set up, will I be able to watch PAL DVDs made for the UK or European markets without any difficulties? I don't want deal with any ripping, conversions, flashing DVD drive memories to change regions etc.
posted by paphun123 to computers & internet (6 comments total)

It depends on a lot of things - the type of drive you use (some Mac drives have hardware region locking), the types of copy protection the disc uses and so on. In general, if you are using a PC (not, as mentioned, a Mac) you should be okay.
posted by fearthehat at 2:43 PM on January 12

I've had no problems watching PAL discs using VLC, even though other programs will complain my dvd drive is set to region 1 (Windows XP user).
posted by Gary at 2:54 PM on January 12

Yes, I should have mentioned I'm on a PC with Windows XP.
posted by paphun123 at 3:13 PM on January 12

Confirmed as yes on a Dell Latitude D630.
posted by clarkie666 at 5:28 PM on January 12

Yes on an XP Sony VAIO laptop. I had previously flashed the DVD-drive in previous attempt to achieve region-freeness.
posted by K.P. at 6:05 PM on January 12

It shouldn't be a problem, as VLC does not respect regioning, and implements its own region-decoding, rather than relying on the hardware's (as I understand it). Other players may complain at the drive region, but nothing should have an issue with it being PAL rather than NTSC.
posted by Brother Dysk at 7:02 PM on January 12