Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Why won't DVDs I bought in Northern Ireland work in the US


Why won't DVDs I bought in Northern Ireland work in the US?
I got three DVDs in Northern Ireland since they were such a good deal, and because one is not available for sale in the States. I tried to play them on my Sony DVD player that I bought here in the US, but it says "cannot read". Can I program my DVD player to read these, or is it a lost cause? I didn't realize the technology would be different. If there is no way to configure my DVD player (which is only a few months old!), I'm just going to sell them on amazonUK.
Other - Electronics - 9 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
different regions. Ireland is Region 2, US is Region 1
2 :
good idea and it because it has different regions. that happened to my friend as well
3 :
check your DVD player and see if it has a setting for region. If so set it to the region code on the back of the DVD. Should be good. If not you out of luck.
4 :
DVD players are configured to only read DVDs ased on the DVD's "region". Ireland and the U.S. are not in the same region, so you would have to reprogram your DVD to allow this. But if you did so, then your player couldn't read the rest of your DVDs. You have three choices: -Buy a second DVD player that's set up for the region containing Ireland. -Buy a "regionless" DVD. (They can be purchased from international mail order.) -Sell the DVDs.
5 :
There are nine regions which DVDs are encoded with. The US is region 1 and Ireland is Region 2. You can't play anything, but region 1 DVDs in a US DVD player because they can only play region 1 discs. You would have to a DVD from Ireland.
6 :
Not only the region code, but Europe is PAL tv-signal and America is NTSC. Otherwise, there is software to change the country code and DVD players that don't care about the country code.
7 :
HI, for the sale of DVDs (to protect copyright and other local regulations with respect to censoring), the world is split into various regions and the DVD players are also normally programmed to play that particular regions DVD only, unless ofcourse you buy all region DVD player or ask the DVD technician to modify and give you for playing all the regions.
8 :
DVD's are programed w/ a certain # that goes w/ certain regions (like the US) and if your DVD player wont play it, its because it can only play US DVD's. there is a way to change it i think, but once you change it, its super hard to change it back or you only get so many times to change it until its not changeable anymore. you could either change it (its tricky), sell the DVD's, or buy a universal DVD player...
9 :
The reason is due to the fact that DVD's have different regions and players are assigned to play different DVD regions.