thelinuxlink.net

Will pal dvds play on American hardware under Linux? I'm going to buy a Russian movie, taras bulba, but didn't know if it would play in my computers. I have compaq, acer, and hp systems.

Yes they will. The only negative thing is the region setting that you can flip so many times before it locks. I forget what the limit is. Maybe five?

Patrick wrote:Yes they will. The only negative thing is the region setting that you can flip so many times before it locks. I forget what the limit is. Maybe five?

What does that mean?

Most standard DVD rom drives have a region setting. In North America it's region 1. Europe region 2 (I believe). You can change the region setting thru the OS.
http://linvdr.org/projects/regionset/

You are limited in how many times you flip the region. You could just pickup a second DVD drive and permanently set it to region 2.

Patrick wrote:Most standard DVD rom drives have a region setting. In North America it's region 1. Europe region 2 (I believe). You can change the region setting thru the OS.
http://linvdr.org/projects/regionset/

You are limited in how many times you flip the region. You could just pickup a second DVD drive and permanently set it to region 2.

Thank you Patrick. I will just dedicate one laptop to a region. I only have laptops. Oh well...

According to this LInux.com article, some of the playback software can bypass the region setting. You might try different players, Xine, VLC, Mplayer..... The article also covers flashing your drive to remove the restriction if you want to try that route as well as regionset.

http://www.linux.com/base/ldp/howto/DVD ... /prep.html

Bugz