Playing video tapes from England in USA

[amylovespaul 0]

My husband brought over several video tapes when he moved from England. I did some internet searching and discovered that you need to convert them to play on american tv because the tv's here use NTSC and UK ones use PAL. Well we bought this converter that is meant to do that. Problem is it doesn't work at all with my VCR/TV and when I tried it on my mother's VCR/TV the picture was good but the sound was dragging rrrrrrreeeeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllllyyyyyyyy sssssslllllllllllllllooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww. It's almost like the tape doesn't want to play in the VCR right. We've tried different tapes to see be sure it wasn't just a problem with the tapes. Has anyone been able to watch their English vidoe tapes over here in the states? If so can anybody help us please? Thanks in advance!

Amy

[Lansbury 19]

My husband brought over several video tapes when he moved from England. I did some internet searching and discovered that you need to convert them to play on american tv because the tv's here use NTSC and UK ones use PAL. Well we bought this converter that is meant to do that. Problem is it doesn't work at all with my VCR/TV and when I tried it on my mother's VCR/TV the picture was good but the sound was dragging rrrrrrreeeeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllllyyyyyyyy sssssslllllllllllllllooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww. It's almost like the tape doesn't want to play in the VCR right. We've tried different tapes to see be sure it wasn't just a problem with the tapes. Has anyone been able to watch their English vidoe tapes over here in the states? If so can anybody help us please? Thanks in advance!

Amy

I'm no expert on this but I have done a bit of research in view of my pending relocation to the States. From your post I gather you are playing the tapes back on a US video recorder (NTSC). If I am not mistaken you need a PAL video recorder to play back on with the PAL to NTSC converted between the recorder and the TV.

These people maybe able to help http://www.world-import.com/index.htm

[Candace 2]

I second what Lansbury said. I have an NTSC television and converter box, but also had to get a DVD and video player that played PAL formats as the converter converts the PAL signal from the player in order to play it on the TV (if that makes sense...)

In any case, it's spaghetti junction back there.

Good luck

[babybunny 2]

I have a multi system VCR< hitachi > and TV< sony >.

you can go special places to buy multi systems.

[amylovespaul 0]

Thanks everybody! I was thinking (hoping) maybe I could avoid buying something else. I guess it was a nice try on my part! ha ha! I guess I'll just look into buying a system that will play them. Thanks again, you guys are always so helpful!

[Linababe 0]

If you are plannign another trip to the UK or still have framily and friends here it may work out cheaper to just mail the videos back home to them and get them to find someone who can convert them to be used in USA. I had a tape I baought in USA and couldnt play it in UK so I got it converted it only cost me around £5 but that was like 10 years ago lol. The most I think they may charge is around £10. Bes to get someone in UK to price a few places.

Lina (UKC)

If you are plannign another trip to the UK or still have framily and friends here it may work out cheaper to just mail the videos back home to them and get them to find someone who can convert them to be used in USA. I had a tape I baought in USA and couldnt play it in UK so I got it converted it only cost me around £5 but that was like 10 years ago lol. The most I think they may charge is around £10. Bes to get someone in UK to price a few places.

Lina (UKC)

Please excuse the typos I didnt spell check this lol

[pj1959us 0]

If you do purchase a multi-region player, especially a dual VHS/DVD player, pay special attention to ensure the player will still play PAL tapes. Many of the multi-region players will still only play NTSC (not PAL format) and the DVD portion is actually the only "region-free" part of the player.

[amylovespaul 0]

Yea I was just looking into some different VCR/DVD combos and it looks like most won't play PAL videos on an NTSC TV, so I would still need a converter or a multi-region TV. Then there was one that said it wouldn't work with a video converter! Yikes! Looks like I'll be looking carefully before buying anything. If anybody have any brands/models that have worked for them, any help would be appreciated! Thanks everyone!

Amy

[Jo1973 0]

Would all this be the same for using a UK DVD in a US DVD player?

[Toledospod 0]

Would all this be the same for using a UK DVD in a US DVD player?

No it wouldn't be the same thank god for that!

The deal is this, Videos are the old standard and therefore they are lot harder to work with. Everyone nowadays buys DVD's and DVD Players and there are very very few films produced on Video now. Obviously, if you have videos already, this is a problem. The reason why UK videos don't work on USA VCR's is that the USA broadcast all shows on TV with more lines on the screen than the UK does(you wouldn't notice this difference at all when you look at the picture on the TV, its all very technical!). Now the British manufacturers were smart in making TV's and VCR's that support NTSC videos. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for most of the American manufacturers. Therefore, you can take a USA tape recorded on the NTSC system and play it back on a modern UK VCR, but unfortunately, you can't take a UK tape recorded on the PAL system and play it on most American VCR's.

However, you CAN play any DVD from anywhere in the world on a DVD player that is 'region free'. Most players you buy in the US can be 'hacked' so to speak and made region free, if they aren't already like that. The reason that DVD players normally only play US region 1 DVD's is because the whole broadcasting and copyright laws around the world. The broadcasting companies deliberately put a security feature on all Region 1 DVD's that stops them from being played on any Region 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 DVD player. The same thing applies to Region 2 DVD's from the UK. If you want them to play, you have to either find a multi-region DVD player(which is very easy nowadays)or buy a cheaper DVD player and find a 'remote control hack' for it. This means that you use a sequence of remote control presses o the DVD player's remote to unlock a hidden region selection menu(which exists on almost all players, but the manufacturers don't want you to know about this)and you can then select Region 0, which allows you to play all DVD's regardless of where they are from! This is what I will do when I get to the US in a few weeks time, as I have a lot of Region 2(UK) DVD's.

[Sister Fracas 5]

We have a multi-region tv, vcr (for the soaps hubster's mum sends over...hahahaha), and a chipped multi-region Playstation, which plays multi-region DVDs as well!