The VCD Gamble

[Pailin]

Random question that may not have an answer.

I live in the US so I usually buy my movies/videos on VCD format to make sure that I can view them.

Sometimes the VCDs work on my television through my dvd player.
Sometimes the VCDs work on my computer.
Sometimes the VCDs don't work at all.

How can I tell if the VCD's are in my 'region'? (DVDs are so well labelled, but most VCD's are not) Is there any secret to getting VCD's to work?

[iGotNoTime]

VCD's do not have regions. They are either properly coded or not to put it simply.

The best kept secret to making VCD's work is to buy a $30 Coby or Apex DVD player from Wal-mart. They are world reknowned for literally playing any disc put into them. I have alot of money in my home theater system. Over $4,000, yet my main DVD player is a $30 player due to the same reason you are posting on.

On a side note it is getting comfortable seeing you post so much more! I am happy to give you a more formal welcome to the forums.

[mikenz66]

I don't think it's a region problem. As far as I know there is no "protection" on VCDs. I think it is a case of the VCD format not being so standardized as DVD. Then again, my DVD players sometimes don't play DVD-R, or especially DVD-RW.

I used to get irritated by region encoding but in my country (most countries?) these days it's just about impossible to find a DVD player that DOES care about regions. Good thing too, since otherwise there are a lot of movies at my local "arthouse" DVD rental store that I could never watch, because they did not bother to release them as Region 4 DVDs.

PS. Good to see from iGNT's post that even in the US you can get multi-region players (or am I misunderstanding that?) As he says, a new, cheap, player is a lot more useful than a slightly older expensive one

[rcalaimo]

Really ? an apex or coby plays "any"disk(dvd or cd or vcd)?
I purchased ( a while back) a dvd player with a wide support range. Chinese made and works great. Forked out some change for it too 5555.

[Pailin]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. We actually bought an Apex here at work because we were so cheap (I work in education and we have no money). I didn't even think that might be better. I'll have to bring by some of my non functioning VCDs and see if that helps.

Thanks for your welcome, IGNT. I'm learning so much from this site. I hope I don't annoy people with my detailed questions!

[badfish]

Just for clarification, some of the Apex and cheap DVD players come region free. Some of them are very easy to unlock with the remote while some are more difficult. The best way to see if you can unlock your DVD player is to check on http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.

Playing VCDs however will not require a region free DVD player as iGotNoTime pointed out. It requires a DVD player that supports VCDs. There are different types of VCDs however (SVCD, XVCD, etc) so that could be the cause of your VCD problems. www.videohelp.com contains a lot of helpful information if you want to find a good player.

In Texas, you should have Fry's. They routinely put the cheap Apex's on sale for like $20 or some other cheap brand. These are often the best DVD players because you can make a lot of them region free, remove macrovision, and enable other things. Sometimes I've had to go there and compare the serial numbers of a certain model to make sure the one I got would work.

[Pailin]

Thanks for your help, badfish! These webistes were full of information. I will promptly direct my technology literate friend to these websites to help me. I don't speak technology yet. (for me, Thai is a piece of cake in comparison)