lag on region zero dvd

koan_2

Not quite sure where to post this, it's a bit of a techie query but it concerns a dvd. I hope the TV board is the right place?

I just bought a music dvd and when I play it on my tv the sound is amazing but the picture has a bit of 'lag' which spoils the viewing. I see the dvd has region 0 and was wondering if this might be the problem. My region 2 dvds all seem to play fine.. (I am in the UK). I thought region 0 was supposed to be ok for all regions?

Any ideas?

Nilrem

It sounds like possibly something to do with the frame rate?

Is the picture actually lagging behind the sound, tearing, or just slightly "off"?


Region 0 is all areas but it can mean that the disc is NTSC (a fraction under 60fps) as opposed to pal (50fps), which can look a little off depending on your player, tv and how it's connected up as depending on the payer/connection it can mean the dvd player is trying to get 60fps into 50 which can result in it looking off/lower quality/stuttery*.

If you're using scart cabling and a normal DVD player (IE not a blu ray player, or DVD player with HDMI), always try to connect the player to the TV through a scart connection that is RGB supported as some TV's (especially older ones) only support NTSC/60fps properly through the RGB function of their scart connections (the manual should say which socket supports RGB, or even the socket label might state it).
Also make sure the scart cable is fully populated and not a cheap one with just the most basic lines connected (it used to be fairly common for some cheap scarts not to have the RGB lines connected, as they often weren't used much in the early days)

I know I used to run into issues with my R1 DVD's on some TV's if I connected up to the wrong scart, as things like the whites would pulse, and sometimes I'd notice a sort of tearing affect when the picture scrolled sideways.


One of the nice things about modern TV's and the blu-ray format is that we're no longer at the mercy of different frame rates affecting playback if you're in a different reason, as pretty much all the frame rate and resolution standards are covered for natively now (which means films don't have to be speeded up by about 4% for UK release**, american TV shows don't have to lose 6fps here)

*Mildly interesting fact, you used to be able to tell when a US TV program was shown over here in quick succession to the US, as often they'd have to put it through a quick and dirty standards conversion (if it was recorded on "tape"), which led to a much poorer picture quality and noticable issues (IIRC things like the x-files on their first run through sometimes suffered it). I think the process is termed 3:2 pulldown in general, but how it's done and where makes a big difference.


**As film is 24fps, so for TV/home video in the uk the easy conversion was to speed it up fractionally

koan_2

I think you're right it is the frame rate. The movement on the film is jolty, it's as if it's trying to catch up with itself. A friend has mentioned something about the de-coding (?) possibly not being quite right.

The dvd's an import, possibly German, and it's region zero. The telly is a tv/dvd combi.

Ah well, perhaps it's just a case of having to play this particular dvd on another machine. Will try it on the computer later on, see how it plays. Shame, because it's a concert, and the sound quality is good, it's just the picture.

InsideInsurance

Region 0 means it has no region coding so this in itself wouldnt explain the issue.

When the sound and picture become out of synch with each other it means that either its a badly mastered production or more commonly it means that the processing that is being done on one component (sound or vision) is taking longer than the processing on the other.

If it is not in PAL format and its the picture that is delayed then it could be your TV is slow at converting the picture from NTSC hence the issue.

Some DVD/ BluRay players, AVRs and TVs have the ability to delay the audio in the setup menus to compensate. The problem is you are probably going to have to do this each time you want to play this particular disk.