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I'm interested in buying a DVD of a British documentary. However, it's only available in PAL format.

I have an iMac running OS-X 10.5.8. I bought my iMac in the States.

Is PAL compatible with my iMac?

Gaff
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  • btw, if you or someone you know has access to adobe premiere, you can convert it. I'll bet there are programs that will do that as well. – Moshe Apr 02 '10 at 01:09

3 Answers3

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I've found this thread on the Apple forums.

The gist appears to be that it will play, but you'll have to change the region of the DVD drive (unless it's a region free DVD) and you've only got 5 changes before the drive locks to the last region selected.

ChrisF
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    +1 PAL is a television standard, a computer doesn't care about it. DVD region codes are a DRM technique and totally unrelated. –  Feb 17 '10 at 17:21
  • PAL will work fine, but PAL DVDs will almost certainly be Region 2. If you're in "Region 2" (Europe/UK) you'll be okay. – njd Feb 17 '10 at 17:50
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Can't really tell, but I can say that I never had any problems playing the couple of NTSC DVD's I have on any hardware, including a 1999 laptop, a 2009 laptop and 2 DVD players, all of which were targeted at the German market (PAL).

Region codes could be a problem, though, unless the DVD is region-code free or you have appropriate... tools. ;-)

DevSolar
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  • Sadly, it's not region-code free. It should be though because it's an awesome David Attenburough documentary series. :-) –  Feb 17 '10 at 19:06
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I am thinking you can probably use HandBrake to make a copy of the contents of the PAL DVD and watch it from hard disk.

Otherwise ChrisF's answer is correct.

Andrew J. Brehm
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