TV Color Systems and DVD Regions

Page last updated February 2004

Living in the US but having a major residence in Europe can be rather difficult sometimes. Among others, especially watching TV and DVDs. So I'm confronted with two different TV color systems, PAL in Germany and NTSC in the US. DVDs bought in the US will not necessarily play in Germany, not only due to the different color systems, also because of the different region codings at the DVD.
To play such NTSC DVDs bought in the US on a PAL TV set in Germany a multisystem, multiregion, codefree zone free DVD player is recommended similar to some of those listed here. At the same place are also Video converters (between PAL, NTSC, and SECAM) available and phones which work across borders. One much more expensive brand would be the excellent multisystem multiregion DVD player from Arcam maybe together with that 1000 Watt receiver.

There are three major TV color systems, NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. From those, PAL and SECAM each have 4 different subsystems.

There are six different DVD regions:

Region 1 - USA and Canada
Region 2 - Europe, Japan, the Middle East, North Africa, Egypt, and South Africa
Region 3 - Taiwan, The Philippines, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong
Region 4 - Mexico, Central America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and the Caribbean
Region 5 - Russia, Eastern Europe, India, North Korea, and East and West Africa
Region 6 - China.

The problem does not occur when using MS Media Player on a computer. So connecting a computer to the TV set instead of a usual DVD player will also work properly - maybe harder without the remote control. Ofcourse, there is also software which can be used to read a DVD with any region code or color system and to burn a new DVD with any other coding. However, due to legal constraints, this subject cannot be explained here in more detail.

Antenna Based HDTV Setup

The most important and also the most expensive part was the HDTV-ready LCD display I bought from DELL US which was made by Samsung, however. If I would have had enough money I would have shopped for a Sharp Aquos LCD screen.
Since the DELL LCD screen had no builtin HDTV tuner I searched the internet for the best price on the HDTV Receiver and HI-Format DVD Player LG LST 3510a (I saved about $ 150 compared to the store price.)
The third and very important part is a good HDTV antenna. I decided for the more expensive Terk TV 55 antenna, which can be used in and outdoors. Many of my friends like the much cheaper indoor antenna Zenith Silver Sensor even more. The Terk HDTV1 antenna is very fancy but does obviously not work very well in my rural region.
Before making such an investment I made sure that I would have enough TV channels in my neighbourhood. This can easily be done with the Antennaweb website. After the input of your precise street adress (no worry, your data are save there) you will obtain a list of available stations together with their distances and compass orientation ordered in colored groups. Starting with the best channels in yellow, my TV 55 is also able to receive stations in the green and light green area. The list shows also channels in the red, blue, and purple areas which are out-of-range for me.

If you want to spend less money, there is also a $ 199 version of HDTV by Gary Krakow who states that the Terk HD TV 1 antenna is obviously a better choice for big cities like New York. It has paid off for me to google Gary Krakow from time to time for some of his excellent articles.