DVD's are made so you have to buy a japanese dvd player to watch japanese dvd's. English dvd's are made like that too. Are VCD players like that? Or can you play any vcd on any vcd player?

-- Tsubasa Ozzora (creamice@bellsouth.net), August 13, 2001

Answers

VCDs do not have region coding like DVDs do (that's why you can't play Japanese or British DVDs on American DVD players), so you can play them on American DVD players with no problem. However, make sure you get commercial VCDs and not bootleg or homemade ones made to CD-R discs. Many DVD players will not play CD-R media, but they will play commercially produced VCDs from places like www.allvcds.com. What I mean by "commercially produced" is legitimate, non-bootleg VCDs. If your curious about whether or not your DVD player can handle CD-R media, go to www.vcdhelp.com and look up your player on the DVD player compatibility list. Most Asian VCDs are in PAL format (US TV uses NTSC), but your DVD player should still be able to reformat it to look OK on your TV.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), August 14, 2001.