Can I give these DVDs to my Indian friend?

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My friend and I made a friend in India. He helped us a lot and there are a couple of films we think he'd really like to see. He talked a lot about 'watching DVDs' so we bought them for him on Amazon in DVD format. But now I'm having some qualms about whether he was in fact watching (cheaper) VCDs and whether he has the equipment to watch actual DVDs. If he can watch one, does that mean he can watch the other? If I send them to him, could he find somewhere to get them transferred to VCD format? This is *not* to sanction pirating in any way, I just want him to be able to see the films! I should point out if it isn't clear from the above that our friend doesnt have much (a)money or (b) technical expertise, and that I have more of the former but not much more of the latter. Also, the films are in French, with subtitles (the TAXI films, if anyone's interested), and I don't think they'll be widely available actually in VCD format.

-- Florence Delaney (florence_delaney@hotmail.com), June 26, 2003

Answers

Good questions. You provided a lot of info on what you have and what you want to do, unlike many people who post here. India is in region 5 for DVDs. If your films are from France (you said they were in French, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are from France) they are region 2. You are entirely correct that your friend almost certainly is talking about VCDs. You could always ask him. Maybe he is watching DVDs. You will need to find out what region the DVDs you bought are from (Western Europe is region 2, USA/Canada is region 1) and ask him if he does watch DVDs, does he have a multi-region DVD player? If not, it possible to copy DVDs and remove region coding, but it's VERY complicated. The fact that you had to ask means that it's probably going to be more work than you really want to do. You do have the option of converting to VCD though. There are various freeware programs that can do this. http://dvd2svcd.doom9.net has the DVD2SVCD program, which is free and can do this with the help of the TMPGenc encoder. You will need to read the guide on using DVD2SVCD as it's not real intuitive. There are other programs that can do this. DVDX can also do this and I think is free, but it can be tricky to find. The following web sites might have some useful information on doing this type of conversion: http://www.doom9.net, http://www.vcdhelp.com, http://www.digital-digest.com. I recommend that you NOT convert your DVDs from PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL. You should make VCDs in the same video format as the DVD. It is possible to do these conversions with programs like TMPGenc, but it rarely gives satisfactory results and the only good ways to do it are to buy $600 (US) encoders or use some very advanced video frame serving tools. If your friend truly has the ability to watch DVDs, he should have no problem with VCDs. If he can only watch VCDs, he will not be able to watch DVDs. DVDs and players are probably very expensive in India and unless your friend makes a lot of money or has relatives who bought him a DVD player, he most likely is really only watching VCDs.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), June 26, 2003.

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