Will French DVD recorder work in UK?

[ChezTinns]

Hello everyone

When we bought our place in France back in March, we were lucky enough to buy it furnished.  However, the previous owners must have been telly-mad.  There are three tvs, two DVD recorders and 2 video recorders - all rather over-kill for a holiday home!  Would the DVD recorder work back in the UK? 

The reason I ask is that there was a CD player left, which was from the UK and plugged in using an adapter, but for some reason it didn't work very well in France, but fine back in the UK - just wondering whether the same would apply to the DVD recorder?

[Cassis]

Our UK DVD player worked here and the Philips DVD recorder that we have bought to replace it has instructions in French and English among others.

Bit extravegant to leave two DVD recorders - are you sure they are not just players, which are cheap as chips?

[ChezTinns]

Nope, DEFINITELY DVD recorders!!!!

[Cassis]

That was lucky!  If you still have the manuals as well, it should show whether they are 'international' standard.  I don't know the ins and outs, I just have a hazy recollection that there are a number of standards but the 'international' one does what it says on the tin.

[ChezTinns]

Thanks,

We'll bring it home and give it a try then - keep you posted!

 

JT

[Nick Trollope]

To actually answer your question;

Yes, the recorder will certainly work (provided you change the mains plug!), but the tuner may not, but most likely will.

I'm sure you don't want the in-depth technical reasoning behind that statement, do you?

Or summat like that.

[Eslier]

All commercial DVDs are either  PAL or NTSC, I don't think there is such a thing as a SECAM dvd.  I wouldn't mind betting that French dvd recorders play back in  PAL anyway.

[ChezTinns]

Sorry Eslier, you just got waaaaayyy too technical for me then!!

[Gyn_Paul]

[quote user="ChezTinns"]Sorry Eslier, you just got waaaaayyy too technical for me then!![/quote]

Don’t let your eyes

glaze over… it really isn’t hard……

 

There are 3 different

systems of colour TV,

NTSC in America (and

other US-influenced territories)

SECAM in France (and

other french-influenced territories)

And PAL – everywhere else

including the UK.

 

As far as I’m aware there

is no such thing as a SECAM DVD, so a French machine will certainly play DVDs

through a scart lead into a UK TV.  

 

As Nick said, the

tuner is probably multi-standard, currently set to record French TV off-air. When

you get it back to the UK and try to get it to record, you’ll need to go into a

menu called something like ‘set-up’ or ‘install’ where – in addition to

changing the language to one you can understand – you’ll probably be offered something like ‘country’. Choose

the UK,

obviously. Now it will be set to tune into UK TV signals rather than French

ones.

 

There. Not too

difficult was it ?

[ChezTinns]

Thankyou Glyn Paul

 

That was a very gentle techie lesson, and I am not one bit stressed!  It is definitely coming home with me next week

 

JT

[Nick Trollope]

[quote user="Eslier"]All commercial DVDs are either  PAL or NTSC, I don't think there is such a thing as a SECAM dvd.  I wouldn't mind betting that French dvd recorders play back in  PAL anyway.
[/quote]

Don't wish to be too pedantic (ha!!) but NO DVD's (disks)  are encoded with NTSC, PAL, SECAM or whatever - they are digital. Unless one is referring to the players (few of which have any encoding, as few have RF outputs). Only recorders (which record off-air) have decoders (almost, as everyone has confirmed, all are "international"), but none of the DVD recorders I have come across actually output an RF "playback" signal, so no encoding necessary....

Sorry.

[cooperlola]

Thanks Nick for being pedantic, quite.  Only difference to beware of with DVD players and recorders is in fact REGIONAL ENCODING which will not affect anybody in Europe as we are all in region 2.  The only time this is important is if you buy discs on the net from the US, Oz etc when you need a multi-region player.