PAL or NTSC?

All our DVDs are region-free and will play anywhere in the world. However, different countries use one of two different methods to enocde the video data on the DVD.

In Europe this encoding standard is called 'PAL' and in the Americas it is called 'NTSC' (there is a third format called SECAM, but this is used for broadcast video only - PAL is the format used for DVDs in SECAM countries). Click here to see a map.

Some NTSC equipment can not play PAL discs correctly (and vice versa). However, computers, and recently produced DVD players and televisions can often play either format without any problems.

If you live in an NTSC country and you are sure that your system can play PAL enocded discs then you may find that the PAL version gives you slightly better picture quality. [For the technically minded: PAL consists of 720 x 576 lines of resolution, rather than NTSC's 720 x 480 lines. In addition, our productions originate in SD PAL or 25P HD, and there can be a very slight loss in picture quality when this is converted to 23.98/30P NTSC].

If you are not sure which format you should buy please email us, or telephone us at +44 (0) 2071 487 439 and we will be happy to help.