Specific Region-Free/PAL question
 

I've seen some threads about Region Free/PAL DVD players, but I have a question related to receiving DVD-r's in PAL format.

First off, I live in America, so my television and most DVD players & VCR's play NTSC.

I have 1 cheap, generic brand DVD player which I use for PAL DVD's. I think the brand name is AMW, as that's all I see on the machine.

It's not region-free (Perhaps there's a code for the machine, but I haven't looked for one)......But, I mainly use it for sports footage I get from friends in Europe & Australia. Most of the DVD-r's they send play fine, but on occasion some will have a pixellation glitch on the screen every now and then (Which can get annoying), and a few times I've received DVD's which have the pixellation freezes so bad the DVD freezes (Won't play further). When I send any problem DVD's back, the DVD's play fine on their systems.

These friends of mine have made DVD's for others (people from their home countries) and they said the DVD-r's play fine on other people's machines with absolutely no glitches whatsoever. The people I get these from are 3 different people, from different parts of the world, who don't know each other, and they have no reason to lie about the DVD's playing fine for friends in their home countries.

I forgot to mention, I have one European friend whose DVD-r's never have glitches shown on my DVD player, whatsoever.

Is this glitch problem a common thing with North American DVD players that play PAL (ie, does it have to do with the way certain countries have their DVD burners & recorders formatted, and perhaps they end up not fully compatible with American DVD players?), or is this mainly because I have a generic brand DVD player?

And, the main point to my post, is there a PAL DVD player you highly recommend that is excellent in playing DVD-r's & DVD+r's? I would prefer one that's region free as well, so I can buy foreign DVD's not available in North America.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Probably just DVD-R incompatibility and nothing to do with PAL. It is an inexact technology. Some recorders/blank media/players just don't get along. You can try counseling your friends to buy the best media, but other than that (or buying different hardware) there isn't much to do.

Edit:
Forgot one. Some players will do better with DVD+R, some with DVD-R, and so on. There are currently 6 different recording formats, perhaps a different one would be more compatible for you.

Thank you for the response.

What I don't understand is, with an incompatibility issue, why, from the same person, will one DVD work fine, while the other has a problem.....On the same player and using the same blank DVD brand? If it's an incompatibility issue, shouldn't it always be incompatible with certain players?

Also, do you think there would be a DVD player which is more compatible with most burnt DVD's, or is it basically a crapshoot?

I've had incompatibility issues with NTSC DVD-r's before, but it has mainly been with people who had old DVD burners/recorders. So, back then, I assumed it was just a problem with earlier burners/recorders.....And I remember when I used to have a low-end, regular NTSC DVD player which would show glitches every now and then with DVD-r's, regardless of the DVD-r's source.

You'd think you could analyze it better, I agree. There are websites like www.videohelp.com that list compatibility experiences.