A friend of mine just brought back some new All Region NTSC DVD's back from China, but when we try to watch them the picture jumps up and down.. We tried to play the DVD's in different DVD players and on different TV's, but no luck.

He said he had the sales guy play those DVD's before he bought them and they all played just fine. Anyone know?? Thanks in advance

From memory theres two types of NTSC format, the "jumping" you're seeing is most likely your TV not coping with the slightly different NTSC format. If you have an older TV, you should be able to fix it using the "Vertical Hold" adjustment.
Someone more familiar with NTSC should be able to explain exactly what the difference is.

could be your DVD player is set to output PAL on region 0 DVDs. Try entering your DVD players setup to make sure.

Most likely the DVDs are encoded in PAL, which is strange because most of the DVDs from China are NTSC, even though China (and HK) itself is a PAL country. What DVDs were they?

Thanks for the replies..

I had problems with these movies: Shrek, Evolution, Tomb Raider, Goodbye Mr. Cool.......
Ash of Time and Fighter's Blue had no problem.

If they were encoded in PAL, is there anyway to change the settings on my dvd player or T.V so I can watch them? Thanks again

not unless you had a combo NTSC/PAL DVD player.

You basically have these choices, as far as I know:

1) get a NTSC to PAL coverter which will be somewhat hard to find and expensive
2) get a DVD player that can do both NTSC/PAL. The ones that are available such as the Sampo 620, are not highly regarded.
3) a choice that people seem to like is to set up a Home Theatre PC, which basically would consist of a DVD decoder card such as the Hollywood Plus and a DVD-rom drive. The PC doesn't even have to be that fast, used ones can be found for cheap real easy nowadays. On the Asian DVD Guide forum, people have been mentioning setting up a PC like this for around $400.

The above titles you mention are bootlegs, and usually with bootlegs released this early they are encoded in PAL format, originating from Malaysia. IF the picture is black and white in addition to jumping, then that would explain it. NTSC encoded dvds should not display that type of behaviour.

yeah, I had a friend buy some dvds for me from China. All the dvds were bootlegs. You could even hear the audience laughing and cell phones going off.

Not all the bootlegs are like this though.
I have bought plenty which are exactly like the original. And there lies the other person's problem. He is buyind DVD versions of pirate VCDs which have been produced by using a camcorder in a cinema. If he buys DVDs which are copied from the original (of which there are none for Shrek, Evolution, Tomb Raider etc), then the image quality and sound is the same. IMO he got ripped off buying them as dvds and should have paid less than half the price for the VCD version (same quality, but on 2 CDs).
I'm currently in Malaysia (home of the cheap VCD and DVD), and have plenty of the VCDs with audiences laughing etc, but for the equivalent of US$1.60, I can put up with it.