French Kurosawa DVD Bonanza

[Michael E Kerpan Jr]

Roddey Reid wrote (about the French Kurosawa DVDs)

> My sense is that these are PAL format and region 2 DVDs that won't 
> play on standard US market NTSC DVD players. Perhaps I am wrong.

Definitely Region 2 PAL.  So you need to have a DVD player that can play 
multiple regions and can convert PAL to NTSC.  There is a Sampo player 
(611) available for around $125 that can do this (a do it yourself 
region code adjustment can be done by anyone with access to a CD burner 
and a tiny smidgen of knowledge). The only problem with this player 
occurs with anamorphic PAL discs (some image distortion). Another player 
(from Malata) that costs a bit over $300 supposedly doesn't even have 
the anamorphic problem.

I suspect that multi-region, multi-standard capability is almost a 
necessity where availability of materials is so catch as catch can as it 
is. (I refused to buy a DVD player until I could find an affordable one 
that was indifferent to the source of the DVDs I wanted to watch).

Michael Kerpan
Boston, MA