Our exchange student is leaving next week, and one of the gifts we wanted to give him is a DVD. I just remembered that his DVD region (2 - France) is not the same as the USA. It's too late to order a region 2 DVD, so how common is it that he would have a DVD player capable of playing region 1 DVDs?

Just make it a region free DVD. It's more the TV broadcast standard (NTSC vs PAL) that you have to worry about.

I think you should give him a DVD player to go with that DVD. Just make sure it can handle PAL and 220 V / 50 Hz.

And I am not joking. It is not common to have players that can play discs from a different region at all. Plus, if you give him a DVD player, it will allow him more than just play that one DVD. Since many movies are released on DVD in the US long before they are released in Europe, he will be able to buy them from amazon.com or similar and watch them. That will allow him to stay in touch with the country he spent some time in as an exchange student.

It will be very difficult to buy a PAL DVD player in the US. There're DVD players that can be hacked easily to get rid of the region code restriction. They can be found at

DVD Player and Blu-ray Player region codes - VideoHelp.com (http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks)

Another route is to view the DVD with computer. A DVD drive can change region code 5 times before it is locked to the last region code forever.

However, if you are making your own DVD, you can just specific region 0 which is region free.

It will be very difficult to buy a PAL DVD player in the US.

I bought a $20 DVD player at Wal*Mart many years ago. I no longer use it, but its menu allowed to switch between PAL and NTSC output. Surely they did not stop making those, have they?

I think you are right. My cheap DVD players from Target also allow me to switch NTSC and PAL too. =)

I don't know why this topic was moved here, it's not about DVD authoring, but about playing back store-bought DVDs.

Good suggestion about the DVD player, but his luggage weight is limited and he's going to be pushing it with all the souveniers he's purchased.