I ordered John Boorman's THE GENERAL last week, and opted to get the Autralian DVD...since it was roughly the equivalent of $7 in American currency (as opposed to $20 for the R-1 from Amazon.com).

Upon recieving it in the mail I was mystified to read "NTSC DVD" on the cover, even tho the back said "Region 4".

Why is this?

I mean it doesn't affect my viewing pleasure (my player is mulit-region anyway). But I thought it was rather odd that an Australian DVD would be NTSC and not PAL. I also tried the disc on my parents' DVD player and it worked fine. Oh yeah...the disc is not even region-coded (despite the fact it says "Region 4" on the cover -- incidentally I also have two other "Region 4" DVDs -- Cyrano de Bergerac and 1492 which are not region-coded either, tho they are PAL.)

And my "Region 2" UK DVD of The Bounty is also NTSC. (I don't think it is region-coded either).

Like I said it doesn't really affect my life, but these questions gnaw away at me. Anyone know why these things happen? Who decides this?

Anyway the only which DVD irk me about THE GENERAL DVD, was that the DVD menu claims to give one the option of viewing the film in black and white (which is how Boorman wanted it seen) or color. However the actual disc only contains the color version.


Paul

It's just an anomaly of the market. It's a PAL region and all Australian-produced releases are PAL, but because it's a fairly small market and the exchange rate isn't that hot, it's not altogether uncommon for them to do licensed imports of some titles they don't expect to sell that well in NTSC. A lot of Warners titles in Australia are NTSC for that reason.

I finally watched this DVD...and get this...

Not only is it NTSC...it is REGION 1!

The case states quite clearly "Region 4", but I put the DVD in my computer (which is set to Region 2) and got an error message telling me the disc was Region 1!

How crazy is that???


It was a pretty good movie tho.


Paul