Unless your DVD or video tape came from one of the countries listed at the right, it's in a format that your DVD player or VCR probably can't play -- either the PAL or possibly the SECAM format. Likewise, if you're planning to send a DVD or flash drive of Uncle Fred and Aunt Frieda's wedding anniversary to a friend in England, or Ghana, or Martinique or France, your friend probably won't be able to view your DVD or tape on her equipment. In either case, you're a candidate for a format conversion, a process in which your original DVD or tape is played through a converter which makes a copy of the original in the proper format: PAL for England, SECAM for France and NTSC for the U.S.A. You get back the original, unaltered. Please contact VideOccasions™ at 425-641-4811 or email us if you have questions after reading this material. Source Formats and Media Types that VideOccasions can convert Source Format Media Types Converted To: NTSC VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, 8mm, Hi-8, Digital8, DVCam, MiniDV, DVD PAL or SECAM PAL or SECAM VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS and DVD. No 8mm, Hi-8 or DVCam or MiniDV. NTSC We can convert from DVDs in NTSC or PAL to DVDs in NTSC or PAL

You can watch DVDs and video tapes without conversion from: Antigua Antilles-Netherlands Aruba Bahamas Barbados Belarus Beliz Berma Bolivia British Virgin Islands Burma Cambodia Camaroon Canada Cayman Islands Chile China ROC Columbia Costa Rica Cuba Cuacao Dominican Republic Egypt Equador El Salvador Ecuador Galapagos Islands Grenada Guam Guatemala Haiti Hawaii Honduras Jamaica Japan Korea, South Leward Islands Mexico Micronesia Midway Islands Nontserrat Myanmar (Burma) Nicaragua Okinawa Palau Panama Peru Philippines Puerto Rico Saba Islands Saipan Samoa St. Kits St. Lucia St. Thomas South Korea Surinam Taiwan Trinidad & Tobago U.S.A Venezuela Virgin Islands

What we can't convert: Copy Protected Materials

The good news is: you've found the commercial DVD or tape you've been looking for in England -- Disney's Song of the South, for example.

The bad news is that it's copy protected, which makes it impossible for us to copy;

To protect copyrighted property, an electronic signal is embedded in the DVD or tape that prevents a copy from being made. Format onversion is treated as "copying" by copy protected DVDs and tapes. Typically the picture will "roll over" every few seconds, colors will change rapidly and, in extreme cases, both the video and audio will become completely unstable and unusable.

Some DVD players will play both NTSC and PAL/SECAM discs. Try yours and see. Otherwise, you'll have to look for an NTSC formated copy of the commercial material.

If you, your family or friends have made the DVD or tape, or it's something we've made for you at VideOccasions -- a DVD from old film, for example -- or the tape was made by relatives abroad, or if you have permission from an organization to copy the material, or your business had the tape produced, VideOccasions can put it into the appropriate format for you, whether it's NTSC, PAL or SECAM.

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Revised 3/13/2020