DVDs ... various regions

[Pixelated]

I am looking at some DVDs (Star Trek ) from the UK on eBay ... but the seller has warned me they are Region 2 in PAL format. I'm not entirely sure what this means but it sounds ominous.
Can I play them on a standard DVD player on this side of the pond? If not, can I buy a DVD player here that will play them? And will it cost me an arm and a leg?
Is it possible to convert them to ... whatever this region is?
I don't suppose there are DVD players that will play DVDs from any regions ... ?

[Kit-Ginevra]

OK here goes. Region 0 DVDs will play anywhere. Region 1 is Canada and the US. Region 2 is Japan,Europe,South Africa and the Middle East. Region 3 is East and Southeast Asia. Try playing a region 2 disc in a US player and you'll get a Wrong region error message and won't be able to access your Trekkies.
You can buy a multi region DVD player online on eBay for between $50-$100. That's not so much a problem.

The main problem is not only are they different regions but they are different formats.

The Americas, Canada and the Caribbean use something called NTSC which broadcasts 525 lines, whilst the rest of the world uses a system called PAL which broadcasts 625 lines-so its better quality.
However they are not compatible-so a PAL DVD will not work on a NTSC system unless you have a dual-format DVD player (think trying to play a Betamax video in a VHS player...) or are able to do all the technical steps to convert it from one system to the other.

What you must get is a dual-format, multi-region player if you want to be able to play DVDs from outside the Western Hemisphere

[RealUnimportant]

Kit's close but not quite there. The players are generally system-agnostic, the issue is usually with the screens you're watching them on. With most modern "televisions" being little more than glorified monitors, it's become less of an issue as time's progressed for those of us in 50hz nations because upcycling to 60hz is technologically simpler. But downgrading from 60 to 50 to get the right refresh for PAL on a primarily NTSC screen always used to be very difficult to impossible. You might be able to watch them on a computer more readily, but hacking the DVD player to allow the discs is more involved and not suitable for discussion in this small space right now.

There's other consequences of this difference in playback speed as well, which will be far more evident to you as someone who's used to seeing Star Trek displayed at the right speed; conversion from NTSC's 24 frames per second to PAL's 25 frames per second used to be done by simply playing the shows at 25/24ths of normal speed, with the attending change in motion and pitching up of sound.

Unless these DVDs are extremely unusual in some way, you would do much better looking for some made for your home market.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

I Googled "region-free DVD player" and got a lot of listings, but I didn't recognize any of the manufacturer names... yeah, better off searching for something in your region.

FYI, Blu-rays also have regions. Region A is North & South America and parts of Asia (Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc.), Region B is Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australia, Region C is Russia, China and India, and there's Region Free/All Region discs as well (which I'm happy for, because I've ordered a Region Free Blu-ray from an Australian company).

[RealUnimportant]

Region-locking on DVDs is more commonly enforced but much easier to bypass; if you can set your player to use Region 0 (region-free) then usually they will stay that way, it's just finding out how to that's the hard part, along with having a TV that supports all the standards as discussed above. On PCs you can usually completely ignore it via software, too. Region-locking on blu-rays is less commonly enforced, but can be much tougher to get around as it's handled only in hardware I believe, although it's been a long time since I looked too deeply into this so i may be misremembering. I don't think it'll be relevant, there's a shortage of trek released on blu-ray which is probably why it's being sourced on DVD from another region. Blu-ray also avoids the PAL/NTSC issue because it used a different standard entirely, and that one's thankfully global!