Good DVD Decoder?

[Craftish]

I have a Lite-ON DVD/CD-RW combo drive and I'm trying to watch a DVD of a Brazilian movie but it says "Cannot be played because a suitable decoder cannot be found," and gives me a weblink to buy decoders. Is there somewhere I can get a (good, free) decoder to let me watch this? Thanks!

[Craftish]

Never mind...guess I'm just a little too used to only using the CDs that come in retail boxes as coasters (i.e. PowerDVD, haha).

[Wixard]

It might be the area copy protection on it. areas has designations, and at one time a dvd player from asia for example, would not play a dvd from north america. Im not sure if this has changed, i dont believe it has.

[The Bryophyte]

There are still different formats, as wixard said. I believe the US and Europe use NTSC and most of South America uses PAL. There is a third, uncommon format but I don't remember what it's called.

[MTB2Live,Live4Comps]

Originally posted by The Bryophyte
There are still different formats, as wixard said. I believe the US and Europe use NTSC and most of South America uses PAL. There is a third, uncommon format but I don't remember what it's called.
maybe you're thinking of all the random variants to PAL (and the japanese version of NTSC)?

but generally speaking, a good dvd player can still display correctly any region

[xonik]

No, he's thinking of SECAM.