Page 1 of not sure if this discussion belongs here....

I just got some home made dvds from the UK of programs my friend recorded off BBC and ITV. My question is this, are your digital boxes in the UK encoded some way? The discs play fine in PAL mode, but when I switch to NTSC mode, pixelated signals appear in the picture.

If the signals are being scrambled somehow, it is only their right I suppose. But does that mean sharing tv shows you record off the air is illegal? It goes back to the same questions asked when people shared videos of their favorite movies and tv shows when you could buy commercial versions of those shows and movies. If you don`t sell the copies, is it considered "fair use"?

....and you thought life was tough

This item was edited on Saturday, 29th October 2005, 00:35

BBC and ITV signals are not scrambled or protected with anti copy signals such as macrovision but they are broadcast in PAL and are therefore recorder as PAL signals. If your TV can`t handle PAL or if your player doesn`t convert PAL to NTSC then obviously you will get some strange looking pictures on the screen.