PAL on a VHS question

[jakeofwildwood]

For Father's Day I have ordered an old Disney movie about this rabbit that lives in a briar patch (come on Eiger, release it already!).

The problem is, after I placed an Ebay bid on the video, I discovered that it is in PAL format.

Does anyone know if modern VHS players can handle playing a PAL format tape and if not how to rectify the problem?

[bicker]

Sorry, but NTSC VHS players cannot play PAL tapes.

Your best bet is to resell the tape on eBay.

[DizneyRox]

PAL doesn't normally play on many VHS players. I hear they exist, but havne't seen any personally.

Unfortunately, Disney is NOT going to release that any time soon, so your only alternative i to buy the PAL verisons and have them converted.

Check your local Yellow Pages and look for people who do the conversion. You probably want to go PAL to NTSC DVD, and the good news is, since you own the movie, you are legally within your right to convert it. All is not lost... I will mention though, you CANNOT sell that PAL version after you convert it without also selling the NTSC version. The conversion is legal since you own a real version, if you get rid of it, you must either destroy the copy or include that with the original.

If you want though, it may actually be cheaper to get one of the ones off eBay and/or many of the other sites that sell it on DVD. What you would get from the conversion is pretty much what they have done already. Actually I think the DVD versions for sale, etc were created from a laserdisc version of SotS, but I'm not quite sure. They really are pretty good, considering what they are.

[bicker]

.... Sometimes, however, what you need is not available for sale. For example, suppose a PAL film purchased in Europe was never released on NTSC. ... Usually, the best thing to do is attempt to contact the copyright holder--in most cases, the studio or publishing house that produced the material--to obtain permission. In some cases, it is not possible to contact copyright holders. For example, if a foreign publishing company is no longer in business, a good faith effort to locate the copyright holder may prove fruitless, and moving forward with the duplication may be an option.

http://www.cls.yale.edu/page.asp?file=2/218

Apparently, at least according to Yale University, media conversion is not necessarily legal, without permission from the content owner, or at least a good faith effort to find the content owner to seek such permission.