Expert: Cleggsan - 5/18/2009

Question
Hey,
Im planning on  buying a foreign DVD (as its unavailabe in my country at the moment) and i was wondering if its possible to play the DVD on my DVD player whilst having subtitles streamed from a USB? Or something along the lines of that, that will allow me to watch the DVD with english subtitles without burning it onto another disc with the subtitles.
Thank You For Your Help,
Kyle

Answer
Australia is in region 4 for country code. Therefore, dvd discs from other countries will not play on your player unless it has been modified to play the region from which the disc is coming from.  Did you know that?

Assuming you do have the right player for the disc of the other country it would require a video mixer to combine the output of the USB feed from a pc with the subtitles and the video output from the dvd.  Of course, many commercial discs have multiple language subtitles available on them already.  Are you sure the one you want does not already have several languages available?

Let me know if you have further thoughts,

Cheers,

c

PS: Here are the region codes for your interest:

REGION 1 -- USA, Canada
REGION 2 -- Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
REGION 3 -- S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Parts of South East Asia
REGION 4 -- Australia, New Zealand, Latin America (including Mexico)
REGION 5 -- Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
REGION 6 -- China
REGION 7 -- Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
REGION 8 -- Reserved for Cruise Ships, Airlines, etc...
REGION 0 or REGION ALL -- Discs are uncoded and can be played Worldwide, however, PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible unit and NTSC discs must be played in an NTSC-compatible unit.