Talk about timing. You probably thought I'd forgotten our subject, but I have been looking! No one in the US seemed to know anything about it. I finally found a place in Europe that addressed the topic. Turns out that the reason most (and mind you this is most, not all) any DVD can be played worldwide with no region code is that DVD players in all European countries can output BOTH NTSC and PAL or at least a reasonable version of them. The hitch comes in that players sold in the US only output NTSC. Beacause of this, the vast majority of titles are done in NTSC so that they can be sold either place. It seems NTSC has become the world standard in discs, so they can just let the machines and region codes sort it out later and forget about it. Magma obviously has decided to stand alone and ignore the NTSC world.
Now there's a great deal more to the entire explanation. I however won't attempt to go into it any deeper here. The document that spelled the whole thing out was like 5 solid pages of tech specs. To actually understand the whole thing I read twice and took to my bed with a cold compress. If anyone's interested in more it's at DVDnow.com
If you'll all excuse me, just thinking about it has given me another headache! I think I need another nap.
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