DVDs in the Library
All DVD’s aren’t made the same….
The Library purchases a variety of DVDs for our customers to borrow, but there are a few formats or types that don’t work as well for customers using our collection, so we don’t purchase them. The main reason is that they don’t play well in a variety of our customer’s machines.
The first type is DVD-R.
When an item is packaged as a DVD-R it might not play well or in some cases not even play at all in DVD players or computers. . This can be a very frustrating situation for both the customer and the library. So if there is any information about the DVD-R format in the ordering information we don’t buy them for the library’s collection. It can be very disappointing to want to watch that certain DVD and it not work in any machine you might have.
One of the biggest disappointments for the DVD collection in the library is that most of the Warner Archives are produced in DVD-R. This means that some of those grand old classics that we would love to be able to provide, we don’t because of the playability factor.
The second type is the region of production/recordings.
Most players are formatted for specific regions and they will not play in DVD players that are not formatted for that region.
For the United States and most of Canada the video standard is NTSC. The Region for the United States, the United States Territories, Canada and Bermuda is REGION 1. So we only purchase DVDs that meet these criteria, Region 1, Region free, formatted in NTSC.
This means that some of the BBC DVDs or foreign films aren’t available for us to purchase.
The two other regions that we most often see are Region 2 or Region 3. Those won’t play in most players in the US.
But despite those limitations, we do have a wide variety of DVDs available to checkout including blockbusters, documentaries, independent, foreign, and how to DVDs. A wide selection for your viewing.
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