Count Duckula

Count Duckula is a hilarious British cartoon from the late eighties and early nineties produced by Cosgrove Hall Films. They also produced another cartoon you may have heard of called Danger Mouse.  The series originally aired in the United States on Nickelodeon.

Only the first season has been released in the U.S. and that was back in 2005. Capital Entertainment, who brought it out on DVD, appear to have gone out of business and it is no longer available. The future of Count Duckula on dvd in the U.S. is uncertain.

Fortunately, the complete series of Count Duckula has been released on DVD in the U.K. Normally dvd releases are region locked, preventing someone from one country from buying a dvd from another country and playing it on their dvd player. When they authored "Count Duckula The Complete Series", they encoded it so it is playable on any dvd player in the world. There is one catch however. The dvds are in PAL format, so if you want to watch them in the United States on your NTSC television it usually won't work. You have several choices. You can:

1. Buy a DVD player that can automatically convert PAL to NTSC such as the Norcent DP-300.

2. You can rip the DVDs on to a hard drive and watch them on a media player such as the Popcorn Hour C-200 or Popcorn Hour A-200.

3. You can just watch them on your PC.

4. You can rip the DVDs on to your PC, convert them to NTSC and then burn news discs that are NTSC that will play in your DVD player.

5. Buy a television that can display PAL. (Very rare in the U.S. and usually quite expensive.)

For most people, option 3 is the easiest and allows one to quickly and easily enjoy the hilarity that is Count Duckula. I personally own both a Norcent DP-300 and a Popcorn Hour C-200 so I was set. I ordered the complete set off of eBay from someone in the UK and it arrived a couple of days ago. Well worth the $30 I spent on it.