I have some films that play in black and white only yet on a friends they play in colour.
What needs to be enabled or disabled on TV or DVD please ??

are the films the us version? if so it could be your tv that doesnt support ntsc try an rgb scart lead this may help

ntsc - need a pal converter
try HMV records - they used to sell them

You might also try a different scart socket on your TV

just a stab in the dark but r u using a ps2 to play them
2 of my m8's some times have probs with movie playing b/w when viewed through there ps2's

Yep, def a NTSC to PAL issue.

Try a fully wired RGB scart or altering the settings on your tv - look for input mode and choose NTSC or Multi.

Might just be an old TV in which case you need a cheapo converter..

I have same problem, they play in B&W on my PS2 (which I use my PS1 aeriel to connect to the tv) Then when I use my ps1 unnofficial scart lead the films go green. Then I try it on my proper dvd player which is connected by RGB scart, then it is still in B&W

I can understand the problems with my PS2 as I may need an official scart lead, but why my DVD player??

Anybody?

I had the same prob once.

I had two films that played fine on my dvd player, but b/w on my mates.

On the back of his dvd player was a switch, to change from pal to ntsc (or vice versa).

This tends to happen on some dvd players when they are trying to play a movie from a different region.

I.E. I live in UK so we are region 2.

All dvd-r movies usually are made to be region free so in theory, any film should play no probs.

The two movies that were b/w were originally region 1.

We tried region 2 films and these were perfect.

On a different note, I agree with what people are saying above.

It is quite possible that there are some settings you are missing.

I don't use ifo edit myself so I can't help with that.

I generally size down films that are too large using ReMpeg, saves the hassle.

Surely that note about Region free films is NOT true.
NTSC and PAL are different video/tv formats (i.e. NTSC has fewer lines in the image). This has nothing to do with region coding!
The B&W image will not be down to the region coding at all and is most likely a TV problem.