Okay, I've been having a problem with my DVD player, and I'm not exactly a technology whiz so I need some help.

I bought a region free DVD player, a Giec GK-3500.  I got this because I want to be able to play DVD's from Europe (I'm in America).  I hooked it up and put one of my disks in, but the image isn't right.  There's actually two squished images that are the same with a vertical black bar inbetween them.

The manual said that if it's not on the correct TV setup, you could experience something called "black strip state."  I'm assuming that's what this is.  To fix it, you're supposed to change the TV setup to either Auto, PAL, or NTSC.  It was originally on NTSC but the disk is PAL, so I changed it to that.  However, when I did that I not only still had the black bar, it was also black and white and very jumpy.  If I put it on auto it was the same thing.

I'm at a loss for what to do.  I've gone through the whole manual and tried pressing all the buttons on the remote that might be useful, and nothing's worked.

the dvd player sounds like it is damaged.  take it back to where u bought it and get a return.

Check if it's a progressive scan DVD player... if you can turn off the progressive scan that could be it.

I just recently got a new one, and it did the same thing... except it had a thing in the middle of the screen informing us what the problem was.... Not all DVD players do that though I'm sure.

Many region-free players do not have a built-in video converter (although some do).  If yours does not, you need to have a PAL-capable (multi-standard) TV in order to view PAL-encoded discs -- or a separate converter.  This is a different issue from DVD regions.

I tried a quick Google search on "Gieck GK-3500" and it didn't turn up any specs or documentation, so you will have to determine whether it has a converter on your own. 

Specs
It's a progressive scan player, with PAL/NTSC selectable.

Click the button on the remote that says PAL or the one that says NTSC while its playing

First, set your TV mode to Auto or NTSC (if you can).

Use the remote to get to the system menu on the DVD player.

Turn off progressive scan, and set PAL output to be converted to NTSC. This is probably in the video and or main categories of the player menu is organised like that.

I've had to do the same thing on my player (except I need to set it to always output PAL)