Pal & Ntsc

izzitme

My Father in Law has had some PAL holiday videos transferred to DVD. He now wants to send copies to family in the USA.

Will they need to be converted to NTSC so that they can be viewed on the TV over there, or will the DVD player just show it as a Region free output?

Thanks in advance for your help.

marleyboy

it should work fine over there, i did the same thing for my brother in Washington

simsun

izzitme wrote:

My Father in Law has had some PAL holiday videos transferred to DVD. He now wants to send copies to family in the USA.

Will they need to be converted to NTSC so that they can be viewed on the TV over there, or will the DVD player just show it as a Region free output?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Izzitime,

Without getting too technical I would try and get them encoded to NTSC as that system is markedly different to PAL here in the UK. The frame rate is different (30fps / NTSC vs 25fps PAL) and the number of lines on the TV screen is also different - so even with a region free DVD player, unless their TV is able to playback a PAL recording they could be stumped.

Double check with the family in the USA that there DVD player is region free and they have watched PAL encoded DVDs before. If it isn't they can still watch the DVDs by changing the region settings on their DVD-Rom drive in their PC (if they have one).

Without a region free player there is no guarentee that these DVDs will play unless when the tapes where converted to DVD then your father in law had some encoded to be region 1.

cheers
simsun

Cantdance_2

You won't have an issue with region encoding as no home-made DVDs are region coded.

So they will be able to watch them on their PC at the very least - however they may hit problems watching them on their DVD player/ TV (due to the PAL / NTSC difference as mentioned above.)

James

waster_2

I'm no expert, but: If you buy Region 1 DVD's in the US or from wherever, you can play them on PAL TV's in the UK (Region 2) no problem. The only issue is the Region Code, when you need to either change the region or make region free. Plenty of hacks for that if your player is not already able to do this.

I believe that it is the DVD player that sends the appropriate signal to the viewing apparatus, in this case the TV. I do not think the DVD is the media that is either PAL, NTSC or SECAM encoded. The DVD is the DVD. Afterall, if your family in the US made DVD's on their PC to view on their DVD player in the US they would not be asked whether they wanted thme in NTSC or PAL farmat they would just make the DVD. And vice versa in the UK.

I do not think you need to worry about “home made” DVD's, especially those made on a PC. They will be region free. In any case the only thing you will lose is your time, a cheap blank DVD disc and the postage if it does not work in the US. If I was you I'd make a disc and send to the US and see waht the results are.

Sput2001

I'm no expert, but: If you buy Region 1 DVD's in the US or from wherever, you can play them on PAL TV's in the UK (Region 2) no problem. The only issue is the Region Code, when you need to either change the region or make region free. Plenty of hacks for that if your player is not already able to do this.

No, there is the PAL/NTSC issue too. DVD players will output the picture in the standard in which it's been recorded - i.e. PAL DVD's will play as PAL, NTSC DVD's will play as NTSC. It's up to the TV to make sense of the signal. Some DVD players can convert from PAL to NTSC and vice versa but it's not the best solution.

Pretty well all modern TV's in the UK nowadays can play an NTSC signal, so it's very rarely a problem. Play an NTSC DVD on a TV that doesn't handle NTSC and it (usually) shows as black & white.

movieman

DVD players will output the picture in the standard in which it's been recorded

Depends on the player. Mine converts NTSC to PAL as it plays, which is annoying because it introduces artifacts. My girlfriend's NTSC DVD player won't play PAL disks at all.

So the safest thing is to convert to NTSC if you're sending disks abroad.