PAL and NTSC
 

If I bought a NTSC tv in the USA and I brought it over to Europe, would it work? If I have a multi dvd player (one that plays both NTSC and PAL disks, and will auto choose output) what wouldnt work? Just the cable tv?

The television would receive broadcasts, even assuming that it could be operated on 220v/50 Hz electrical systems. If it did operate on the 220/50 system you would, of course, be able to watch your DVDs on your multi-system DVD player (oddly enough, most "cheapie" DVD players sold in the US -- the ones made in China or Malaysia -- can play either NTSC or PAL disks).

What type of television is it? If it is an LCD, Plasma, or DLP; it should work fine displaying both systems as the scan rate is easily adjusted.

If it is a CRT Based Television, I believe you will have trouble viewing any PAL material that is not frame-rate converted and resolution converted.

PAL has lower temporal resolution (frames per second), but higher spatial resolution ("pixels").

I believe the reason that it will be much harder with a CRT is that the CRT's scan rate is determined by the power it is on. European power is on a 50 Hz cycle, whereas US power is on a 60 Hz cycle. This results in the 50 interlaced frames per second in Europe (PAL) and 60 interlaced frames per second in the US and Japan (NTSC).

Possibly, the only way to view NTSC signal on an NTSC CRT set in a PAL country is to run the NTSC CRT set off of a generator that generates a 60 Hz frequency.


This is not a total understanding of mine, so some facts could be off; but it is an educated understanding. I work in television here in the US and once a year we shoot in Europe (Paris).


Anyone please feel free to ammend or correct this information.

Well, I was looking into a plasma from the states. With all these cheap prices going on and all these sales, I would want to get one and bring it back out here to Poland. All the plasmas I saw were 110/240V, and at worse, I could get a power converter for a few bucks. I would add to that a HD DVD player, but my cheap one with multi-region works well :). Plus, I would also hook up my pc, so that shouldnt be an issue for web browsing, news, video streaming etc. I would like to hook up the cable, but with what I heard that in a few months, the sat company will be launching HD out here, and I assume the sat tuner will have the HD out (either the HDMI, or component). But cable wise, if I just plugged it into the plasma, and the plasma has the ntsc tuner, would it work? What about adding like a PAL cable box and using Svideo?

PAL and NTSC differ in more than just scan rate. Whether CRT or LCD or Plasma, an NTSC set will not display a PAL signal.

The problem isn't just frequency but voltage. Europe is, generally, 220 v at 50 Hz. The US and Canada are 110 volts at 60 Hz.

In addition to the above:

NTSC - 525 scanlines - not all visible however.

PAL - 625 scanlines again not all visible.

Sanosuke!

Never had an issue. If the PA says 110-240, I just got one of those tip adapters, and worked fine. Majority of my electronics are from the states, but I never messed around with a TV signal input before. Now if I got one, either I would have to check it on my flight (which I think with all my connections is a no-no) or ship it out in a cargo container.

Jason, I'm still not clear on what it is you want to do. Do you want to take your U.S. NTSC monitor and U.S. NTSC/PAL DVD player with you to Europe and use them there? If so, it should work. If, however, you want to receive PAL broadcast signals, either over the air or via cable, it will not work -- only dual-system monitors can do this. These are specialized items sold specifically to handle both PAL and NTSC inputs.

Bingo. Is there a way to convert PAL cable signal or OTA to NTSC?

I'm not aware of any consumer devices that will do this. There are professional PAL/NTSC converters, but they are on the pricey side and are also rather bulky.

TVs are pretty cheap now -- why not just buy one there?

Plasmas are MSRP here. example a 40" HD LCD Sony is running near $2000USD on SALE. 42" Sharp HD Ready LCD over $3000USD.
I can pick up a nice 50"Samsung Plasma 10,000:1 contrast, wide screen for under 2000$USD incl shipping to Poland and a power converter to 220V.
But if I use a sat box, with component out, it should go out the same in Poland or USA, right? I mean, its the same settings. I could just hook up the plasma to a Sat receiver.

EDIT: Another example, philips 50" HD Plasma with ambilight, under 2,000 at costco. It allows 110-240V 50/60Hz power, so no need for a power converter.

Hmmmm. I'm not 100%, but I don't think that would work for analog. Whether the output is component, composite or s-video, the analog signal must still be formatted to a specific standard, i.e. NTSC or PAL (or SECAM if you're in France). If the satellite box has a digital out, i.e. HDMI or 1394, it might work, but I'm really not sure and my initial guess would be, no.

NTSC in the US uses a 6 MHz channel bandwidth. PAL in Europe uses an 8 MHz channel bandwidth. They use different picture-coding methods.
So a PAL TV won't receive US TV broadcast signals and an NTSC TV won't receive European TV broadcast signals.

So even if I brought it here and ran it with a component cable from the HD box, it wont work? I gotta find out here if there is some converter that affordable.

Just checked the site. The receiver they are using is Philips DSR 6201/91 and it does have HDMI

EDIT: I figured it out. I could buy a Plasma monitor, w/o any tuner, and that has a HDMI port. They seem to be right, listing even SECAM as an option as input, just to watch TV I would need a cable box

Are the DVDs actually encoded for NTSC, PAL or whatever? I was under the impression the media is actually all the same digital size and it's the hard/soft/firmware in the DVD player that actually converts the digital images into the appropriate signal for your TV/display.