NTSC vs. PAL. What's the difference?

There is a movie on the internet that i want to order. It comes in VHS format (which is cool, because i don’t have a dvd player yet), but on the order page it says to select an encoding type, either PAL or NTSC format. So, my question is, what’s the difference? Does one have an advantage over the other? Which would you recommend me getting? Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

-Dani

P.S. There’s not a contact link on the page so i could ask the makers of this film. Otherwise i would have tried that first before taking up space here on SDMB. Thanks again!

You need to order whatever system your VCR uses (NTSC in the USA, PAL in the UK, Germany, etc).

If you live in the US of A, you need to order NTSC. That’s the standard used by all domestic television and video equipment. PAL-formatted tapes are not compatible with VCRs made for use in the USA.

The primary difference is that NTSC has 525 lines of resolution and displays 60 fields per second; PAL has 625 lines of resolution and displays 50 fields per second.

You can find more information here.

I forget what they stand for, but NTSC and PAL are types of encoding used on the tape. If you live in North America, you’ll want NTSC. Europe, you need PAL.

I just returned from Slovakia and I wanted to bring home a cool “Simpsons” tape I found in a store there, but alas, it was PAL so I wouldn’t have been able to watch it.

Well i guess i need the NTSC version then. Thanks guys! :slight_smile:

-Dani

While living overseas, we bought many different VCDs (sort of copies of DVDs, without all the bells and whistles, and not as compacted, typically 2-3 disks per film). Now upon our return, we have found that some of the VCD won’t play correctly. We are using the original DVD player, and DVDs work just fine. Here’s the kicker: the cheap, off the street [sub]bootleg[/sub] VCDs work just fine, but the ones that came in nice jewel boxes from reputable department stores [sub]more expensive[/sub] don’t work. I think this is somehow related to the PAL v NTSC issue, since this was in a PAL country, and the image seems to scroll, which is the effect I think you might get if you play a PAL tape on an NTSC VCR.

Questions: 1) Explain the science 2) Any idea how I can view my VCDs? Could it work if I get a PAL/NTSC convertible television?

>> The primary difference is that NTSC has 525 lines of resolution and displays 60 fields per second; PAL has 625 lines of resolution and displays 50 fields per second

Well, not really. NTSC and PAL are color encoding standards and totally unrelated to resolution, frequency etc. It just so happenes that the US uses NTSC/60hz and the UK PAL/50Hz. But you could have the opposite combinations.

NTSC, National Television Standards Committee or maybe Never Twice Same colour.

PAL Phase Alternating by Line or maybe Picture Always Lousy.

(TV engineers joke)

I have seen video replay devices that are capable of recieving one broadcast standard and displaying to a differant standard, but they ain’t cheap.

  Here In the UK I have just purchased a new PAL VCR for £75 ($110)which can play back both PAL and NTSC tapes .

1). It is most likely a region issue. DVD players are encoded with a region (region 1 = North America) and will only play DVDs with a matching region code. The reason your cheap off the streeters still work is that they were probably burned without region info encoded on them.

2). Hard to do, since most DVD players allow you to set the region only once, or come preset. You could try a DVD-ROM with player software set specifically for another region, but switching between regions is difficult to impossible on purpose. Then again, it may be a NTSC/PAL issue and converters are readily and google-y available

VCDs are quite different from DVDs and I don’t think they have region codes, but there are separate PAL and NTSC VCD standards (according to whatever program I tried to use to encode a VCD once). If you have a DVD-ROM drive, you might have better luck playing the VCD on your computer.

Ah, but Bangkok is the true “Land of Opportunity” Everything and Anything for a price! We bought our DVD player there and paid the department store the extra $25 (a small fortune in Bangkok) to have them jigger the region codes so that it can play all regions. I had logically eliminated this possibility, since we have played DVDs from Asia and US regions on this machine (says so on the labels, anyway).

Plus, they played in Thailand but not in the US, so it has to be some TV plus DVD player plus VCD format combination. Also, many of the black market VCDs are blatant, ie, you get scrolling disclaimers occasionally that this copy of the film is only for promotional purposes and please contact the fraud department if someone sold it to you (we’ll get around to it). My personal favourite is the part in our copy of Nurse Betty where you can see two guys get up and walk out of the theatre (it was being record in the theatre on a camcorder…) So they are likely being copied in the US.

I like this theory, nothing I can think of to disprove it. Will try it later tonight and see if this is the definitive answer.