So I’m bidding on ebay and realize the seller of the video I want is in France…I know there’s a difference between European & American electronics. I know I want the video to be in a format that will suit my American VCR. Help! Which format am I looking for here??
The US and most of North America use NTSC.
France and most of its colonies’ use SECAM.
Most of the rest of the world (Europe, etc.) uses PAL.
A French SECAM tape will not play in a US VHS machine. If you’re a speccy type, you can click here for the technical reasons.
The video could be converted to NTSC, but it needs a little work (and some $)
Well to add to the confusion , PAL CAN play Secam only there are niggles #1 being it is in monochrome #2 the picture quality is reduced slightly but that maybe related to #1 , I recall someplace where it said it was much the same with NTSC playing secam tapes , but that was years and years ago