Can the flat-panel LCD display I use with my computer display PAL video? I heard somewhere that all computer monitors can, but I want to know before I buy a region 0 PAL DVD.
PAL & NTSC are color encoding schemes used in broadcast TV which are not used in video computer files which are encoded and compressed using MPEG or other systems.
In the context of computer AVI, MPEG , etc files, PAL & NTSC only refers to the frame rate (25, 30) and the computer can play any frame rate on any monitor. It makes no difference.
Sailor is pretty much correct. I’ve been led to believe the difference is that TVs in the US have the ability to display only 525 ‘lines’ of an image - that limit is the number as broadcast by NTSC. Whereas PAL TV’s have the ability to display 625 lines, so can much more easily accommodate for NTSC, and many do have inbuilt converters for just that.
Computer monitors have at least twice as many lines in its resolution, and indeed are variable which can be chosen by the user, so the limitations aren’t even an issue.
I may be wrong about this, but I believe it is a significant factor.