It is usaully down to the quality of the mastering that matters on DVD

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Stealing my thunder?

Where is it?

What is your name tell me where it is!

What you have done is illegal, and in this State you can be fined or spend up to 25 years in a correction facilolllllity.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHaaaaaaaaaaaaa..
HAHAHAHA...I'm JUST...jerking your chain! HAHAHA...HA HA..wake up little snoozy! HAHAHA...
...................

lazenby..I heard the opposite..I heard PAL is 600 lines of resolution. Many of their mainstream DVDs outbeat ours by a mile compared to the image. That is what I heard.

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There are 2 types of DVDs, NTSC and PAL. Most DVD players sold in PAL countries will play both PAL and NTSC DVDs without any problems. However, NTSC machines generally will not play PAL discs unless you have a special adapter or a special machine.

Ken Graham
Five Star DVD

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Bizarrely, most people in the UK constantly moan about the way in which mainstream movies are released on DVD in the US a good 3 months in advance. While over looking how Great DVD is in Europe as we can handle both the PAL and NTSC formats, and pretty much have muti-regional players as standerd.
So if you want to buy the latest Japanise martial arts film (thats only releaced in Japan), it isnt a problem. Where as in the US, your stuck with the problem of not being able to play the Pal format, and not being able to play any other region than 1.

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Hi Ken (haven't talked to you in awhile!) I originally typed something different than is here now, because my authorer told me something different. (We thought PAL and NTSC only referred to video tape players, not DVD players, but Drew, I actually have the book DVD DeMystified, and thanks for doing all the research).

But to address what Clubber was talking about:
REGION 1 is the DVD problem that makes mainstream US DVDs non-playable outside of the US. For instance, when I was in Europe last year, Scream 3 was just arriving in their movie theatres, while here, it was already available on DVD. If the standard player in Europe could play the DVD, why would people go to the theatre after the DVD was already available to them. Of course, they can buy an American player, but at least it's a deterrent to help the domestic sales not interfere with foreign screen sales.
Adult DVDs are different in that they DO NOT have regional coding. This is possible because we do not have to worry about theatrical release dates. If you ever do see regional coding on adult DVDs, it is probably because another country bought foreign rights, and is trying to protect their investment.

Edited by - tricia_devereaux on Apr 17 2001

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It's hard to argue whether PAL or NTSC are better on DVD from a specification standpoint. High quality DVDs are encoded in the CCIR601 format which supports 72 hex 480 pixels at 30 frames per second for NTSC and 720 x 576 pixles x 25 frames for PAL. PAL has more resolution but a slower frame rate on DVD. These numbers only apply to DVD. (Not VHS)

Here's the part that confuses me:

Motion video on DVD is encoded using MPEG2 data compression in CCIR601 component video format. (not composite video like VHS and Laser Disc.) CCIR601 is a digital format the represents luminance and chrominance data. (brightness and color) There is a chip in your DVD player that DEcodes this format into a digital image frame by frame and stores it in high-speed memory. There is a seperate function that takes the image from memory and ENcodes it into NTSC/PAL/RGB format for playback on a monitor or TV. This seperate function is usually performed in a second dedicated chip.

I still contend that the digital representation of the image on the DVD is video format independant. Motion video on DVD doesn't become PAL or NTSC until it's ENcoded in the player from the unit's internal memory. It should be that the player is PAL or NTSC specific and not the DVD from a purely technical standpoint. It may be true that DVDs are marketed as PAL or NTSC versions but that may just be to a carryover from the VHS days or an attempt to maximize profits.

I'm going to look around for some more info.

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(Thanks Ken.)

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when a video does 3:2 pulldown.. it stretches a 24fps (23.91fps but who's counting) to 29.97fps during playback..

of course I don't know anything about TVs and VCRs
but i know when i watch a PAL or NTSC video/DVD on my computer.. there aren't anyproblems cuz they both go full screen just the same..

Evil_RIP

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I always thought I could just by looking at the picture tell if it was PAL or NTSC. The differencies in resolution, 625("576") and 525("480") is nearly as big (20%) as between anamorphic and non-anamorphic (33%), which I suppose everyone notices. But now I seem to have few Private movies which aren´t PAL as I´ve thought, and I´d like to check if this is for sure. So does anyone know a pragmatic way to check if a certain disc is PAL/NTSC? A PC software player perhaps? This would also propably be beneficial to those from NTSC part of the world querying about GGG and such Euro titles.

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