Quote:
Originally Posted by Just a Guest
Keep in mind that standards conversion (especially these "Toys R Us" types in those DVD players)
will degrade the quality enormous, because of time stretching and resolution scaling. 
The result would be disappointing. |
Not
always true, actually. Any name-brand DVD player capable of (1) playing PAL video, and (2) sending that video signal through it's NTSC outputs after conversion should produce
acceptable (at worst) image and sound quality. However, there are caveats to observe : (1) "Name-brand" DVD hardware is important - cheap players from lower-quality manufacturers can produce inferior video output after conversion, and (2) even quality players can handle aspect ratios and cropping incorrectly, such that you may not be seeing the entire video frame on your NTSC display.
I'm using good quality NTSC equipment from Sony and Panasonic, but both brands are painfully strict about NOT being at all compatible with PAL in any shape or form. So, after my French "En Concert" DVD arrived from amazon.fr back in 2006, I spent a some time learning how to re-master the disc to NTSC standards. I even re-authored the menus into English, except for the song selection menus, which I left in French but added better menu highlighting. The overall result has some nearly unnoticeable color noise (due to some small compression required during format conversion), but I'm quite satisfied with how it all turned out.
It was a lot of learning and hard work, but I can enjoy "En Concert" and the extras on NTSC equipment with little quality loss.