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#1
10-29-2007, 09:17 PM
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PAL All Region DVD question?
I have a question about the title designation: PAL All Region DVD. As far as I understand it, Format NTSC is Region 1 and Format PAL is Region 2; the further qualification, PAL All Region, doesn't really play on all DVD players, to the best of my knowledge. It is not 'Universal 0,' so to speak and doesn't play on a DVD player that is but Region 1 NTSC. I've heard that it might show up as black-and-white but not in full color; I haven't tried it but that is a little of what I've heard.
If anyone can help me on further understanding the designation PAL All Regions I would certtainly appreciate it. I have a seller of an item listed as NTSC Region 1, received it as a PAL and now he's telling me it's a uinversal coded item, which I don't believe it is. And I need clarification on PAL All Region just to pretect myself from any confusion. Thanks. 
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#2
10-29-2007, 09:36 PM
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I think we went through this in the "How to Buy the En Concert DVD" thread or somewhere. At the risk of oversimplifying, PAL and NTSC are two different standards for encoding the pictures, basically. Each country basically uses one or the other, and all the TVs require the appropriate signal.
DVD Region coding is an orthogonal axis of incompatibility; there are 6 regions, and players can be locked to one (e.g., US is region 1, Europe is region 2, etc.) and DVDs can be locked to be playable in only one region, or be region-free. Many DVD players (esp. the cheap ones) have PAL/NTSC conversion, allowing you to watch PAL DVDs on NTSC TVs. The original En Concert is indeed PAL, region-free/all-region (technically "region 0").
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#3
10-29-2007, 11:09 PM
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Thanks 'fsquared,' on your response. The reason I asked was because many of the posters on this Forum seem to know more about the Region Coding than I do. I hate to rehash tried and true discussions.
What happened was that I purchased over eBay an item, Enigma MCMXC a.D. DVD, listed as Region 1 (US, CA), but when I received it it was designated on the packaging as PAL; I haven't tried to play it as of yet. I don't have the item in front of me at present, I'll have to double check, it may be PAL All Region, and if it is 'then' it would be as similar to NTSC?...no difference? I don't know; I'am still perplexed. Why would the producer label a DVD 'PAL' if it's PAL All Region? Why not just say Region '0?'...then it would be complatible with all regions and DVD players; no problem. I still think that I'd need a NTSC/PAL compatible DVD player and television with connecting cables allowing interface of both regions to be shown.
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#4
10-29-2007, 11:38 PM
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region and color formats are two separate things. Japan for example has region 2 and still uses NTSC. Quote:
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#5
10-30-2007, 12:17 AM
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As RMJ elaborated on (and I guess I tried to say but didn't quite get across), "PAL/NTSC" and "Region 1-6 or 0" are orthogonal axes of incompatibility. I.e., every DVD has both attributes: i.e., every DVD is "PAL, or NTSC", and every DVD is also "region 1, or 2, or ..., or 6, or all-region". (I'm eliding some details, like a DVD could be "Region 3 and 4"). The reason you associate PAL with region 2 is because you're focusing on European DVDs, which are usually both PAL *and* region 2 locked, so you have two kinds of incompatibilities to deal with, since all the hardware (TVs and DVD players) sold in the US is both NTSC, and region 1. As with everything, it's a little more complicated than that, but I think that will suffice. If you want the gory details, there are articles like: http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Article.../PALvsNTSC.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC A PAL signal fed into an NTSC TV (in the US, over composite cables) does tend to show up as B&W, but also usually with the vertical hold screwed up (so the picture goes up and around). Also, ironically, in the US anyway, PAL/NTSC conversion is more likely to be found in cheap players than in name-brand players like Sony or Panasonic. Philips is one good brand for supporting these sorts of things and several of their players are very affordable (some can play DivX movies as well). Last edited by fsquared; 10-30-2007 at 12:20 AM..
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#6
10-30-2007, 12:30 AM
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Well, thank guys on your information. I seem to have a lot to catch up on in my research.
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#7
10-30-2007, 07:28 AM
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My own experience with the En Concert DVD has been that it will play perfectly on a PC, where software handles the different resolutions, frame rates and color gamuts between NTSC and PAL with no issues at all.
The standalone DVD players, on the other hand ... not so simple. My name brand players - Sony, Panasonic - are strictly NTSC. PAL DVDs don't even register - the player offers a cryptic error message and refuses to play the disc. However ... I have an older, semi-portable KOSS player that was very popular in the US at one time, and it was easily hackable. The unit was already able to see and understand PAL DVDs; all I had to do was fiddle with the remote a bit so the player would accept DVDs with ANY region code, not just region 1. But the playback pf PAL DVDs isn't really correct. The NTSC color gamut is smaller, thanks to having to translate the output to play back on my NTSC monitor, and worst of all, the player doesn't re-scale the higher PAL resolution image down to lower NTSC resolution. The unit zooms-and-crops the bigger PAL frame to fit the NTSC screen resolution, so I missed about 20% of the original image frame. And yes, I'm certain that the player knows how to "do" widescreen properly, and that the monitor knows how to do it as well - NTSC anamorphic widescreen plays exactly as expected on this player/monitor team. That's why I re-authored the En Concert DVD to NTSC standards for my own use. It was a bit of an effort, but well worth it. I doubt highly the final result would meet RMJ's standards, but that's OK - it's still of sufficiently high quality to meet MY standards, which are somewhat high as well. I had to re-author the title to 2 DVDs since I'm still having trouble burning dual-layer media. This means the concert video itself - still in one piece - has been compressed by about 18% to fit the single DVD. The result was a little bit grainy in one or two spots, but the PAL-to-NTSC conversion worked very well. I had to remove the linear PCM and DTS soundtracks and stick with AC3 Dolby 5.1 (it leads in popularity over DTS here in North America right now), which was a huge space saver. The extras have their own home on DVD disc 2. (BTW, RMJ : I didn't have to do some horrible frame rate surgery to go from 25fps to 29.995fps; I re-flagged the video's internal frame flagsto trigger 3:2 pulldown in the playback hardware. This lets 25fps video play on NTSC completely smooth, without visible jitter or stalling.) PLUS ... I was not only able to convert and preserve the main and extras motion menus, I was also able to re-render them with English text (only when appropriate). Also, both discs maintain the full anamorphic widescreen resolution and flags - no phony letterboxing or pan-and-scan for the sake of old 4:3 format displays. Lastly, as I was re-authoring the navigation for the menus, I added three "easter eggs" : (1) click RIGHT on the "Making of L'Alize" extra feature to view the actual music video; (2) click RIGHT on the "Making of J'en Ai Marre" feature to view the actual "J'en Ai Marre" music video; (3) a "Play All" feature on the extras disc that plays all the special features videos (including the music videos) in sequence without interruption. The final product looks very, very good (though not perfect, RMJ, I know that) on my Sony Vega 27 inch CRT TV. Last edited by The Cap; 10-30-2007 at 02:45 PM..
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#8
10-30-2007, 09:28 AM
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Linear Mode
