NTSC DVDs in PAL regions?
 

Hello,

I've been reading that NTSC DVDs will play fine in PAL regions such as Europe, the UK, etc. -- However, occasionally some older tv sets will not display them properly.

So I just have a couple of questions:

-Is this still a problem nowadays in 2010? -- Or can I safely distribute an NTSC DVD in a PAL region without worry?

-Will there be quality loss if someone plays an NTSC DVD on their PAL DVD player and tv?

Thanks,
Alex

The last information I had on this topic was that VIRTUALLY all DVD players in PAL countries now ship with the ability to play NTSC discs by converting to a PAL compliant output signal on the fly. SO... ASSUMING your intended audience has a newer (I don't know HOW new it would need to be...) DVD player AND is ok with the quality hit that a consumer device doing the upscaling takes, you're ok.

Addendum: the image will be less sharp and colours won't be PRECISELY the same and there may be some motion blur/judder imposed by the retiming from 29.97 to 25 frames per second...

I made NTSC dvds for my inlaws back in 2005. Their system is PAL. Even at that time, every PAL player I saw could play NTSC.

it works...the television is not the issue, the DVD player is. And all players support NTSC in PAL regions. I live in India, a PAL region, but where commercial DVDs are sold as NTSC.

You could, but the purist in me prefers a PAL disc.

Recently I had a client tell me how she had called the USA to purchase a DVD and checked with the merchant that they had a version that would be PAL format for Australia. She was disappointed when she still got a NTSC disc through in the end ... and I ended up doing a standards conversion for reliable playback.

Just sayin' ...

Andrew

You're taking chances
 

Although practically most players will either play both standards and output whatever you feed them, or they will convert to PAL - there is no guarantee that ALL your clients will be able to play back your product.

If this is a professional job, then I suggest you do the transcoding and play it safe.

Especially if you are producing something such as a guitar tutorial and there needs to be clear view of the motion of the fingers, etc. A good quality standards conversion will carry this through whereas the job done by a consumer DVD player is .... cheaper.

Andrew