On Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 06:34:41PM +0100, Hans Franke wrote:
> > Speaking of PAL... a couple weeks ago I got a VHS movie (Barber of
> > Siberia... I'm trying to learn Russian and thought it might help) on ebay,
> > played it on my NTSC VCR, and noticed that the picture looked funny;
> > people's faces looked like melting plastic, and high-contrast edges were
> > somewhat haloed, etc. Then I noticed the box was labeled PAL. So I'm
> > wondering if it was dubbed to NTSC (with poor quality), was the wrong box
> > for the tape and was actually NTSC despite the labeling, or if my VCR
> > actually managed to play a PAL tape, with the quality being the result
> > of the higher-bandwidth video signal going through lower-bandwidth NTSC
> > electronics, and probably also speeding up the movie by 20% or so?
>
> > I didn't think NTSC VCRs could play PAL tapes at all.
>
> Well, if it is a Japanese VCR, chances are good that it can
> play both. They have only a few designs, and they are made to
> cover all relevant Standards with only minor modifications
> (additional software, different modulators/filtering) The same
> is true for most TV sets. At least over here in Europe vitualy
> every TV and most VCRs found are able to play both, often all
> three standards (PAL, SECAM and NTSC). Just for the lower price
> units these features are sometimes disabled.
Hmmm. Well mine is a Hitachi from the early 90's (93 maybe?) and
was kindof high-end for the time, but not sold as a multi-standard
VCR (those kind are still expensive even now, here in the US). I
use an Electrohome projector for my TV, so wouldn't be surprised
if it is pretty forgiving about the video input.
In Europe multi-standard VCRs may be more common because they are
much more necessary.
Do they automatically detect what kind of tape is being played
or is there a switch to select it? If they detect it, I wonder
how it's done.
I also found a FAQ on the web that says it won't work at all:
http://www.cmc.com/lars/dansk/videofaq.htm
>
> Your description looks like a pure colour problem.
Meaning what?
The halo effects are somewhat like what happens when you hook up a
high-res RGB monitor using a cheap VGA extension cable. So I thought
bandwidth compression could very well explain it.
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Received on Fri Nov 10 2000 - 16:01:31 GMT