Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: UK NTSC DVDs ???

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Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 09-11-2003, 08:30 AM:

I noticed while in Blockbuster one DVD that claimed to be NTSC. (This is the UK so all the other discs are PAL)

There was a sticker on the front printed 'NTSC REGION 2'and on the back is said NTSC UK.

What is that all about?

Here in the UK our video standard is PAL?

So what is a NTSC Region 2 disc?

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 09-11-2003, 10:13 AM:

The video standard and the region code are quite independant of each other. The video standard can be either PAL or NTSC, a double sided disc with PAL on one side and NTSC on the other would be technically possible, and I think is allowed in the standards, but I've never seen one.

The region code is stored as 8 bits, any combination of which can be set, regions 1-6 are used in various countries, 7 is not yet assigned, and 8 is used for special venues. You could produce a disc with regions 12578 enabled and regions 346 disabled if you wanted to, for example.

There are quite a few NTSC discs available in this country, most are not normal feature films, but documentaries, IMAX film, educational titles etc. Most of these are all region, sometimes incorrectly described as region 0.

Japan is in region 2, and uses NTSC, so most discs sold there would be NTSC, region 2.

Strictly speaking, PAL and NTSC are systems for encoding colour information in composite video systems, and DVDs store the video in component form, so these systems do not apply, but the terms tend to be used to reffer also to the 625 line 25 fps and 525 line 29.97 video standards as defined by the CCIR, now renamed something else but I cannot remember what, and the SMPTE.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 09-11-2003, 10:27 AM:

So it wouldn't play in a standard UK machine?

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 09-11-2003, 11:30 AM:

A standard uk machine would play it; you might have problems with your television. It would need to handle the 525 lines/29.97 fps, most recent ones do, my 17 year old Sony does, if you have a really old one it might not. In this case, you would need a new television, the only other way would be to buy a proper standards converter, not just a colour transcoder, and good ones are very expensive.

Normally the player will generate NTSC composite video when playing a 525 line disc, your television may, or may not handle this, mine doesn't. Most players can be switched to produce a 525 line/29.97 composite video with PAL colour coding, so called 'PAL 60'. My player could do this, until I installed a chip to make it play all regions, now it doesn't, but there is another way round the problem, see below. This is not like VCRs and Laserdisc players which can transcode from one system to another, the DVD player takes the component signals, and generates either a PAL or NTSC composite signal, there is no conversion from one system to another, and no loss of quality. By far the best way to connect a DVD player is to bypass the composite video thing altogether, and feed in pure RGB signals via a scart cable. This is what I do.

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 09-11-2003, 01:22 PM:

I have one of those all-region NTSC discs from the UK. It's the Tartan release of Kinji Fukasaku's teen hack'em slash'em Battle Royale (2000). Presently it is the only decent pix/subtitle-quality way of seeing this film on DVD in the US if one doesn't want to go for a multi-region player.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-16-2003, 02:01 AM:

The other issue is the MPEG-2 frame size: 720x576 pixels in the case of PAL, 640x480 in the case of NTSC. So with PAL you get a more detailed picture but a slightly lower refresh rate, and vice-versa with NTSC.

The way I get round the compatibility issue is simply to watch DVD video discs on a large, Trinitron PC monitor, which scans at 80Hz. The DVD playback software sorts out any conversion necessary, depending on the type of disc.

BTW, does anyone know how consumer DVD players deal with SECAM? Is the MPEG encoding done as per PAL and the colour compatibility sorted out in the players sold in SECAM countries?

And also, does anyone know of any DVD video authoring software which isn't horrendously expensive but which allows you to set region codes?

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 09-16-2003, 03:35 AM:

Leo asked:
BTW, does anyone know how consumer DVD players deal with SECAM? Is the MPEG encoding done as per PAL and the colour compatibility sorted out in the players sold in SECAM countries?

That's how it's done--on the disc PAL and SECAM are exactly the same frame rate and frame size. The signal on the disc is essentially component video. It's the player that actually creates the composite video output, be it NTSC, PAL, SECAM, or some combination of these. My understanding is that most modern SECAM TV sets and monitors can also display PAL directly. It's only the older SECAM sets that absolutely have to have a SECAM signal fed to them.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 09-16-2003, 06:44 AM:

There are also no true SECAM Laserdiscs, the ones marked PAL/SECAM are PAL discs, in this case, since composite video is stored on the disc there is a PAL/SECAM transcoder built into 'SECAM' players.

There is also no SECAM version of SVHS, again, the SECAM signal is generated within the player where necessary. Normal VHS does exist in all three systems, but, as with most other analogue home video systems, they cannot record the composite colour signal directly. The chroma is shifted down in frequency by a hetrodyne system, the resulting signal is then monulated onto an RF carrier, and this is what is recorded on the tape.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-16-2003, 09:32 AM:

Thanks folks...

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 09-16-2003, 10:44 AM:

At a festival recently, we got a submission on Beta SP tape--in PAL. Amazingly, it actually did play (using an NTSC deck and monitor), although the frame rate was wrong (25fps recording played back at 29.97fps) and the color and picture stability were very poor. I was quite amazed that we were able to get any picture at all, though.

As I understand it, the DVD player doesn't need to understand the TV system in use, so NTSC and PAL disks can be played with the same player, provided that a) the monitor or projector supports the format of the disk and that b) the disks aren't region coded or the player is configured to ignore the region codes.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-16-2003, 11:24 AM:

I understood that a consumer player sold in a given country will be configured to output in that country's TV system. So a DVD player sold here will output a component/composite/S-video signal in PAL regardless of whether it's playing a PAL or NTSC disc. If the former, it simply decodes; if the latter, it translates the 525/29.97 MPEG data into a 625/50 analogue output.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 09-16-2003, 11:47 AM:

There are a few players which can convert between 525/60 and 625/50, but they are very much the exception. What the vast majority of players in PAL countries can do is to play a 525/60 disc, retaining those line standards, but encoding the colour in the same way as normal broadcast PAL, at 4.43.......MHz, and with the alternate line phase inversion, so that a normal PAL decoder can handle it. What it outputs, in composite mode, is generally known as PAL 60 i.e. PAL colour but 525 line 29.97 fps scanning as is normally used with NTSC. Most newer PAL televisions will cope with this. There's normally on option somewhere on one of the menus to select whether you want to do this, or to output normal broadcast spec NTSC from a 525/60 disk.

It's much better to feed RGB, and bypass the composite thing altogether.

Posted by Elena N. Solovyova (Member # 1636) on 09-16-2003, 11:18 PM:

quote:
There are a few players which can convert between 525/60 and 625/50, but they are very much the exception.

I've never seen a DVD player without 525/60 to 625/50 transcoding capability.