Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Please recommend an NTSC/PAL blu-ray Player

This is topic Please recommend an NTSC/PAL blu-ray Player in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 04-16-2013, 09:12 PM:

Hey, Guys.

I'm looking for a good blu-ray player that will play a PAL DVD and convert it to NTSC so the TV can show it. I've heard that some can do that on the fly, so I'm wondering if anyone here has one or has seen them in action and can recommend a good one. I'd prefer it to be 3D enabled also.

I'm not talking about region encoding. I'm talking PAL vs. NTSC. I have a non-region coded PAL DVD that I want to be able to just pop in the player and play. And no, I'm not interested in converting it myself. I'd like it to play as is.

Thoughts?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-16-2013, 09:35 PM:

The Denon DN-V200/V210/V300/V310 series will do this, but they are DVD players, not Blu-ray players.

If there is any Blu-Ray player that supports this, the Oppo is probably it.

Semi-related question: Will a normal home-type HDTV set work properly with 25P and/or 50i SD and HD images, or are those formats not supported on American sets?

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 04-16-2013, 09:44 PM:

The Oppo BDP103 defiantly does it, and is 3D ready. A little pricey, but a solid machine with an outstanding feature set. It plays a Region O PAL DVD on a Sony Bravia XBR LCD set just fine.

Of course, you ARE just talking about a plain vanilla PAL DVD disc I assume, as the PAL and NTSC distinctions are meaningless to Blu-Ray discs.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 04-16-2013, 09:47 PM:

I've got an Oppo BDP-93 that will play PAL/NTSC in native forms. I'd imagine it can convert back and forth, but haven't tried it. It does play my 1080i/50 episodes of Top Gear back either natively or at 1080p/60.

AJG

Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 04-17-2013, 11:17 PM:

I have the Oppo BDP-93 and it has the best PAL to NTSC conversion I've seen on a DVD player. Most players that have this don't show video-based material at the right frame rate, it's closer to 24 frames per second than 30, but the Oppo does it right. My Sharp TV displays PAL anyways, so I keep the Oppo on Native output but I tested out the capability when I got it. It's easy to make region-free for both DVDs and BDs too.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 04-18-2013, 03:21 PM:

Great info, guys. Thanks!

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-18-2013, 05:43 PM:

quote: Mark J. Marshall
I'm not talking about region encoding. I'm talking PAL vs. NTSC. I have a non-region coded PAL DVD that I want to be able to just pop in the player and play. And no, I'm not interested in converting it myself. I'd like it to play as is.

IMHO the most hassle free way to do this is to watch it on a computer monitor. Because PCs and Macs don't care about the scanning rate, they can just play either PAL or NTSC. You'll only run into a problem if the disc has a region code on it.

I've never had much of a problem playing NTSC DVDs on set-top DVD players sold in Britain, but I certainly have the other way round (playing PAL DVDs on set-top players sold in the United States). My guess is that the players sold in the US don't have the software in them to tweak the frame rate from 25 to 29.97 and downconvert the picture from 625 lines to 525, but that for some reason, the players sold in Europe do have the ability to convert in the other direction: it's just that this is shut out if they detect region code 1 on a disc.

But the bottom line is that just as long as there is no region code involved, a software DVD player won't care.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 04-18-2013, 06:02 PM:

In point of fact, any so-called "up converting" DVD players that have HDMI outputs, like Steve's Denons, should be able to do it as long as you are using the HDMI output to feed the display, and the disc is either region 0 or region free (or you have a hack for the player).

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 04-19-2013, 02:07 PM:

Now I'm seeing Panasonic is about to roll out their latest BD players that will have 36-bit color (12-bits each for the three component paths). They will use their own version of MGVC (Master Grade Video Coding, already built into AVC and H.264) to get 36-bit color performance out of 24-bit bandwidth. Several BD titles are already out that take advantage of this.

At the moment I don't think there are any easily available 12-bit color consumer display panels though. But I'm sure they're coming. More upgrading to look forward to when I get back to work...