OT: _my_ PAL/NTSC question :-)

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. -- _______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com (_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org __) | | \________________________________________________________________