10 Nov
2000
10 Nov
'00
11:34 a.m.
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.
Your description looks like a pure colour problem.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 2.0 am 28./29. April 2001 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
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