PAL video in the states

[Phil Blundell]

On Fri, 2017-01-13 at 05:47 -0500, Corey Cohen wrote:
> So I have a friend who is originally from the U.K.   He has his old
> BBC micro from when he was a kid and wants to be able to use it here
> in the states.  His parents threw out his old TV in the U.K.  
> 
> Is there a way to use a BBC Micro PAL version with a modern US LCD
> TV?  Do some brands of modern TVs support both NTSC and PAL? Let's
> assume he may need to grab video before the modulator.  

I imagine more or less any modern TV should be able to cope with the
576i timings.  If you plug the "composite" output (BNC connector) into
the CVBS input on your TV then you'd probably get a decent monochrome
image.  The BBC doesn't provide chroma information on its composite
output and, even if it did, I doubt that a US-market TV would be able
to recover the chroma.

To get a colour output you'd have to find a TV which can accept RGB
input and then improvise a way to adapt the TTL-level RGB output from
the DIN socket to the levels that the TV is expecting.  I suspect there
might be some adjustment required to the sync signals as well.  Or I
think there exist converter boxes for this purpose that can take
"analogue" RGB input and convert to HDMI output, doing scan conversion
at the same time if necessary.

p.