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PAL consoles question

piccolo38 - Jul 18, 2003

		piccolo38	Jul 18, 2003
		hey i'm browsing the web for certain consoles i want to buy, and these PAL units keep poping up. what exactly are they? what's the difference between them and American ones? Is it like the difference between america and japan?

		Jaded God	Jul 18, 2003
		PAL consoles are used in areas such as Europe/UK... See the difference between America and the UK is, America uses NTSC tv signal, while the UK utilizes PAL. PAL has a refresh rate of 50hZ, while NTSC has a refresh rate of 60hZ. You may ask why the difference? Well two different areas had separate ideas, basically. Us americans are just stubborn and we should utilize PAL also. So, unless you have a tv that can play PAL signals ok on a NTSC tv, I advise you to stick to your own NTSC units.

		Scared0o0Rabbit	Jul 19, 2003
		Alternately those silly europeans could switch over to ntsc like both teh US and Japan use ^_~. If you are handy witha soldering iron you can change the saturn to do eithe rntsc or pal... or install a switch to do both.

		piccolo38	Jul 19, 2003
		ah see, i just thought they PAL units have a different regional code or their power cord has weird plugs like the ones in britain, if its the hz signal then i guess there's nothing i can do about it, thanx much for replies

		Scared0o0Rabbit	Jul 19, 2003
		Actually pal units generall are europe region code also lol... and run on a different power than US units. So... unless you have technical skills, I'd stay away from PAL units.

		Gmc	Jul 19, 2003
		Originally posted by Scared0o0Rabbit@Jul 19, 2003 @ 06:29 AM Alternately those silly europeans could switch over to ntsc like both teh US and Japan use ^_~. If you are handy witha soldering iron you can change the saturn to do eithe rntsc or pal... or install a switch to do both. Heh, we got PAL 60Hz on most of our games nowadays which is alot better than NTSC (Higher res and same refresh rate as NTSC :cheers )

		Myname	Jul 19, 2003
		If you're talking about older systems, stick with NTSC. Most of us who live in PAL territory spend half our time trying to get get 60hz out of our consoles, so if you don't have to do that.. Don't

		mal	Jul 19, 2003
		piccolo38, you really need to learn to use Google....

		gameboy900	Jul 19, 2003
		Originally posted by Gmc+Jul 19, 2003 @ 04:57 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gmc @ Jul 19, 2003 @ 04:57 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-Scared0o0Rabbit@Jul 19, 2003 @ 06:29 AM Alternately those silly europeans could switch over to ntsc like both teh US and Japan use ^_~. If you are handy witha soldering iron you can change the saturn to do eithe rntsc or pal... or install a switch to do both. Heh, we got PAL 60Hz on most of our games nowadays which is alot better than NTSC (Higher res and same refresh rate as NTSC :cheers ) [/b][/quote] Actually Pal at 60hz has the same resolution as ntsc. (It's the whole signal bandwidth issue). The only difference between pal at 60hz and ntsc is the color encoding. So in fact you're just evening out the res and increasing your fps. Hopefully once hdtv becomes more widespread we can finally put this whole mess behind us. But of course the french will invent some hdtvf format that will once again be incompatible.

		Shakey Jake33	Jul 20, 2003
		For the record, the PAL format is actually a later technology than NTSC and it technically superior. In simple terms, PAL looks cleaner and sharper, even with games. Primarily because of ther higher resolution, secondly because it's a more refined format. NTSC refreshes faster, but always looks 'softer' and a little blurry. NTSC can actually look quite nasty if you have a decent PAL optimised game... It depends what you need it for... with a TV program, PAL is the best format to use. It looks cleaner and sharper, and the fps difference is small (25fps on PAL, 29.95 on NTSC). If you want to make TV shows, use PAL. Games are different. Games these days often run at 60fps, and thus the 50Hz refresh rate of the PAL system acts as a bottleneck, so even with PAL optimisation you can loose as much as 10fps. Because of this, many developers choose to add 60Hz modes into games, mainly GameCube games. Things weren't as bad in the days of the Saturn and Genesis, where nothing really went over 30fps anyway. Which is why Saturn PAL Optimised games look FAR superior to the equivelent NTSC title. So games should generally use NTSC these days, because the drop in fps in PAL overshadows the clearness of PAL. I'm not too sure what the difference is between PAL and SECAM mind... presumably it's colour encoding... For the record, the difference in power between the regions is unrelated.

		Jaded God	Jul 20, 2003
		yea how come I never hear anything about SECAM?

		gameboy900	Jul 20, 2003
		Originally posted by Jaded God@Jul 20, 2003 @ 03:52 PM yea how come I never hear anything about SECAM? Because it's a horrible french standard that everyone hates.

		Scared0o0Rabbit	Jul 20, 2003
		Originally posted by gameboy900+Jul 20, 2003 @ 03:06 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gameboy900 @ Jul 20, 2003 @ 03:06 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'> <!--QuoteBegin-Jaded God@Jul 20, 2003 @ 03:52 PM yea how come I never hear anything about SECAM? Because it's a horrible french standard that everyone hates. [/b][/quote] That's a lot more diplomatic than what I was going to say :devil