if PAL is better, why does the PAL equipment/media suck ?

[lordsmurf]

Alright, I know I'm opening myself up to flames, but it's a legitimate question.

I was reading www.100fps.com and his rant about PAL over NTSC. And I can't really disagree. It got me to thinking...

PAL does have better color (or "colour" for all you British blokes), it does have higher resolution, and the film frame rate issues make PAL more appealing.

BBBBBUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT... ......

Why is it that most PAL equipment and recorded analog media is nowhere near the quality of NTSC VCRs, capture cards, broadcast and digital quality, and pre-recorded commercial movie tapes.

I have used PAL VCRs and even own a Samsung SV-5000W... but tapes choke more on PAL than NTSC it seems.

And the choices of options in hardware just isn't very broad or exciting.

Now, I realize the Japan/USA video companies are the top-of-the-line video companies, and coincidentally (or not) in the NTSC realm. And the USA companies cater to the audience at home, which is fair.

But I've seen some of the most amazing cars in the world come out of Europe. Most strides in early Internet technology came from that "little" place called Europe. Why has this not bled into video? You may not be in the USA, but that surely doesn't make you inferior or backwards... just different. You drive on the left, me on the right... etc...

How are things over there concerning video? Do PAL people love the format, yet have crappy equipment?

Comments. Thoughts. Just no flames. I'm curious what the deal is.

And yes, I know PAL is all over the world... it's just that most of the PAL audience on this particular site seems to be mostly from Europe... at least all the common posters (Aussie mods excluded).

[Gees]

Hmm. I don't know. Is that PAL equipment you have PAL only? Here in PALville :c) most everything plays/handles both. And it's all the same (big name) manufacturers.

Maybe the difference is in equipment made solely for PAL? Which we don't require here? Maybe corners are cut for things like that?

I never had a single tape choke on any of four vcrs I have or have had since I moved here.

[The village idiot]

I'll agree about some of the Broadcast equipment. BTS cameras are the strangest thing in the world. Give me some basic tools and I can work inside any of the Japanese cameras with no problems. But the stupid BTS (now thomson multi media) are the strangest things. Even the schematics are odd, almost as if they tried very hard to be different from the Japanese manufacturers. As far as the other equipement goes, the VTRs are no different from the ones in NTSC land. Just as durable, and functional. Consumer electronics might be different.

[cooel]

I think I may be able to answer this. I live and work in Scotland as a Video technician. In my view there is no dought that PAL is better than NTSC. (by the way, in europe NTSC stands for "never twice same colour) and the reason you may not see this is that Samsung (pronounced crap) is poor quality equipment. NTSC is much improved in the last ten years due to advances in electronics but PAL, because of its better system will always have the edge.

[lordsmurf]

Samsung (pronounced crap) is poor quality equipment.

I'd actually say it was decent, and have to disagree. But the problem is larger than just my Samsung.

I've seen it elsewhere, and a lot of my e-mail's and PM's are from Europeans that gripe about having bad equipment.

It ranges from PAL-only to the PAL-NTSC units to the worldwide systems. Granted, NTSC has some real junk video equipment, but I think it has a larger impact in PAL (with less high end equipment and higher prices overall, driving people towards buying the cheapest junk around).

I'm curious if PAL versions of the JVC S-VHS units (or competitors) exist. From those I know in Europe, I'm being told no.

[Boolean]

I have a JVC SVHS, unit its about 10 yrs old now, great bit of kit but getting SVHS tapes is almost impossible over here. I bought it back in to old days of analog camcorders hoping to get better quality for my home movies. Its now been retired, I only do DVD's now.

[tompika]

Here comes lordsmurf again.

I'm not buying what he says.
I was watching American/Canadian broadcasts, tapes on NTSC TVs and European broadcasts, tapes on PAL TVs for years.

Anyway who needs VCR(and capture cards) when you can buy standalone DVD recorders in every corner.

VCR sucks, how about that?

[SatStorm]

The technologies rises in Europe, but the commercial success / practical use of them rises in USA.

You see, Europeans are plural. Plenty of countries. It is not one huge market: They are many smaller markets.
There are 3 big countries in Europe (4 if you count Russia...), leading the situation, but as "markets" are very - very small compareded the US market.
Germany is the technology leader. But, that means nothing: Berlin is the first place in Europe with only DVB/T transmissions (that means they don't have analogue aerial channels there anymore!), but in Italy most of the channels are analogue PAL channels, mono sound, no teletext and with many noise from other analogue channels, from neighbour places...
European Union tried to make Europe for the first time on huge market, and it is really very early to see where this gonna lead...

So, the big ones are targeting NTSC, because by they own, USA/Canada and Japan are enough to support commercial actions.
Then, they change couple of things, and they present same products for PAL countries. Most of the time, those products sucks! (ATI for example...)

There are plenty differences between Europe / USA on anything. The mainstream European knows at least 2 languages (3 is needed). Our homes are 4 - 5 room apartments. We don't have rooms to include big screen TVs, projectors, etc. On our cities, "Garage" for our cars are not exist. Technology is a new term. Only the recent years, computers are a part of school lessons (when I went to school, PCs like 8086 cost something like to buy a small apartment...)
Anyway, there are poor and rich countries, so near buy, you can't understand how this is possible. It is...

And, because the european market is devited, each country has own rules, esthitics, dreams, lifestyles, languages, etc.
Very rare something is establish and acceptable from anyone around here. Just imagine: 10 years ago, we had Secam and PAL. East europe used SECAM, west europe PAL. East and West isn't determined by the geographical position of the country neccessary, rather than the influage from US/USSR...
Then we had those PAL variations: The Germany's PAL is slighty different England's pal, etc.
Those have commercial sideeffects...
Also, good products rise on big markets. If the market is smaller (like the european countries), for the same quality the price is higher to pay the cost. Logical.
The problem is the salaries... Only few countries in Europe, had (still have...) comparable salaries to USA salaries. What about the other countries? They also have needs! Well cheaper products for them. And how a product can be cheap without many sales? With lower quality.

Today, we have 2 Europes: One with the E.U. countries and one with all the others. For the second ones, the things are tuff. For the E.U. ones, an average solution used for the quality. So countries like mine, for the first time have better quality products. But countries like Germany, France, UK, now have products less good than before. The average is the overall result here. But we can't have winners only...

A commercial side effect in Europe for this, is the closure of traditional technology castles in Europe. Grudig for example, now is off. Nokia, have factories in China. Philips have a sex relation with Sony. And so on...

So, it is not a suprise that europe doesn't have quality products right now... Europe have average quality products for all the E.U. countries in good prices for all the members about the same. The next step, gonna be better products. But to go to the next step, europe need to solve all the marketing issues. Internal technology words exist on anything and the side effect of all this, is the less quality of the same products, established americans today have. Eventually, this gonna change. In 10 - 20 years...


The same problem is on anything, not on technology only: In the music indestry, succees for an artist means success in US hit lists. UK count, but not so much. There are artists or music gentres well known all around europe / asia / australia / africa, but because they didn't reach success in US (through a success in UK first, UK is the door to US for the music indestry...), are virtual unknown. Just count: Eurodisco, Italodisco, Trance, Breakbeat, Gothic.... Trance is huge today, Italodisco was huge in 80s, both gentres virtually unkown in US...
In the movie indestry, there are the US movies and nothing more. Yes, there are also those Bollywood Indian movies, but they has success only at the third world. Japan exports only magnas. It is not that the european movies / cartooons / comics / music etc are not good, but it is very difficult to find the distribution outside their terretory.
And when I say success, I don't mean artistic success. I mean commercial success. Money. Only the US system can feed well artists or commercial attemps. The European system, in theory is better, in praxis is just a huge risk nobody takes.

In other words, this is yet a USA dominant world, because it has a system used in praxis. Europe has a new, better, improved, system, but in theory. Just now they start the first tests to see how it goes on praxis.
Untill then, USA has the fist hand. And the best quality products...

[energy80s]

Lordsmurf, I don't know where you get the idea that professional PAL equipment is crap, because it isn't. It's a damn sight better than NTSC. This is not a flame, this is fact. Why do you think America is moving over quickly to HDTV? It's because standard NTSC produces the worst colour broadcast pictures in the world today. Even SECAM is better than NTSC. Having seen material shot on both an NTSC and a PAL Betacam after 11/9/01 for news reports in N.I viewed on proper broadcast monitors there is a drop in definition and colour rendition of NTSC sourced footage. Also we don't have the "colour varying with voltage" problems that plague NTSC transmissions.

Oh and Samsung is pretty crap gear. Sorry, but its true.

[energy80s]

Oh and another thing, S-VHS has existed in the UK since 1988. I have had S-VHS VCR's since 1997. They are easily available in any high street electrical shop. However they are usually twice the price of a basic VCR so not many people would buy them. and the tapes are 5 quid each, so who wants to pay that! Thank God that DVDR is finally starting to take off. I haven't bought a blank video tape in nearly two years!!

[SatStorm]

Just to add that in my answer, I was refering to mainstream users equipment, not the pro or the expencive/advance one.

About VCRs, IMHO the best VCRs are those from SHARP, followed by philips matchline's series or some Thompsons (which virtually are the same VCRs the last 5 years with different label...).

PAL is far better NTSC. Secam is better PAL in studio inviroment, but far worst PAL in practice.

Pal is a very good system, that's why the market stay PAL so many years...

[The village idiot]

PAL is much better. NTSC was a compromise in quality so that it would work with all the old black&white TVs that were all ready in use! That is pure fact! It was a decision made by polititions that they thought was in the people's best interest. ATSC (USA's HDTV broadcast standards) is the same thing only not compatible at all!!! DVB is far better, but was not choosen for broadcast, cable uses DVB, satellite uses DVB, Europe uses DVB, not sure what Japan uses, they have gone through so many changes it is hard to keep up with them. Good PAL equipment is much better looking than good NTSC equipment. But for the reasons that Sat Storm brought up, the lower level of PAL equipment is what is generally seen.

[lordsmurf]

The reason I asked was because I don't live in Europe or anywhere else, I live in the USA. What I have seen in both studio settings and home use has been PAL tapes that are horrible to work with.

And from Satstorm is saying, that's fairly common in most places. The overall quality is lacking, that's what I was getting at.

While I'm sure the professional broadcast standards are great, it the consumer equipment (and upper end consumer, lower end pro equipment) that seems to be blah in quality. That's what I've seen, and what I was trying to confirm.

I've got Samsung tv's and monitors, and they're great, some of the best display devices. The worldwide VCR does a good job on most tapes... but the slightest imperfection will make it go nuts... something I've seen reproduced with PAL studio equipment (went somewhere intending to pay for a transfer once, but left seeing the same errors).

I can restore some of the most stubbron NTSC tapes around... but one miniscule PAL errors and BOOM, beyond repair. It's annoying... and I'm looking to find out why.

And satstorm, I really appreciate your viewpoints on Europe.

What I'm seeing is a superior format with overall inferior equipment.

[FulciLives]

I too live in the USA but being a horror/cult/exploitation film fan I have bought many PAL VHS videos over the years.

I don't know why (well censorship or rather lack thereof) but many of the PAL VHS videos I have are either Dutch or Greek. I also have some from the UK as well as Austraila.

They are all utter crap. Poor transfers ... cheap blank tape ... you name it.

Even when the transfer does seem to be good there is always a problem with the signal being poor (crappy blank tape).

They can't begin to compare to US made NTSC VHS videos.

I also have a lot of NTSC Japanese VHS videos. These things put USA NTSC VHS to shame for the most part. I'd say here in the USA we didn't start to catch up to Japanese NTSC VHS quality until maybe the mid to late 1990's

Now ... one would think that the switch to digital (bascially I'm talking DVD here) would have improved things and to an extent it has but it is rare that I come across a PAL DVD that was as good a "print" (film-to-video transfer) as a USA NTSC DVD.

Now most of the PAL stuff I have comes from smaller less known labels than say WARNER BROS or COLUMBIA TRI-STAR or MGM or UNIVERSAL etc. but they don't own anywhere near the number of films *I* watch. Most of my video collection is made up of films released on non hollywood big budget labels.

So perhaps the newest DVD of say the newest HIT movie such as MATRIX RELOADED might look just as good on USA NTSC as UK PAL since it would be a major brand new STUDIO release ... OK ... but just about ALL of the PAL VHS and yes even PAL DVD I have are crappola.

So whenever PAL people say that PAL is better ... I take it they have very few USA NTSC material for comparrison OR they don't have the proper technology to watch it on (say perhaps the popular PAL TV that converts NTSC to PAL 60 thus loosing quality etc.)

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Colindale]

That's the most one eyed bias statement I've seen in a long time.
If it's not American it 's crap?!.

Do some research and you may get enlightened!.

[hothandiman]

Although I have never viewed PAL broadcasts, friends visiting for Europe always used to say their picure quality was better than my NTSC set, and this was on a good quality set! PAL had higer resulotion from the beginning. The US is in full swing now to the conversion to ATSC. Even in my backwoods area all but one chanel has converted to digital. I would guess that this Christmas and next, digital will make significant headway. Of course, there are MANY versions of digital: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i to name a few. 480 is in my opinion, is only a slight improvent over analog. Essentially the same resolution as NTSC, but better color rendition, no ghosting, etc. 720 and 1080 are awesome, however. What is the status of Europe's conversion to digital and HDTV?

[The village idiot]

One problem that PAL would have in transfer is that it is Phase Alternate Lines, so if you miss the phased line, the chroma is going to go nuts until it can get locked again. But I have seen some impressive looking transfers from a couple of World type vcrs, and stuff from satellite through a world analog receiver, and it looks great. It's odd that you would be have tape quality problems, since the tapes are all the same. Or at least they should be, same size, same formula. Some of the best tape I have seen came from BASF. They only made chrome tape, and yet it was as cheap as all the other junky tapes.

[lordsmurf]

One problem that PAL would have in transfer is that it is Phase Alternate Lines, so if you miss the phased line, the chroma is going to go nuts until it can get locked again.

That strikes me as being a flaw of the format. And it does explain one problem I have (one out of several). The tape caused the miss, I would speculate, due to it being dirt-cheap and having issues with decent playback.

[SatStorm]

First of all:

PAL VHS captures from analogue aerial countries like Denmark, Greece and Italy, are problematic not because of the system, but because of the aerial transmissions.

In Athens (Hellas) for example, between UHF 21 - 69 Band, we have about 35 channels, dual transmitting from 2 near by montains. That makes it about 70 channels!
So, what happens: The same freq is used from 2 or sometimes 3 different channels the same time. If I point my aerial antenna to one mountain, I can see for example Eurosport. If I turn this antenna the oposite dirrection, I receiver a local channel called 920TV. If I point it to the sea, I receive a channel called SevenX.
There is virtual impossible to watch a channel without noise from other channels. That is what private TV brought us after 1988. (Before, we had only national channels...)
This same story happens in all Mediterenian, Balkan, Middle East countries and some parts of BeNeLux!
This is the reason there is no cable here: When you have 35 channels for free, airing anything you can imagine, it is more than natural when you tape on VHS to have noise.
This story is even more problematic in south Italy, and a part of spain, don't mention Turkey or some balkan countries....

So, it is not the tapes, the system, or whatever: It is the transmission itself! Plus, most of those channels are transmitting VHS or SVHS tapes. So, short to speak, when you tape from a channel, sometimes is like taping from a VHS VCR, using long long cables!

The new "problem", are on music channels: Some companies, send promo extra CDs to various music channels. Those CDs include the single and an mpeg 1 VCD version of the videoclip. So, what happens: The music channels rip those VCDs and airing the videos from there! Imagine the source to be 352 x 288, transmit interlace to 720 x 576, taped on VHS and then transfer it to DVD.
The silly part is that later, after the official realise of the song, the record companies send on pro beta tapes (never DVD!) the videoclip to those channels. Yes, sure, who gonna waste time to replace the mpeg 1, which works - for their needs - perfect....

I repeat: MTV and VH1 in Europe, currently using mpeg 4 NTSC archives, on the fly converted to PAL! How to expect quality from those?

From the other hand, you watch those German Channels airing 30 years old colour stuff like Beaclub (1970 - 1984) or Disco (1971 - 1982) and you don't believe your eyes! It is like live transmissions! Amazing picture.
Well, yes, but they are Germans... They have 100 million people and scifi salaries for us...


@FulciLives: It didn't suprise me that Greek VHS tapes are awful. Most of them are VHS to VHS copies, or from local channels. Before 1989, the country used SECAM. Officially, noone dear to inform the big ones, that Greece switch to PAL. So what STUPID happens: The big ones, sent master tapes to SECAM and local studios / stations transfer them on the fly to PAL....
Also, the archives of Greek TV, starts somewhere 1981 and they are VHS tapes! They manage to loose even their archives in the 70s! There are situations, that 70s productions of National Greek TV are lost and they found copies in Russia, Germany even USA!

Situations like those are everywhere in Europe. Only the big ones don't have problems with those matters. European Union eventually gonna help us, the small ones, "solve" lot's of secondary matters. The price is to loose some of our tradition, but when I studied US, I understood that each state differs another. So, if this model succeed here, I see a positive future..

@lordsmurf: The "Phase Alternate Line problem" appears only when the aerial transmission have noise. This noise is unoticable when you watching a tape on TV, but it is well noticable when you capture composite on PCs.
When you capture using S-Video, the lines you see are simply the noise of the other channel in the same freq...

You eliminate really easy those, using the filter rmPAL.
Overall, this is not a flaw of PAL and if you use good tapes, you rarely see them. Mostly appears on Tapes recorder more than once, so they have noise from a previeus recording.

You could easily say, that those lines are a flow of VHS when VHS is used for PAL recordings... Another excellent point of a technology made for NTSC and then with few changes used to PAL markets.
VHS optimized for NTSC you know (JVC = Japan = NTSC = USA and so on....)

[hech54]

I grew up in America. I'm now....39 years old. I now live in Germany. PAL is better "looking" than NTSC. What you have to remember is that all of europe somewhat "caters" to NTSC. 95% of all video equipment "can view" NTSC. The vise versa is NOT the same in the U.S.
And as far as the best converting VCR?....Aiwa....hands down. Plays, converts and records in NTSC and PAL....with Secam thrown in as well.
So there.....NYA!!!!

[SatStorm]

AIWA is good, but somehow rare outside Germany...

The reason anything PAL is NTSC compatible, is simply because those products first made for NTSC and then modified a bit to work with PAL.
So they are simply modified NTSC machines.

The vice versa is rare, 'cause only few equipment are first PAL and then are modified to work with NTSC... Maybe some handmade hi-end machines are still like this. But mass production works simply: We made NTSC, we modify a bit (cheap) and then we "offer" PAL to those who interest!

[hech54]

Yea but....
My Aiwa is back in the U.S.
I bought it there to view (mainly) PAL tapes from Australia. My next trip back to my former home....bring the Aiwa...

[Dragonsf]

SatStorm: where did you here about those "sci-fi" salaries?I'm working in Germany for more than 25 years and never encouted one of these.Only top honchos, politicans, lawers get high salaries, employees are not bound to lay fingers on such stuff (and the government takes 50% of your salary).
To Beatclub and other stuff: non-private TV (ie. ARD and ZDF) is paid thru GEZ (monthly fee of 18€).So they own a lot of money (multiply that by 20 million households) to have the best archives (on PAL Betamax tapes), which are constantly digitized and re-recorded (befor digitizing).The Video archieves are the most valued asset for the TV companies.
To S-VHS: you can by S_VHS tapes anywhere (MediaMarkt/Saturn).And best were EMTEC (formerly BASF).

[whatever]

Just a little question for you americans complaining about PAL quality... what kind of TV do you use to view the PAL material, do you use a good PAL tv or a crappy NTSC tv?

I have seen NTSC tapes from the states and I can't say that they are higher quality than the average PAL tape.

Also i find the quality of available equipment very good, of course a $99 stereo vcr is not going to produce excellent results, but that is to be expected.

As for PAL DVD's that someone mentioned, the higher resolution of PAL is MOST noticable, i.e. all NTSC DVDs looks like crap when compared to their PAL counterparts.

[SMHarman]

<snip>

I have seen NTSC tapes from the states and I can't say that they are higher quality than the average PAL tape.

Also i find the quality of available equipment very good, of course a $99 stereo vcr is not going to produce excellent results, but that is to be expected.

As for PAL DVD's that someone mentioned, the higher resolution of PAL is MOST noticable, i.e. all NTSC DVDs looks like crap when compared to their PAL counterparts.

My Panny VCR plays NTSC and PAL tapes (in the UK) without any real noticable diferenence in quality.

As you say A PAL DVD compared to a NTSC DVD is really noticable. On a 32in Widescreen you can see more black between the picture lines. This is most noticable on solid items, such as the WB logo for example.

[freakyalbino]

Hech54 said what i was going to say, but here in sustralia consumer electronics is a bit behind the times (especially takeup of dtv broadcasts) because we basically cannot see the point. America has the largest obesidy figures for children than any other country, which could contribute to the development of better technology, not to mention the us is a perfect 'test' market for many companies. Here in australia we have 6 main channels that show everything, buffy angel, crossing jordan, alias - all these shows are on channel 7. channel 9 shows csi and csi miami. CHannel 10? australian idol. We do not have 400 channels on satellite and since most of our tv is free to air (cable tv is around but the incentive just isnt there for most people) we do not see the point in purchasing what we allready get for free. THis is why we're behind everyone else, hell, when we finally get a digital reciever that has a hdd and dvd-r blue ray will be in the US! no joke

[SatStorm]

@Dragonsf: The basic salary for a typical worker in Hellas, is 480 euros per month. This is our salaries, you have to feed your family with 480 euros per month here.
I am the basic journalist (right hand of the chief - editor) in a technical magazine, well known (and succesfull) in my country and my salary is 675 Euros per month. It is concerned "amazing high".
Just for your info, the cost to rent a 2 room apartment in Athens, is about 300 euros. How we manage it when our salaries are 480 euros per month? We don't! We do 2 - 3 jobs just to feed ourselfs...
It is the price we pay just to became a "european union country".
Sure, this gonna change eventually, the "overall" factor soon gonna rise our salaries. But untill then, the next 10 - 12 years, the salaries (and the services) you got there in Germany, is SciFi scenario for us! (and other fellow members or E.U.)

Which is the typical worker's salary in Germany? Last time I asked, was about 1200 - 1500 Euros per month...
Here, 1500 Euros per month, is a SciFi salary.. Only few have jobs with such salaries...
And we are both members of E.U. as you know and we have the same currency (euro)...

We also pay in Hellas for our 3 national channels, through the electricity bill! That means that whatever you have a TV or not, if you have electricity you pay about 20 euros for national TV.
Our National TV is not receivable terrestrial in about 15% of our country, it is encoded on a satellite subscription service (the most expensive in europe, for 30 channels, half of them terrestrial re-transmissions, the cost is 59 euro per month. Here is the list of those channels: http://www.lyngsat.com/dig/nova.shtml) and has adds all the time. Also, we don't have archives before 1982, even if we have TV since 1967.
In Germany, you have countless local national channels, no adds, with excellent program (no reality series, no stupid talk shows, no endless soap series...). You have music, dokumanteries, even thematic TV channels (ARD and ZDF have digital satellite thematic TV right?) and all of them FREE for all the german speaking europeans.

Also, you have fast and cheap internet, while we have only expencive isdn 128 at best! We don't have fast trains and the ones we have are expensive, we need about 1 hour to move from our houses to our jobs and the mainstream Greek do hollidays once in 2 years!
Do you know how is it, to live near the sea, near beautiful hotels, 1 hour distance from popular holliday islands like myconos, santorini, paros, etc and have to rent money from bank just to do a weeks holliday IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY?
How is impossible even to swim in the dirty waters in Athens, because you don't have time? You have to work 2 - 3 jobs to pay the bills?

Sorry, but you are not informed well about the situation of the other E.U. Because now for the first time Germans have some few problems with the former eastern germans, they believe is the end of the world.
How about us, the "small" countries? Portugal, South Italy, west spain, etc?
Read about them: After all, we are one big country now (almost...).

Don't mention the salaries or the situation on TV of other, non E.U. countries....

Eventually all this gonna change for better (for us), but right now, the situation is not good...

[RabidDog]

my 2 cents ? In the past europe had many competing variations of pal secam a b etc now as the digital age looms they are trying to make everyone sing from the same song sheet. So hopefully in the future PAl will be as big a market as NTSC. Look at mobile phones us and europe use two diff systems cdma and Gsm.. Gsm is reckoned to be better becuase of the earlier and greater takeup of the mobile in Europe.

[Dragonsf]

SatStorm: I don't know, if you are talking about salaries before or after tax, but a German worker with 1500 Euro pays around 600 Euro for taxes and such.That's why most people have more then one job too.
We have around 5 Mill people here who earn less then 400 Euro, they surely need more then 1 job to stay alive (not to mention the unemployed).
If the situation (in your opinion) is so bad, why don't come all the Greek workers to Germany, to work here?This is EU and you should be able to do that.

[whatever]

Heh.. I live in Sweden, and make approximately 1600 euros a month, that's considered a pretty shitty salary over here anyways..