Pal-M compatible with NTSC tuner?

[Massa]

Hello,

I want to buy a DVD recorder in the USA and take it with me to Brazil in a few months.
Brazil uses Pal-M for air TV transmission, which has the same frequency and lines of NTSC, but a differente color standard (it is not compatible with the European Pal).
I know that a NTSC tuner is able to tune Pal-M, but if you use a NTSC TV to watch, it will be Black&White (for sure!).
My question is, the NTSC dvd recorder will record the Pal-M signal coming from the NTSC tuner "as is"? I mean, if I then use a NTSC player linked to a Pal-M TV to play the recorded DVD, will the image be color or black&white?
A friend took a DVDR75 to Brazil and it seems to work fine, but I don't know if this is specific to the model or a technical feature of the Pal-M x NTSC.

[edDV]

Your country decided to do it's own unique hybrid standard with 525/60 30 fps rates and PAL (phase alternate line) encoding but with a subcarrier located at a different frequency than any other PAL system.

Unless the product says it will work with PAL-M, or unless you have evidence that a given device will work, you are on your own.

Maybe this was done to prevent imports?

[Massa]

Thanks edDV.
Brazil likes to innovate, believe it or not, we are discussing a Brazilian HDTV standard
Regarding the Pal-M issue, does the MPEG process is sensitive to the subcarrier frequency? I mean, won't it just encode whatever it runs into?
I know that my friend is using the DVDR75 there without any problems, the device records the disks as NTSC and the TV set just interpret as Pal-M.

[edDV]

Thanks edDV.
Brazil likes to innovate, believe it or not, we are discussing a Brazilian HDTV standard
Regarding the Pal-M issue, does the MPEG process is sensitive to the subcarrier frequency? I mean, won't it just encode whatever it runs into?
I know that my friend is using the DVDR75 there without any problems, the device records the disks as NTSC and the TV set just interpret as Pal-M.

The PAL-M issue was settled back in the 1970's for analog broadcasting. HDTV will be part of a new digital broadcasting standard.

I think the reason Brazil invented this scheme was to protect local TV manufacturers (and the high local TV taxes) from foreign competition and especially from smuggled foreign TV models.

Here is the the way analog tuners work.

TV is broadcast as a mix of luminance and color information. In the case of PAL-M the luminance is tranmitted as a 525 line 60 field in the same way as NTSC. Color is transmitted on a subcarrier ~3.58MHz but in the PAL standard. PAL is normally broadcast on a 625/50 standard with subcarrier at 4.43MHz. So a tuner would need to be PAL-M aware in order to decode the color from the RF broadcast.

A tuner first tunes the channel. These channels would need to match the frequencies broadcast in Brazil. Next it would split out the lunimance Y and color C as separate signals.

The luminance Y would be identical to NTSC luminance and would record on an NTSC DVD recorder as monochrome. The color information C would need to be PAL decoded from the 3.58 MHz subcarrier to U and V. If that was successful you would have a component YUV baseband signal.

At the YUV level the signal would be compatible with a NTSC signal and would record on a NTSC DVD recorder. So the challenge is to find either a DVD recorder with a tuner that works for PAL-M or find a DVD recorder that has YUV (aka Y, Pr, Pb) inputs plus a separate PAL-M tuner that outputs Y, Pr, Pb. The signal encoded to MPeg2 and recorded to the DVD is baseband YUV.

If the Philips DVDR75 works for your friend, then it is PAL-M capable at the tuner. If you know that particular model works you should buy it.

[hech54]

Most Philips recorders(at least mine anyway...and as far as I have read over the years) will record ANY signal as long as it is NOT via the tuner. My Philips DVDR985 with an NTSC tuner obviously does not record from a TV signal here in PAL land....but it does record PAL via the scart or S-Video connections with no problems at all.
I often use my PAL VCR as a tuner...then record via a line-in to my Philips.

[ofbarea]

My DMR-ES10 and my DMR-E55 (originally) supported NTSC and PAL-M. Both units were the Latinamerican version of the recorders. The E55 was bought in Panama and the ES10 was bought in Costa Rica. I do not know if you will be able to find the recorders in US, but at least now you know that the recorder you are looking for exists.

The E55 lost its PAL-M support after flashing it to the latest US firmware, so I think it is possible to convert one Panasonic recorder from one NTSC to PAL with the right firmware. Unfortunately I only have been able to find US and Japanese firmwares.