How good are Multisystem/PAL to NTSC DVD players?

[vivsavage]

I'm interested in being able to play PAL DVDs on my NTSC television, but would like to know if the picture quality will be any good. Will PAL DVDs show any degradation in image quality, or will they look just as good as my regular NTSC DVD movies?

[lumis]

i've never noticed any image quality degridation..

i watched some futurama dvd's & a harry potter dvd(not for me) that were pal on an ntsc televsion.. they looked fine.. the only weird thing was that the voices sounded a little squeakier from futurama.. probably because it was originally NTSC and it was sped up a bit for PAL.

[vivsavage]

i've never noticed any image quality degridation..

i watched some futurama dvd's & a harry potter dvd(not for me) that were pal on an ntsc televsion.. they looked fine.. the only weird thing was that the voices sounded a little squeakier from futurama.. probably because it was originally NTSC and it was sped up a bit for PAL.

And Harry Potter was fine? What model is your DVD player?

[lumis]

pioneer dv-270.

but i've also done it on a symphonic & a sanyo, worked fine on those too.

[Quantum]

It depends on the chipset the DVD player uses. Some DVD players will do the conversion and some will not. Some do it better than others. Two of the better ones are the Philips DVP642 and the Pioneer 578.

[jman98]

The Philips DVP642 actually chops lines off the image to do the conversion. This is not noticeable if you are watching something that is letterboxed, but it might be very noticeable if you are watching something that is full frame. I have a PAL VCD with English subtitles that is full frame and I was shocked that the subtitles were cut off. It played fine on a PC, so I know this player is simply cutting off extra lines to get a PAL resolution down to NTSC. The image quality is fine though.

I have Futurama season 1 on DVD from the UK and the voices are too fast because of the 5% PAL speedup during conversion. I haven't tested this, but I've read that this problem was fixed in R2 Futurama sets for seasons 3 and 4. It has not been fixed in seasons 1 and 2.

[lordsmurf]

Cyberhome 300 resizes, converts colorspace, and does not leave any interface jerks. Very nice.

[Resolution]

I have a Philips 707 I bought on line. Works perfect for the last year + I've had it. No problems with sub titles or any thing. It was cheap, will play anything and looks as good as my more expensive Sony stuff.