PAL to NTSC Picture Quality?

[Mike99]

Is there any difference in PQ between different brands of DVD players when converting a PAL DVD to NTSC for USA playback? Presuming that the player is capable of converting.

For example, does Philips typically do better or worse than Pioneer or Toshiba? I mention Philips because some models are very inexpensive. Of course if the converted PQ is poor then it's not worth saving a few bucks.

Any comments would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[jman98]

Some Toshiba models in the past have been infamous for not doing conversions at all. So I would be very very careful if considering anything made by them and sold in the USA.

I have a pretty cheap and old DVP-642 by Philips. Unfortunately one of the ways it converts from PAL to NTSC is that it chops the image down from 576 to 480 rather than scaling it down to 480. I've tested PAL VCDs on the TV. I've got a full frame PAL VCD with English subtites near the bottom of the screen and they are completely cut off when using the Philips. A better DVD player would simply scale down to 480 rather than simply removing the screen area larger than 480. I cannot tell you whether other Philips players do or do not do that because I do not own other Philips players. If I had to guess, I would guess that Pioneer probably re-scales. The picture quality on the Philips is actually fine and if I have a wide screen PAL video source, it looks OK because the area it chops is only where the black bars are.

Whatever you get, the player will need to be able to be put in region free mode so you can play PAL DVDs from other regions. Not all players can be hacked.

Oppo only makes BluRay players now, but they use some of the best video chips on the market and they do re-scale to get PAL to NTSC resolutions. Their players are not cheap though. You might be able to find one of their old DVD (not BluRay) players somewhere like Ebay or Amazon's resellers, but you have to accept the risk of buying a used piece of electronics from someone you do not know. Oppo DVD players can be made region free by entering a code. Their BluRay players require a hardware mod (some re-sellers do it for you) to become region free.

[victoriabears]

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but whatever you do, ensure there is air flow around your electronics, I am convinced that's why a lot fail, especially cheap ones like the Philips.

I believe the Pioneer

http://www.110220volts.com/DV-420.html

is the best, I have owned only Philips and Pioneer and the latter is a bit of a pain to hack, so for the price you can get it already done and will spend only $20-$30 more than doing it yourself, I believe money well spent, The other Pioneer models eg 220, may be as good.

Modern LCD TV's also do enhancements and I believe that the OPPO's for dvd playback are not worth 2 - 3 times the price of the Philips/pioneer.

[Mike99]

Previously I searched & it appears some players convert from PAL 576 to NTSC 480 and then upscale to 1080. Unfortunately I could not find a list of which brands did this.

I saw the Pioneer DV-420V-K on Amazon & one reviewer stated with the HDMI set to output at 1080p, the player does not downscale to 480 before upscaling to 1080. That it takes the 576i signal and directly converts it to 1080p. I don’t have a 1080p TV & wonder if it still directly converts to either 720p or 1080i.

He also mentioned his player was a Japanese version designed for tourists. However the picture was rather dark out of the box, and even after making some adjustments PAL discs still appeared a little dark. He adjusted the Gamma setting & it solved the problem.

The dark picture is a concern. I know that USA NTSC has a different black than Japan NTSC and perhaps this might be the cause of the problem. IOW the Pioneer might be converting to the wrong black level for USA TVs. I wonder if this typical of most players or just the Japanese model that this reviewer had. I don’t know if adjusting Gamma really solved the problem or just made it less obvious.

The online owners manual for the DV-420V-K states “Discs recorded in PAL are converted to NTSC for playback.” But it does not say North American NTSC or Japan NTSC. I don’t know how the reviewer found out the DV-420V-K upconverts directly from PAL 576i, but it would be nice to verify it did this.

[lordsmurf]

Some of them will crop the image differently.