NTSC and PAL playing on JVC DVD Standalone Player

[crowdx38]

Hi,
Have just noticed that my JVC 300 dvd standalone player plays both NTSC and PAL formats, also plays fne on my tv using the composite video out. Is this normal ? If so then why do folk want to convert NTSC to PAL or PAL to NTSC ??
Thanks for any input
Patrick

[bugster]

The ability to play both NTSC and PAL format DVD and (S)VCD is quite common. The question as to wether it is of use to any particular individual depends on the players exact capabilities and the TV in use. Many players will output the signal type (NTSC or PAL) appropriate to the type of disc being played. Therfore if you play a PAL disc but only have an NTSC TV (or vice versa) it will not display correctly or at all.
Some players have a setting that allows the player to output NTSC as PAL (or vice versa). For example. my Panasonic will output NTSC disc in PAL-60. This is a PAL signal but with 60 fields (30 frames) per second. Most PAL TV's would be able to handle this. Not all players will do this kind of conversion tho.

Most TV's sold in Europe in the last several years are multi-standard. That is they will quite happily handle NTSC and PAL signals automatically. I believe that in the US the situation is quite different and most TV's are NTSC only.

So if you are in the US (or other NTSC regions) or have older european equipment you may need to convert the format in order to watch some movies.

Hope this helps

Hope this helps.