PAL to NTSC conversion, Memorex MVD-2029, NTSC Television

[greenmeansjoe]

Hola, all:

This is my first post here.

I have a Memorex MVD-2029 DVD player and I recently discovered -- on this site -- how to hack it so it'll play DVDs from any region.

So I got all super-excited about freely being able to switch regions and ordered the second season of The Office from Amazon UK, figuring I'd be able to play the DVD with no problem.

My DVD is crossing the pond as we speak, but I just discovered that beyond region coding there's the whole PAL/NTSC issue. The Office is PAL. My Memorex player gives you the option to choose between a PAL or NTSC television, so I'm guessing it plays PAL DVDs.

What I don't know is if the Memorex player will play a PAL DVD without forcing me to change my TV type to PAL. Will it do the PAL to NTSC conversion automatically? Can I just leave the Memorex's TV-type setting on NTSC? Even with a PAL DVD? My TV is definitely NTSC.

C'mon techies, help me out here!

Thanks,
Joe

[greenmeansjoe]

Sorry, I'm not trying to bump my post back to the top here. I just want to simplify my question.

Does anyone know if the Memorex MVD-2029 DVD player has a built-in PAL-to-NTSC converter? I know I can play PAL DVDs. I just want to make sure I'll be able to watch a PAL disc on my NTSC television.

Thanks again,
Joe

[pijetro]

Alrighty, my knowledge is pretty limited, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt...
Most people on this board seem to agree that PAL players and TV's will play NTSC video content. So the people in Europe shouldn't have a problem switching over from NTSC.

TV's and DVD players built for the North American market, doesn't have PAL capabilities as a rule of thumb, because, well , you know, everything revolves around the U.S.
They probably figure it isn't worth the cost of adding PAL capabilities, when 99.9% of all commercial movies viewed in NTSC land are made in Hollywood.

That being said, if you're in Europe, you're in luck. If you're in North America, then your DVD player needs to be switchable and your TV set needs to be switchable...

Don't get this confused with region codes. That's a totally separate issue over and above the different video formats...

Good luck!!!!

[FOO]

I recently spent all day converting a PAL DVD I got in London
to NTSC so I could watch it. Hooray for me. I then discovered
my $45 cheap shit Mintek DVD player converts PAL to NTSC on the fly into
a NTSC only TV. I feel kinda silly

[greenmeansjoe]

I then discovered my $45 cheap shit Mintek DVD player converts PAL to NTSC on the fly into a NTSC only TV.

Exactly. I wonder if my cheap Memorex player will do the same thing. The customer service people at Memorex couldn't even tell me. After four or five hours on the internet -- a lot of those hours on this site -- I knew more about my DVD player than they did. How lame is that?

So anyway ... any Memorex owners out there?

Joe

[FulciLives]

The only DVD players I have seen that have a selectable output (PAL, NTSC, MULTI) have a built-in converter.

Setting to to NTSC will always output NTSC. Setting it to MULTI will output what is on the DVD so a NTSC outputs NTSC and a PAL outputs PAL

Since you have a NTSC only TV you want to set it to NTSC output.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[greenmeansjoe]

The only DVD players I have seen that have a selectable output (PAL, NTSC, MULTI) have a built-in converter.

Setting to to NTSC will always output NTSC. Setting it to MULTI will output what is on the DVD so a NTSC outputs NTSC and a PAL outputs PAL

Since you have a NTSC only TV you want to set it to NTSC output.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

Ok. I definitely can choose between PAL and NTSC output, so this is good news ... unless, of course, my player is the exception to the rule, which would totally be my luck.

Thanks, John.

I love this site, by the way. I've learned more about DVD technology here in the past couple of days than I ever would have thought.

Joe

[pijetro]

Yeah, I also bought a $50 DVD player (Amphion) for my in-laws, and to my surprise, saw a PAL-NTSC button on the remote..
I still believe your TV has to be switchable..Can somebody confirm this please??

Thanx.....

[ratchet]

I recently spent all day converting a PAL DVD I got in London
to NTSC so I could watch it.

Foo, could you briefly explain the programs and your method used to convert a PAL to NTSC? I would appreciate it.

[LisaB]

Joe,

I am 99% certain that your Memorex DVD player will have no problem playing the PAL DVD on your NTSC television. Every DVD I have seen that has PAL/NTSC selection will also do on-the-fly converting (otherwise there would be no point to offering an output choice!)

Since your TV is NTSC-only, choose the NTSC television option on your DVD...it's as simple as that.

Lisa

[FOO]

PAL to NTSC (there are guides for this)
1 Rip DVD with dvddecrypter
2 demux video to 1 M2V file with Vobedit
3 extract audio to wav with DVD2AVI
4 resample audio from 25 to 23.976 MP2 with besweet
( the reason here is i have a pioneer player which doesn't like AC3 from besweet.
5. frameserve video to TMPGenc from Vdub and convert to 720 x 480 23.976
6 mux audio & video

7 Author with something

notes: step 2 & 3 could be done in step 1 and step 6 not necessary

[greenmeansjoe]

Joe,

I am 99% certain that your Memorex DVD player will have no problem playing the PAL DVD on your NTSC television. Every DVD I have seen that has PAL/NTSC selection will also do on-the-fly converting (otherwise there would be no point to offering an output choice!)

Since your TV is NTSC-only, choose the NTSC television option on your DVD...it's as simple as that.

Lisa

Thanks, Lisa. Still don't have the DVD. It's coming, though, and I'm feeling better about the probability of being able to play it with no hitches.

How does on-the-fly conversion work? Is it a true conversion?

Joe

[LisaB]

Every DVD player I have ever owned has had on-the-fly conversion, and it works beautifully. There is no jerking or skipping at all. I'm not sure how it is actually doing it, but I don't think you could do a better job even if you did it yourself....plus, there is always a quality hit whenever you re-encode something.

My DVD players include 2 Apexes, a Fujilink, a Phillips, and a Cavs. I think the best is the Phillips (727 I think) that I bought at Target for $70. Beautiful progressive scan, played everything I threw at it, and flawlessly played all PAL and NTSC discs on my NTSC-only television.

[mnkyboy]

PAL to NTSC (there are guides for this)
1 Rip DVD with dvddecrypter
2 demux video to 1 M2V file with Vobedit
3 extract audio to wav with DVD2AVI
4 resample audio from 25 to 23.976 MP2 with besweet
( the reason here is i have a pioneer player which doesn't like AC3 from besweet.
5. frameserve video to TMPGenc from Vdub and convert to 720 x 480 23.976
6 mux audio & video

7 Author with something

notes: step 2 & 3 could be done in step 1 and step 6 not necessary

So, from your previous comment, its not really worth doing this?

I have 7 avi files of a documentary thats in PAL (25fps). I converted all the avis to DVD, so I could play them in my dvd player (at least i thought). I didnt think I would have a problem, since Ive played PAL VCD/SVCD in my Pioneer DV-333.

So, how long are we talking about for the steps above? Each episode of the documentary is about 49 min long It took DVD2SVCD about 4 hours with CCE to encode each episode.

Is there a way to set DVD2SVCD to convert while its encoding in those 4 hrs?

[FOO]

Ive played PAL VCD/SVCD in my Pioneer DV-333.

well mine doesn't work with my TV . Maybe your TV can do PAL

[mnkyboy]

Ive played PAL VCD/SVCD in my Pioneer DV-333.

well mine doesn't work with my TV . Maybe your TV can do PAL

I cant play PAL DVD, only PAL VCD/SVCD.

Did you read the rest of my post? Let me know what you think. Thanks

[greenmeansjoe]

So I finally got my PAL DVD last night ... and it played fine. No problems.

YAY!

Thanks to everyone who responded.

Joe