Cant view PAL VHS tape. What are my options?

[quantass]

A friend sent me a VHS tape that when played in my Canadian VCR appears as a mostly blakc screen with banding. I cant see any picture and the sound seems to be unintelligible. My guess it has something to do with PAL since the tape came from Germany.

What are my options in viewing the tape? Can i still use my NTSC VCR to play the tape but then have the output fed into some videocard for conversion or MUST i get a PAL playing VCR and record out from that.

Tx

[schematic2]

You'll need a PAL VCR.
Some PAl VCRs will output in NTSC and you're good to go. Some only output in PAL which will require an additional PAL to NTSC adapter....

[filmboss80]

If you live in or near a city with a good international mix in the population, you may find some small shops that will make PAL-to-NTSC video transfers for a cheap price. Immigrants to North America from India, especially, set up video stores for Bollywood films, and usually have equipment to do the standards conversions. During the 90s, I had some Italian home videos converted to NTSC at a video shop that catered to immigrants from Pakistan. I just found the place by looking in the business phone listings under Audio-Visual Services. Check around.

[jman98]

Listen to flimboss80 and pay someone to convert it for you. Living in Canada I can promise you that you won't be able to play a PAL signal on your TV and typically VCRs that can convert PAL tapes to NTSC video output cost multi-hundreds of dollars. At least they did the last time I checked. VCRs that don't convert and only output the same format as the tape they play (PAL tapes come out as PAL video and NTSC tapes come out as NTSC video) are cheaper, but your TV won't be able to handle it. Well, there is like a 1% chance IF you have certain HD TV models that it MIGHT be able to handle a PAL signal correctly, but most likely you won't be that lucky.

If you can, try to get your friend to send you DVDs in the future as it's not too hard to find DVD players that can convert PAL DVDs to NTSC video output.