PAL or NTSC for NTSC-sourced material?

[emilroh]

I have almost stopped buying DVDs because of Blu-ray, but I still buy titles that's not released on Blu-ray. I plan on buying some box sets of my favorite TV series. But I'm unsure of whether I should buy the PAL or the NTSC versions. I rip and encode TV series and watch them on my computer. Most series I'd like to buy are American, so I'm wondering if I should I buy the NTSC because the series are made in America or the PAL version because of the higher resolution? I will be watching on my full-HD monitor, so 576p will look much better than 480p in terms of picture quality. Or are the PAL versions just upscaled from 480p? Another thing that bugs me with the PAL versions are the speedup. What do you suggest? I live in Norway, so I know most PAL TV series DVDs are interlaced. How are the NTSC versions? Are most soft telecined or hard telecined?

[wulf109]

I would base it on the country that produced the series. If it's an American series go with NTSC. My experience buying PAL versions of American series has been very bad. If the series was produced in a PAL country go with PAL.

[emilroh]

I would base it on the country that produced the series. If it's an American series go with NTSC. My experience buying PAL versions of American series has been very bad. If the series was produced in a PAL country go with PAL.

Okay, that's what I expected. Thank you for your reply.

[DB83]

Well you might be playing them on your PC now but in the future you might want to watch them through a player. So, with that in mind, I would select PAL versions if available.

I do note you live in Norway so they will be expensive to import anyway.

'Speed Up'. Surely that only affects film source and tv is mostly video source these days. And, anyway, PAL speed up is un-noticable.

Any PAL version of an original NTSC source is going to be 'up-scaled' so there is no real gain in that.

[emilroh]

Well you might be playing them on your PC now but in the future you might want to watch them through a player. So, with that in mind, I would select PAL versions if available.

I do note you live in Norway so they will be expensive to import anyway.

'Speed Up'. Surely that only affects film source and tv is mostly video source these days. And, anyway, PAL speed up is un-noticable.

Any PAL version of an original NTSC source is going to be 'up-scaled' so there is no real gain in that.

Yeah, that was one of my concerns (with the player). And I totally forgot about the speed up being only on film! I know this may vary from release to release, but is the picture quality on the PAL version close to the NTSC one?

[DB83]

You may find it hard to get an full answer to that last question.

Back in the days of analogue tv, without wishing to cause offence to my American friends on this forum, there was a running gag of what N.T.S.C. stood for = Never Twice Same Color

I doubt these days with HD, probably SD being 'down-scaled' from that, there is little difference

[emilroh]

You may find it hard to get an full answer to that last question.

Back in the days of analogue tv, without wishing to cause offence to my American friends on this forum, there was a running gag of what N.T.S.C. stood for = Never Twice Same Color

I doubt these days with HD, probably SD being 'down-scaled' from that, there is little difference

I understand I think I'll be going with PAL releases because the player compatibility. The series I'll be buying is created before HD and Blu-ray though.

[usually_quiet]

If there are any user reviews or critical reviews you can read for the DVD releases it might be helpful to you. If the conversion for the PAL version of the series is disappointing, and the NTSC version is better, you might prefer having the NTSC version. I have read reports here of things like that being true.

[hello_hello]

I live in PAL land and I watch everything at PAL speed. I use my PC as a media player, with my TV refreshing at 50Hz (standard for PAL) and Reclock set to adjust the frame rate so everything plays at 25 (or 50) fps. That gives me a kind of PAL "film mode" where the frame and refresh rates match, so I don't need to worry about changing the TV refresh rate when watching NTSC video and there's no annoying NTSC pulldown. Effectively I'm watching everything with PAL speedup applied with the audio resampled so the pitch doesn't increase.

My TV will refresh at 24Hz so I could switch it to that when watching 24fps video, and I would if the PAL speedup was noticeable, but it's not. There's no way I could tell if the video is being sped up unless I watched it side by side with the original at it's original speed.

I live in Norway, so I know most PAL TV series DVDs are interlaced. How are the NTSC versions? Are most soft telecined or hard telecined?

I don't know the answer but I'm curious too. I've seen lots of newer PAL DVDs of American series which I assume must have been shot at 24fps as the PAL version appears just to be sped up by 1fps, the resolution is higher than NTSC, and the colours don't suck. I've seen plenty of older PAL/NTSC conversions between 29.970 and 25fps though which are somewhat ugly.

It no doubt won't apply to the older DVDs you're referring to, but does anyone know which format is used for "TV" video these days. I've seen quite a bit of BBC video at 23.976fps which looks fine (no frame blending etc) so I've wondered if the "NTSC" version is 25fps video slowed down to 24fps, or whether these says even PAL video is shot at 24fps and sped up.
I know when it comes to HD there's no longer the same NTSC/PAL distinction, I'm just using that to refer to the different frame rates.

[Brad]

hello_hello: Surely at least one of your PAL discs doesn't have pitch correction applied, unless you have a small collection.

Everything I've read indicates that the BBC shoots stuff on HD video at 25 fps.

Any PAL version of an original NTSC source is going to be 'up-scaled' so there is no real gain in that.

Recently I read an old post here, I think by edDV, talking about how the process for '90s shows shot on film and edited on an NLE was often to run off separate versions based on the Edit Decision List. In those cases the PAL version could have higher resolution, but of course it all depends on the processing of the film transfer to begin with.

Anyway, the answer to the original question is that it varies with every release. You can group things into certain years or say that animation is likely this and live action is likely that, and so on, though. Then there are the edge cases like Beast Wars and ReBoot that were inexplicably animated at 25 fps even though they were produced in Canada for air in North America. Still holding out hope for a proper release of the latter.

[hello_hello]

hello_hello: Surely at least one of your PAL discs doesn't have pitch correction applied, unless you have a small collection.

I'm sure I've come across the odd PAL DVD where the pitch is obviously different to the NTSC version and likewise where it isn't, but to be honest I can't often compare the two, and without doing so it's hard to know if the PAL version was pitch correct or not.

[jman98]

vaporeon800 has nailed it. There's too much variability to give advice here. I've seen PAL DVDs that were not pitch corrected and if you are extremely familiar with how the voices are supposed to sound, it can be very annoying. I've seen lazy conversions in both directions from NTSC->PAL and PAL->NTSC where nobody bothered to go back to the source and just took the format for the country of origin as the source and converted it in a lazy and sloppy fashion to the other format. Add interlacing to this and it can be fairly ugly. In the case of such as NTSC->PAL, I can't rule out that they just upconvert from an NTSC source to PAL resolutions. My general advice would be that if the DVD is of a show that is originally from the USA, you're probably best to buy the region 1 DVD versions and if it's from a show that was broadcast in PAL land (ie. UK, Europe, Australia, etc.) then you're probably best to buy the PAL versions. wulf109 suggested this and basically got ignored. I sure wouldn't make a sweeping generalization that the PAL versions are always done correctly and better than the NTSC DVDs of American shows. You may get lucky and that may be exactly what happens, but there is still a fairly big chance that you'll get just the lazy NTSC->PAL conversions that I talked about which may be upscaled and have various artifacts like ghost frames, etc.

[emilroh]

Thank you for your relies, you definitely answered my questions!