rbibbs
05-19-2004, 12:02 PM
[quote from US help desk; Coach Hadden, maybe you could also answer there, I'm not sure Kai will be looking here for a response]
Hello,
I am interested in the video courses of Body-Flow™, Breathed etc. but understand that they are in NTSC format, which format is not viewable in Europe since we have the PAL format.
My question is do you have DVD or PAL versions?
Many thanks,
Kai Taimsalu
[video note for those interested:]
NTSC (national television standards committee) (AKA 'never twice same color') was proposed by RCA and approved right after World War 2. It features 525 horizontal lines, displayed 262 1/2 at a time in vertical fields which are refreshed 60 times per second, and a 'relatively low' color subcarrier of 3.58MHz, resulting in a luminance bandwidth (detail resolution) of about 3MHz and color resolution around 1Mhz. Better performance is "possible" but in practice that's about as good as it gets. NTSC portrays motion better than lower frame-rate formats, but always 'looks fuzzy'. Used in US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Peru, and if I'm not mistaken, Cuba.
PAL was invented by Bosch-Fernseh of Germany. It's just different enough from NTSC to avoid having to pay license fees to RCA. Europe runs on 50Hz AC and early (B/W) TV standards used that as their vertical rate. When color was introduced, the line and field rates were left the same for back-compatibility. So PAL's line (horizontal) rate is 625, its field (vertical) rate is 50, and color subcarrier is 4.43MHz. Clearer picture, almost 4MHz of detail resolution and 1.5MHz of color resolution. Takes up more broadcast spectrum, but not a whole lot more, just enough to make US and European channel designations impossible to "line-up". Most of Europe (except France), South America, and Australia use PAL.
Then there's SECAM... Systeme Ecran Coleur Au Montage (AKA, 'system essentially contrary to american method'). The French didn't want to pay royalties to RCA OR Bosch, so they invented their own. I think it's line-and-field compatible with PAL, at least in some versions, but the color encoding is.. shall we say... original. Outside France, it was adopted primarily in countries under the economic influence of France or the former Soviet Union.
There are variations on all these, like 60Hz PAL and 50Hz NTSC. The most elaborate receivers will play all the formats. 'Good' PAL receivers will play any PAL broadcast, and 'basic' PAL receivers will only play the format of the country they were sold in. Recording these formats is another issue. For around $1000 (US), it's possible to buy multi-standard VCRs that can record or play any format. DVDs don't use NTSC, PAL, or SECAM color encoding-- the player decodes what's on the disc into whatever format the machine is-- but they still use format-specific line and field rates, so there are NTSC-rate DVDs and PAL-rate DVDs.
More than you wanted to know? Yeh, me too. :lol:
Hello,
I am interested in the video courses of Body-Flow™, Breathed etc. but understand that they are in NTSC format, which format is not viewable in Europe since we have the PAL format.
My question is do you have DVD or PAL versions?
Many thanks,
Kai Taimsalu
[video note for those interested:]
NTSC (national television standards committee) (AKA 'never twice same color') was proposed by RCA and approved right after World War 2. It features 525 horizontal lines, displayed 262 1/2 at a time in vertical fields which are refreshed 60 times per second, and a 'relatively low' color subcarrier of 3.58MHz, resulting in a luminance bandwidth (detail resolution) of about 3MHz and color resolution around 1Mhz. Better performance is "possible" but in practice that's about as good as it gets. NTSC portrays motion better than lower frame-rate formats, but always 'looks fuzzy'. Used in US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Peru, and if I'm not mistaken, Cuba.
PAL was invented by Bosch-Fernseh of Germany. It's just different enough from NTSC to avoid having to pay license fees to RCA. Europe runs on 50Hz AC and early (B/W) TV standards used that as their vertical rate. When color was introduced, the line and field rates were left the same for back-compatibility. So PAL's line (horizontal) rate is 625, its field (vertical) rate is 50, and color subcarrier is 4.43MHz. Clearer picture, almost 4MHz of detail resolution and 1.5MHz of color resolution. Takes up more broadcast spectrum, but not a whole lot more, just enough to make US and European channel designations impossible to "line-up". Most of Europe (except France), South America, and Australia use PAL.
Then there's SECAM... Systeme Ecran Coleur Au Montage (AKA, 'system essentially contrary to american method'). The French didn't want to pay royalties to RCA OR Bosch, so they invented their own. I think it's line-and-field compatible with PAL, at least in some versions, but the color encoding is.. shall we say... original. Outside France, it was adopted primarily in countries under the economic influence of France or the former Soviet Union.
There are variations on all these, like 60Hz PAL and 50Hz NTSC. The most elaborate receivers will play all the formats. 'Good' PAL receivers will play any PAL broadcast, and 'basic' PAL receivers will only play the format of the country they were sold in. Recording these formats is another issue. For around $1000 (US), it's possible to buy multi-standard VCRs that can record or play any format. DVDs don't use NTSC, PAL, or SECAM color encoding-- the player decodes what's on the disc into whatever format the machine is-- but they still use format-specific line and field rates, so there are NTSC-rate DVDs and PAL-rate DVDs.
More than you wanted to know? Yeh, me too. :lol: