Aargil Video

The conflict of Zones

The globe has been divided into six zones, each of them practicing a different standard. However, the basic standards are three in number. These are NTSC that is ordinarily followed in North America, PAL-M, PAL-N followed in South America, PAL in Europe and Asia and SECAM in France and a few other countries. Most of the countries do not use a pure version but rely on a combination of the standards. The basic problem that lies in all these is that, none of these standards are compatible to the other. To overcome this problem, engineers and scientists came out with Video converting VCR that can play different video tapes having any of the mentioned standards. Therefore, a PAL standard tape can be played on an NTSC TV or a SECAM standard tape can be viewed on a PAL compatible device.

Converting Multi-System VCR – An improvement over customary Multi System VCR

A multi system VCR is different from a converting Multi-system VCR, with the Multi system VCR capable of playing video tapes from anywhere in the world. But the constraint is that the video tapes must conform to the standards used by the VCR. This is not the case with a converting Multi System VCR. An ordinary Multi System VCR will not allow you to view a PAL tape on a NTSC Television and vice versa. Where-as, a Converting Multi System VCR, converts the incompatible signals into the system friendly signals making viewing possible You may think of using a converter or other extraneous accessories by tagging them to Multi System VCR to avail the same results, but the picture quality may have to be greatly compromised.

Brand choice

Whether you are purchasing a Multi System VCR or a converting Multi System VCR, it is always better to go for a branded product. There are many named and famed companies on the fray dealing with these products but only one ended up being available for the last 5 years. The only converting VCR is the Samsung SV-5000W model, has since been discontinued but still www.planetomni.com has a few left. In case they run out you’ll need a regular multisystem VCR such as JVCs, Hitachi, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp, etc., that take the prime positions among the Multi System VCRs in the market today. The choices are often made on the basis of clarity of picture, performance, sound system, and above all the longevity. The companies are also the best providers for many of such products, including the video converting VCRs. With these VCRs (PAL-NTSC or PAL-SECAM-NTSC) you’ll need either a video standards converter such as the famous TENLABs or a PAL-SECAM-NTSC TV.

What a user should look about while going for a video converting VCR

The first and foremost issue will be compatibility. If you are in United States then you will like a Video converting VCR that will allow you play PAL tape on a NTSC TV and if you are in Europe you will like NTSC or SECAM

tapes to be played properly on your PAL TV. Sometimes there will be companies that will require the buyer to have an additional converter with the machine purchased. Such converter works as an interface, between the VCR and the TV, and converts the non-compatible signals from other systems or standards into compatible ones, facilitating viewing the disc without any hassle. Sometimes, the video converting VCR may require a PAL/NTSC video converter instead of multi system TV. In a few instances, some TV manufacturers incorporate direct conversion of incompatible signal standards.

World standards on video tapes requiring a video converting VCR

In general, there are three standards which are widely followed the world over. These are NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. All other systems followed anywhere and elsewhere are offshoots of these parent standards. The NTSC system was introduced in United States way back in 1953, simultaneously with the coming of the first colour TV. While NTSC is used mostly in America, some other countries like Japan use the same standard. NTSC uses 525 lines per. PAL came in Europe during 1960. France is the only exception using SECAM. SECAM or Sequential Color with Memory standard also came up along side PAL in the 1960’s and uses identical bandwidth and lines per frame. The only difference between PAL and SECAM is that SECAM transmits color signals sequentially. This standard is most popular in France. NTSC is not popular outside North America. SECAM is mostly used in those countries which were either under the French dominion during the days of colonialism or are the countries neighbouring France. PAL is used in South America, most of the Asian and African countries and Europe.

The alternative form

Use of video tapes is on the decline today due to use of DVD, the newer version of home entertainment component. However, DVDs suffer from the same problems of region and standard compatibility. The DVD version of the video converting VCR is a region-free DVD, also known as code-free DVD player that can play any CD of any standard on a non-compatible device, by converting the non-standard signals into the compatible ones. A DVD obtained in France will have SECAM format whereas one obtained in UK will have PAL, and both can be played on a NTSC TV, provided that it is multipurpose, with a region free DVD player. Prices of such region free DVD players vary with brand and their specifications.

The price tag

A separate video converter coming from any of the leading companies like Hitachi, Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, or Sharp will cost somewhere around $350. But the services provided by a branded item are mostly better than cheap non-branded versions. But the competitive commercial market today has forced many of companies to come up with models with competitive prices within the range of $100. Some companies like the Samsung has come up with Hi-Fi multi-system with tape conversion and world wide TV tuner costing around $400. There are different models with cost range from $500 to $1,200 for Multi System VCR converter and SVHS Playback systems.

The impact

It was not without reasons, that even in ancient day’s, man preferred to express their message through pictures instead of words and expressions. It is easier to comprehend the message delivered through visual presentations, and with effect, the language does not constitute a bar to the understanding of the expression. Not surprising therefore, the video and visuals continue to be popular and will remain popular for sometimes to come

110-220 Volt Electronics - A multisystem TV is a TV capable of receiving and displaying different video systems like PAL, SECAM and NTSC. You'll be able to operate a multisystem TV in 99% of the world. Their dual voltage design allows them to be plugged into either a 110 voltage source or a 220 voltage source. In some cases, the plug on the television will not fit your country's outlet, so an inexpensive plug-adapter will be needed. They can generally be picked up at an electronics store such as for $1.95. With a multisystem TV, such as a plasma, CRT tube type, LCD or DLP, you'll likely need a codefree (sometimes called region free) DVD player. These exist in many forms. When used with a PAL-NTSC TV you'll be able to see the full 625 lines of resolution available in the PAL system and the full 525 lines used in the USA NTSC system. There exists a converting type of DVD player which is codefree in that it can read all of the world's 6 regions and both standards, PAL and NTSC. 140,000 other products are available here:

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PAL which stands for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television system used in many Asian, African, and European countries to show video. The current PAL standard has a slightly higher resolution then its NTSC brother which is used in most North American countries as wells as some Central American, Asia, and Pacific areas that are US Territories.

This higher resolution gives PAL an advantage over NTSC when displaying movies, graphics, and other media. Many media enthusiasts and video engineers agree that the PAL standard is superior over NTSC, however it does depend on what content you are displaying.

Besides the video resolution PAL and NTSC display different frame rates per second which can make converting and looking at PAL content on a NTSC screen difficult. Some PAL players can play back NTSC material successfully, however most NTSC devices do not display PAL resolution.

In order to combat this change in format and resolution, cameras, camcorders, and other computer and video accessories have begun to offer a "switch" from PAL to NTSC. However, there are still many devices that are purchased outside North America are PAL only, and can not be shown on a NTSC screen. As a consumer traveling outside the country, returning home to find out that purchased videos or camera equipment doesn’t work as expected can be frustrating.

Thankfully, a simple adapter is really all that is required to show PAL content on a NTSC screen or device. These adapters vary in price and features, so it's important that you purchase the right converter for your needs. One thing to remember, no matter what video source you are converting, audio standards generally remain the same across countries. For example, some converters include standard RCA jacks, but remember, they include these jacks for convenience and that audio ports do not necessarily need to be connected to the converting box for everything to work properly.

For most applications, a compact and inexpensive box is all you really need. Other PAL to NTSC converting boxes include S-video as well as composite connectors offering a greater flexibility of compatible devices. Generally speaking, when you find the need to purchase a converting box to show your media on a NTSC screen or monitor they should cost no more than 50-60 dollars (US).

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PAL Technology

PAL technology was developed in Germany by Walter Bruch, and was first introduced in the year 1967. It is an analog video format used in television transmission and is widely used in Europe, Australia and some Asian, African, and South American countries. Within Europe - France, Bulgaria, Russia, Yugoslavia, and some other countries in Eastern Europe mainly uses SECAM technology. PAL system uses 625 lines per frame, with the refresh rate at 25 frames per second, inter-laced. This interlacing feature improves the picture quality without consuming any extra bandwidth. In PAL system, each frame consists of two fields, which is termed as half-a-frame. In each of these two fields, the first one displays all the even lines and the other one displays the odd, within these 625 lines. These two fields are displayed in succession and there are 50 fields per second, corroborating with the 50Hz mains power frequency.

There are variants in PAL. PAL-M is a combination of PAL and NTSC, using 525 lines per frame at 60Hz. This standard is used in Brazil, while PAL-N is another derivative of PAL, using narrow bandwidth and the standard is used in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. United Kingdom uses the other variant of PAL, PAL-I, with other European countries using PAL-B/G. PAL60 is similar to NTSC and uses 59.94 fields per second. It is used mainly for displaying NTSC video or DVD on a PAL TV set.

NTSC Technology

The video standard in the United States have been set by the National Television Standards Committee, which is called NTSC in short. This standard has been adopted in other countries as well, such as, Japan. NTSC standard has 29.97 interlaced frames of video a second, often specified as 30 frames per second, with 525 lines per frame. Out of these 525 lines, 480 lines are used for vertical resolution and the rest are used for synchronisation, vertical retrace, and other data such as captioning. The scan lines in NTSC are interlaced, with two fields containing the odd scanned lines and the even ones respectively. This provides a near flicker free image utilising 59.94Hz refresh rate, which comes to 60 cycles at 1.001 seconds. This is close to 60Hz alternating current power used in the United States.

In trying to convert NTSC to PAL or SECAM, the most difficult part is the mismatch of the frame rate between the three. In the process of this conversion, the equipment used is made to guess the contents of the intermediate frames which introduce artifacts. This is quite detectable by trained eyes. A frame consists of a packet of composite image information and the 525 lines per frame in the NTSC standard may contain up to 16 million colours. A composite signal would mean a video signal which contains all the colours, such as, red, blue, and green signals and may also consist of audio signals.

Radio interferences is known to disturb NTSC transmission, therefore by the time the picture gets transmitted on to your TV screen, the picture often loses its colour balance. This necessitates the inclusion of a "tone" or "hue" control on NTSC sets, which is not necessary in PAL and SECAM TV sets. Further more, some observers find that with NTSC, the 525 line resolution of NTSC results in a lower quality image than the hardware is capable of.

SECAM Technology

SECAM is the short form of Sequentiel Couleur avec Mémoire, French for "sequential color with memory". This is an analog system which uses Frequency Modulation (FM) for encoding the chrominance information. SECAM technology stores the lines of colour information in a memory. This does not produce the colour artifacts that are found in the NTSC systems. SECAM was developed with PAL as the basic design. Contrary to PAL, it transmits Red-Yellow and Blue-Yellow information in alternate lines and they are combined by storing the video lines.

SECAM was introduced in France in the year 1967 and it is still being used. It is also being used in the countries which were French colonies before, as well as parts of Eastern Europe, like, Bulgaria, Hungary, and former Soviet Union. It is observed that this had a political motive, mainly with the former Soviet Union restricting their broadcasts along with its member East European countries, within its own people, making it impossible for most Eastern Europeans to view television which was broadcasted from outside the Iron Curtain which were mostly using PAL.

The Conversion – PAL to NTSC

The heart of conversion is the converter itself. There are many converters available in the market in different qualities. There are service providers who would convert your tapes to the appropriate standard against a charge. In converting a PAL standard to NTSC, the most difficult part is the different numbers of lines and different frequencies of fields/frames in video pictures that exist in the two standards. Considering that that PAL has is 625 lines at 50 fields per second and with NTSC, having 525 lines at 60 fields per second, it is quite difficult to convert one to the other. Further, generating 60 fields per second from a format with 50 fields per second is quite a challenging task. In doing so, every second new 10 fields need to be generated out of nothing. The converter has to create new image at the output from the PAL input signals and that too in real time. Therefore, converting an incoming 50 frames per second PAL signal to 60 frames per second NTSC signal requires much skill, so as to use the existing information to provide a quality conversion.

If a video image can be taken as a series of individual picture elements or pixels, arranged across the screen as a grid, the number of rows can be taken as the number of lines in the displayed image. In order to interpolate the number of lines at the output in relation to that of the input, some mathematical process is involved in placing the pixel on the output line along with the hue and luminance for each pixel. The interpolation algorithm enables a pixel to be picked up from the video that is the input side, and placing it appropriately on the output buffer side.

Conversion interpolation methods used in converters are much the same, except that the process have a three dimensional relationship and these are, the horizontal and vertical dimensions plus the added dimension of time to account for motion between fields. This complicates the earlier thought-out method, as we are now thinking of 3 grids to match three dimensional arrays. The third dimension is related to time which represents motion from one field to the other. Therefore, the relationship between the input and the output becomes complicated.

In processing a motion effectively, you need to detect the motion and its direction at the first place. There are various kinds of converters dealing with this motion and the direction of it, in various ways. The cheapest kind never bothers with it. The next grade of converters is those which track the motion over two fields, while the professional grade tracks up to 6 fields. The greater numbers of field tracked, provides more accurate predictions of motion.

In converting a PAL system to NTSC, having 625 lines @ 25 frames per second and 525 lines at 30 frames per second respectively, it can be observed that every second 100 lines needs to be dropped in the process of conversion. With dropping 100 lines, an additional 5 frames need to be created. In the inexpensive converters, the 100 lines are just dropped to create 525 lines out of PAL 625 equally spaced through frames. In order to create 5 new frames, it just repeats a single frame 5 times, thus effectively adding 5 frames. It works fine as along as the image is not moving or is in motion.

Video is a dynamic medium and with the kind of conversion just discussed, the effect is highly undesirable. The more sophisticated converters measure the nature of motion within the video and then employing a more complex algorithm dynamically produce a corrected and well compensated output.

The mid-range converters deploy inter-field interpolation, which create new frame not by just repeating one frame but by averaging adjacent fields. In converting PAL to NTSC, there are two method used by these converters, one being the 2-line, where the converter creates a new line by comparing adjacent two lines and the 4-line ones, creating the 5th line comparing 4 adjacent lines. As the averaging of the adjacent lines goes up, the greater is the picture smear. There needs to be a compromise. As the complexity increases, the price tag of the converter goes up.

There are various other kinds of quite complex converters, which produce better and better converted output as the price of the converter goes up. There are many service providers offering PAL to NTSC conversion with price ranging fro $20 to $40 for a 120 minute to 6 and 8 hours of play time. When you buy a video tape in a foreign land, in a country which uses PAL, you can drop the tape with one of these service providers who would give you a converted tape on NTSC for your viewing, with some of them providing volume discount. The prices are generally exclusive of delivery charges.

110-220 Volt Electronics - A multisystem TV is a TV capable of receiving and displaying different video systems like PAL, SECAM and NTSC. You'll be able to operate a multisystem TV in 99% of the world. Their dual voltage design allows them to be plugged into either a 110 voltage source or a 220 voltage source. In some cases, the plug on the television will not fit your country's outlet, so an inexpensive plug-adapter will be needed. They can generally be picked up at an electronics store such as http://www.planetomni.com for $1.95. With a multisystem TV, such as a plasma, CRT tube type, LCD or DLP, you'll likely need a codefree (sometimes called region free) DVD player. These exist in many forms. When used with a PAL-NTSC TV you'll be able to see the full 625 lines of resolution available in the PAL system and the full 525 lines used in the USA NTSC system. There exists a converting type of DVD player which is codefree in that it can read all of the world's 6 regions and both standards, PAL and NTSC. 140,000 other products are available here: http://www.planetomni.com Tel. # 800-514-2984