I hate to ask this in a public post like this, but I'm in a bit of
dilemma. I have to send a video tape to a friend who lives in Australia
adn I need ot know if an American VHS tape will work or if there is a
different standard in Australia. My local video experts know nothing
about it, so I need to know how much more difficult this will be.

Again, I apologize for the completely off topic post, but I knwo that
there are Australians who post here.

Josh English
eng### [at] spiritonecom
www.spiritone.com/~english

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Hi

Chances are the tape you are trying to send is in NTSC format. Here in
Australia we use a format called PAL. I don't know what they stand for
and I don't want to get into an argument about which is better. But what
I do know is that they are incompatable. However alot of the new VCR's
have they ability to play back NTSC format videos. So if your friend has
a new VCR then you may be in luck. Otherwise your friend may be able to
find someone here who can copy it to PAL for them.

May I enquire which state your friend is in???

Sam


Josh English wrote:
> 
> I hate to ask this in a public post like this, but I'm in a bit of
> dilemma. I have to send a video tape to a friend who lives in Australia
> adn I need ot know if an American VHS tape will work or if there is a
> different standard in Australia. My local video experts know nothing
> about it, so I need to know how much more difficult this will be.
> 
> Again, I apologize for the completely off topic post, but I knwo that
> there are Australians who post here.
> 
> Josh English
> eng### [at] spiritonecom
> www.spiritone.com/~english

Post a reply to this message

Josh English <eng### [at] spiritonecom> wrote:

>I hate to ask this in a public post like this, but I'm in a bit of
>dilemma. I have to send a video tape to a friend who lives in Australia
>adn I need ot know if an American VHS tape will work or if there is a
>different standard in Australia. My local video experts know nothing
>about it, so I need to know how much more difficult this will be.

We use PAL, which is a different encoding format. The big difference is that we
use a different frame rate (25/50hz rather than 30/60hz), and have more lines
in each frame (i.e. the vertical resolution is higher).

The reason for this is simple - US TV's use 60hz since that's your power line
frequency. In earlier TV's, having a different frame rate than the AC power
would have caused banding/interference. Since Australia uses 50hz AC power (and
it's 240 volt rather than 110), we use 50hz (interlaced) TV signals. The lower
frame rate allows more lines to be packed into each frame, within the same
chunk of bandwidth. Hence the higher resolution ;)

Since NTSC tapes, therefore, have -lower- resolution than PAL, it is possible
to play them on Australian TV's, -provided- that the video cassette player that
your friend uses is a relatively modern one (since most of the newer ones have
NTSC playback as standard).

The converse isn't necessarily true - I doubt you'd be able to get a tape from
him and play it on your NTSC player, since it'd need to step up in resolution.

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"povray.org admin team" wrote:

> The reason for this is simple - US TV's use 60hz since that's your power line
> frequency. In earlier TV's, having a different frame rate than the AC power
> would have caused banding/interference. Since Australia uses 50hz AC power (and
> it's 240 volt rather than 110), we use 50hz (interlaced) TV signals. The lower
> frame rate allows more lines to be packed into each frame, within the same
> chunk of bandwidth. Hence the higher resolution ;)

Ahhh. but if you do the math with 525 lines at 30 fps and 625 lines at 25 fps you'd
see NTSC has 125 more lines per second overall, and thus a higher resolution ;-)


I had a PAL/NTSC VCR when I was in Germany, but the only way here in the States to
view PAL is on PAL equipment (rare, and professional) or after paying for a
conversion (usually expensive).

Unless, of course, you could make a Video-CD of the tape. Then the player hardware
would handle the differences. But unless you happen to have the equipment in your
den, that might be a little expensive.

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