Need help: getting a PAL VCR to work in the US (1 Viewer)

[Ryan_M_M]

A friend of mine in Holland recently sent a PAL VCR to a friend of ours in Atlanta. He managed to get the power systems changed, but I am sure (or I think) you need some sort of PAL-NTSC converter for the TV. I am not sure. Isn't their a device you need for producing PAL sources onto an NTSC TV? Or will the PAL VCR (converted to US power systems) work on its own with the TV? what equipment do we need.

 

[Scott Barnhart]

You need a PAL/NTSC convertor. I use a Tenlab TR-11 which does a reasonable job, but it was not cheap - about $700 a few years ago. They might have cheaper models. There are also other, cheaper PAL/NTSC convertors out there. Maybe try Mindlogic, which is where I bought all my PAL gear. Or, you could try EBay or other places like that for cheaper convertors. If this is just to view a limited number of tapes, it is probably cheaper to get them converted by a shop somewhere (look in the Yellow Pages under Video).

 

[Ryan_M_M]

That's a bit of a downer. In the UK, almost all VCRs and TVs support PAL/NTSC. I have no idea why American retailers rip off people like this.

 

[Sathyan]

Could you use HTPC for this. My Pinnacle TV card lets me choose between NTSC and PAL and vid card outputs NTSC (or if I encode to MPEG and playback on Hollywood+ I can choose to output NTSC or PAL). Note: I have no PAL equipment so have not tried this.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

That's a bit of a downer. In the UK, almost all VCRs and TVs support PAL/NTSC. I have no idea why American retailers rip off people like this.

Simple

90% of the US public isn't even aware there is such a thing as PAL here. And even if they do know, maybe only half of them would even contemplate importing something, and of those maybe 30% actually do it.

They save $$ by not including a PAL tuner. It's that simple

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is so used to getting screwed on both price and software availability they happily include an NTSC tuner. Also they probably just toss the PAL tuner into the already NTSC TV rather than the other way round

As a rule, Americans are NOT worldly, nor do they care to be. Instead, they enjoy wallowing in their ignorance and issue statements like "If the book's any good, they'll make a movie out of it" or the similar "If the movie's any good, they'll dub it or remake it with actors that speak American"
*sic*