Which current TVs can display PAL with no conversion? (1 Viewer)

[AndyMcKinney]

Last August, I bought the Sharp LC60E88un, their lone entry into the standard CCFL LCD TV market in the current line-up of larger (non-bedroom-size) models (the rest are LED). It does, however, have the company's new "X-gen" panel (just not that gimmicky Quattron stuff).


I can confirm it supports NATIVE PAL and 1080/50i sources, so you can take your Oppo player, set it to "MULTI", and play those PAL DVD and 1080/50i British TV show BluRays without any standards conversion!


I would've posted this sooner but assumed I already had. Anwyay, last summer, I did a lot of in-store testing, bringing in my own player(s)/disc(s). The retailers were all too happy to let me loose (with the prospect of making a sale).


In my tests, I also discovered that the LG set I tested could display PAL DVDs and so did the Sony model I tried. I'm not sure about LG, but I know that those particular Sonys used Sharp LCD panels, so that might be part of the reason the Sony worked (and, perhaps, why the LG did, too).


I also think it should be noted that although the manual states that PAL inputs are only supported on component/composite inputs, I can confirm that I can indeed feed the TV native PAL and 1080/50 signals via the HDMI cable and still get an unconverted picture!


Of course, your results may vary depending on your player's capabilities. Some US players cannot output unconverted PAL at all (software-locked), while others can only output native PAL via composite/component (I know my 'hacked-to-multisystem' Philips player can only display an NTSC-converted picture if you use HDMI).


By the way, the TV set is, in my opinion, very stunning and a good value for money. I paid about $1600 for mine back in August, and you can do about $200 better than that now! It's a keeper! Best Buy also has the same model of TV under a different model number (it's usually an 'unadvertised special' and is marketed as 120hz rather than the E88's listed 240hz).

 

[bobcats]

I was looking at the LG 60PZ950, Does anyone know if it supports PAL? (50Hz) Tried to send a question to LG, but no reply yet......

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Bumping this because I just got an LG 75UH8500 and it DOES support PAL, at least through the HDMI inputs. I heard reports to the contrary which surprised me because LG had consistently supported it before, they may have at least disabled it on North American TVs of smaller size. Mine was made in Mexico and has a black back, I've heard some are made in Asia and have a white back so that might make a difference. (I can't test the analog inputs yet because those don't work, a tech is coming on Monday to look at them!)

Odd that this subject still isn't widely discussed. I have equipment to play almost every format in PAL, except for Beta. Last year I got a PAL CED videodisc player shipped here from England!

 

[AndyMcKinney]

My previous experience with LG was that they support PAL (the one I bought for my in-laws certainly does).

If there were some LGs that didn't, I'd suspect that they are one that are actually made by someone else and just re-badged with LG branding.

Tried to send a question to LG, but no reply yet......

Not in reply to that specific question/model number, just replying to say that there's probably no point contacting the US manufacturers on these. Most likely, they either don't know that these sets support PAL or don't want the outside world to know that they didn't take steps to software disable them. If enough people ask, it might just give 'em a reason to disable this feature, so it's best just to do your own in-store testing (or make sure the return policy is liberal enough for you to bring it back).

 

[AndyMcKinney]

I bought Insignia's RokuTV (made by Hisense for Best Buy) for the bedroom a few months back. It supports PAL, even on composite inputs (I have an old hacked Philips DVD player hooked up to it with is only able to output PAL through component/composite).

I suspect most of the other off-brand TVs are likewise compatible. I'm sure your main non-compatible sets are the ones made by (not re-badged, but actually made by) Samsung and Panasonic.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Most likely, they either don't know that these sets support PAL or don't want the outside world to know that they didn't take steps to software disable them. If enough people ask, it might just give 'em a reason to disable this feature

See, I don't get WHY they would go through so much trouble to disable that. Region codes already exist for discs that studios don't want people playing outside their native country (and of course there's ways around that.) I know the main reason is to prevent parallel importing where someone in Europe buys a US set for less money, but even then that seems like the shipping, voltage differences and differences in TV tuners would make that unappealing. Meanwhile people in the US like me enjoy being able to watch material from anywhere in the world in the best possible quality, and what's wrong with that?

 

[AndyMcKinney]

See, I don't get WHY they would go through so much trouble to disable that. Region codes already exist for discs that studios don't want people playing outside their native country

Maybe one reason is to appease the studios, etc. Perhaps another one is to avoid getting technical assistance phone calls. For example, let's say a few years ago a US consumer (who doesn't know anything about PAL/NTSC/Multi) buys a Philips DVD player and, say, his kid goes messing around in the player's menu and switches PAL). All of a sudden, everything on the TV is in black and white. Not knowing anything about TV standards, he calls up Philips for technical assitance in how to fix the problem. Then later, someone at Philips decides, "if we disable TV System switching, we won't be getting any of these stupid phone calls anymore." Then, in the next generation of players, the PAL and Multi options in the menu are disabled, leaving only NTSC selected by default (with no way to switch out of it).

I cite the above example because Philips actually did this with their players. I'd bet money that clueless technical support phone calls was why. At least in Philips case, they made it to where any disc would still play on a US television, just that anything not NTSC was forced to be converted.

I know the main reason is to prevent parallel importing where someone in Europe buys a US set for less money, but even then that seems like the shipping, voltage differences and differences in TV tuners would make that unappealing.

When I was researching multi-standard TVs a few years back, one of the places I looked in was a "return to India" forum (for people moving back to India), and one of the big threads was about U.S. televisions that one could take back (or have shipped) to India. Most of them were not concerned about the tuner, because they were going to be using a set-top satellite/cable box, nullifying the need for a tuner. So, these grey market exports are not as insignificant a matter as you might think.

Luckily, though, there are at least enough manufacturers out there who do not disable PAL/Multi that we have a ton more options on the market than in the days of CRTs, when the only choice was a mega-expensive actual multi-sytem TV (or live with standards conversion).

 

[Robert Crawford]

My LG OLED 65E6P supports PAL as I changed the settings on my Oppo 93 to PAL and then played a Region B DVD with no issues.