Jonathan Dagmar
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2002
- Messages
- 723
I just recieved my copies of the Malaysion Star Wars Trilogy VCDs. I was expecting the quality to be bad, and it is, it's awful really, but since my VCR broke months ago, they are nice to have until the DVDs finally come out, and after that they will make fine novelties.
Anyway, to the point. My Panasonic F65 DVD player plays the discs without a problem, but I noticed a pronounced jitter in the picture. I assumed it was probably due to the ultra low bit-rate mpeg 1 compresion, but it also corssed my mind that it could be due to these being PAL discs played on NTSC equipment. So I loaded them up on my computer to find out for sure, and sure enough it was the compression, not the player.
However when I had them playing on my PC I took careful note of what was visible in the frame, and then checked the same frame using my DVD player. My understanding was that playing a PAL VCD on an NTSC player would result in the loss of a few scanlines off the top and bottom of the picture. I therefore expected that I would see those "lost" scanlines when I played the disc on my PC, since it is not subject to PAL or NTSC restrictions. However what I found was that the frame was exactly the same whether played on my PC, or on my DVD Player/TV, there was no loss of scanlines. Could it be that my DVD player is actually capable of converting a PAL VCD signal to NTSC? I can find no mention of it in the manual, and it seems unlikely to me....
Anyway, to the point. My Panasonic F65 DVD player plays the discs without a problem, but I noticed a pronounced jitter in the picture. I assumed it was probably due to the ultra low bit-rate mpeg 1 compresion, but it also corssed my mind that it could be due to these being PAL discs played on NTSC equipment. So I loaded them up on my computer to find out for sure, and sure enough it was the compression, not the player.
However when I had them playing on my PC I took careful note of what was visible in the frame, and then checked the same frame using my DVD player. My understanding was that playing a PAL VCD on an NTSC player would result in the loss of a few scanlines off the top and bottom of the picture. I therefore expected that I would see those "lost" scanlines when I played the disc on my PC, since it is not subject to PAL or NTSC restrictions. However what I found was that the frame was exactly the same whether played on my PC, or on my DVD Player/TV, there was no loss of scanlines. Could it be that my DVD player is actually capable of converting a PAL VCD signal to NTSC? I can find no mention of it in the manual, and it seems unlikely to me....
