VHS PAL question (1 Viewer)

[Chris Liberti]

I am trying to find out if a normal, everyday USA VHS deck will output PAL video if a PAL tape is inserted? The reason that I ask this is I have a friend with a few videos that are not available in NTSC and I can capture the video into my computer and convert it to NTSC. Thanks for the help

 

[Martin Fontaine]

I never tried it, so I'm just guessing here, someone who have actually tried it can confirm what I'm about to say.

As far as I know, there is no flag on a tape that tells the VCR if it's NTSC or PAL, so the VCR assumes it's NTSC, so the output is gonna be all screwed up since it thinks it's NTSC and will output an NTSC image of what it thinks is on the tape. If your VCR has auto-tracking, it will most likely go wild trying to lock on the image since the frames are not even the same sizes. That incorrect conversion will probably prevent you from setting your capture card in PAL mode to cap it.

In theory, it could be possible to predict what the VCR does when trying to play a PAL tape so that a capture card could decipher that messed up signal and output it correctly, but I doubt any card out there does it.

Your best bet would probably be to order a PAL VCR from Europe and use a Voltage Converter.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

No, a VCR will only pass 1 standard

Samsung makes a deck with a PAL converter built in tho, runs about $6-800