PAL-60
PAL-60 is a playback mode in newer European video recorders, many European DVD players and some European models of game consoles, in which media in the American or Japanese NTSC format, although with the number of lines intended for NTSC and the NTSC-typical 60 Hertz Field rate, but can be played with the European PAL color coding. This is possible without a time-consuming and almost always quality-reducing complete standard conversion, since the brightness and color information are stored independently of each other on VHS cassettes and DVDs and the NTSC or PAL coding of the color information is generated in the player anyway. The idea behind PAL-60 is that, although European PAL televisions are often able to display 60 Hertz signals, they do not necessarily have an NTSC decoder, which means that the picture is displayed in black and white when using NTSC color coding would.
Most televisions intended for PAL, which were built from the mid- 1980s , are also able to reproduce PAL-60. For some devices, the image on is 5 / 6 of the image height is compressed so that the image appears compressed and be visible at the top and bottom of the screen disorders and black bars; In some cases, this can be remedied by changing the image height (using the controller or in the device's service menu). However, the newer the device, the greater the chance that the PAL-60 playback will be completely flawless.
Only with very old PAL devices (from the 1970s and before) does a PAL-60 picture "run through" and you have to correct this manually using the V-HOLD control on the television, or it is even no usable reproduction of PAL-60 possible.
PAL-60 cannot usually be processed further, in particular it cannot be recorded by most video recorders or DVD recorders - neither by NTSC nor by PAL devices. Another disadvantage of PAL-60 compared to real PAL and real NTSC is that the color subcarrier frequency is no longer so well matched to the line and image frequency, which is why a stronger edge flicker and a more noticeable "run through" of fine pattern structures can occur with colored surfaces become visible. It is therefore only an emergency solution for displaying signals with PAL television sets that are available in NTSC.
With PAL-60, as with NTSC, 525 lines are transmitted per frame, but only about 480 of them are visible. For comparison: With PAL-50 625 lines are transmitted per frame, of which approx. 576 lines are visible.
PAL-60 should not be confused with the Brazilian television system PAL-M , since in this the color subcarrier is only 3.58 MHz instead of the usual PAL 4.43 MHz as in the real NTSC. Such a signal would appear just as colorless on a European PAL television as an NTSC signal.
The counterpart to PAL-60 is NTSC-50. This can be used to play European media on American or Japanese televisions. However, the demand for European media in the USA and Japan is much lower than in the opposite direction, so that NTSC-50 only plays a minor role in practice.
Alternatives
Many more recent PAL televisions (from around the year 2000 to 2005, depending on the manufacturer) are multi-standard capable, i.e. they contain a decoder that can also correctly process a real NTSC signal. In this case, instead of PAL-60, NTSC should be used directly if possible. With many DVD players this can be selected via the built-in menu. Video recorders usually do not offer this option.
As already mentioned, the image information is already available on the medium by component. Coding the color information in the playback device into the black and white image in an analog way, only to separate the two immediately afterwards on the television, is unnecessary and significantly reduces the image resolution. It is therefore more sensible to use a fully wired Scart cable instead of a cinch or antenna cable and to switch both devices to RGB mode (switching of the television can be controlled by the player so that the user only has to switch the latter himself) .
With full use of HDTV - i.e. when a high-resolution medium such as a Blu-ray disc is played on an HDMI-connected, also high-resolution screen - there is no longer any difference between NTSC and PAL, which is why the whole problem arises in this Do not fall.