[SHOOTFIGHTERX]

Hey guys, my old Plasma screen blew up so I replaced it with a Phillips 42PFP5532D/05 (any good by the way?) and its fine, except that when I try to play Region1 DVDs there is a black bar at the bottom of the screen cutting lots of the picture and flickering like mad.

I have tried eveything I can think of and can't understand what the problem is. Please guys I need some help. The DVD is connected by S-Video and is a Panasonic SA-HT870 and worked fine on my last screen.

Thanks for you help,
Danny

[JimRockford]

Maybe it's your DVD player.

[SHOOTFIGHTERX]

no it plays region 2s fine and it was fine multi-region on the last TV so it is definetley the screen.

[KevIW]

Is the TV NTSC compatible?

[SHOOTFIGHTERX]

Ok fixed the problem, on the DVD Players menu I changed NTSC output from PAL60 to standard NTSC.

What does that mean? Should my new player be able to show PAL60? Which is the better option for R1 discs, PAL60 or NTSC? I don't want a new TV that plays my Region1 discs worse than my 5 year old screen.

Thanks again all

[GDK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SHOOTFIGHTERX

Ok fixed the problem, on the DVD Players menu I changed NTSC output from PAL60 to standard NTSC.

What does that mean? Should my new player be able to show PAL60? Which is the better option for R1 discs, PAL60 or NTSC? I don't want a new TV that plays my Region1 discs worse than my 5 year old screen.

Thanks again all

NTSC should produce the best results. PAL60 was a fudge introduced years ago to enable LD players to play NTSC LDs on PAL TVs. It's PAL encoding with NTSC frame rate and number of lines. Back then most TV sets could cope with the altered frame rate and number of lines, but not the NTSC colour encoding. These days, most TVs are made with multi-standard chipsets for international markets so handle NTSC well and the colour encoding is not an issue as the best analogue vide output is RGB. Except perhaps in the US where I believe it's still difficult to get a TV that'll cope with a PAL signal.

You are using an RGB scart lead to connect to your TV, I hope!

[SHOOTFIGHTERX]

no a Monster S-Video (I also have a Monster Scart as well but for sky) as I was told this was the better option. I thought that Component was the best connection and that S-Video was next and then Scart.

Thanks for the info though, much appreciated.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SHOOTFIGHTERX

no a Monster S-Video (I also have a Monster Scart as well but for sky) as I was told this was the better option. I thought that Component was the best connection and that S-Video was next and then Scart.

Wrong way round (partly).

In order of quality:

1) RGB SCART
2) Component
3) S-Video
4) Composite (either SCART or phono)

There's little to choose between RGB and Component though, and there's no actual source of RGB quality available.

But it's probably best never to buy anything with 'Monster' in the name?, it's usually just vastly overpriced, and not particularly good quality - but it does give the retailer a nice 'monster' profit

[jj_636]

I think the only reason that we have different region encoding is because they just dont want 2 lose out on money for when the big releases are sent over to britain after they hav been released and become cheaper in america. It really is just down to corporate greed! Thts my ranting done for today!

[GDK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

>snip< ...and there's no actual source of RGB quality available. >snip<

It's almost certain the DVD player *can* output RGB. All that's needed is the right Scart cable. RGB will give a worthwhile improvement over s-video.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GDK

It's almost certain the DVD player *can* output RGB. All that's needed is the right Scart cable. RGB will give a worthwhile improvement over s-video.

Yes, it can output RGB, but it's not an RGB quality source inside the DVD player.

[ntlhellworld]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

Wrong way round (partly).

In order of quality:

1) RGB SCART
2) Component
3) S-Video
4) Composite (either SCART or phono)

There's little to choose between RGB and Component though, and there's no actual source of RGB quality available.

err, Component is the top quality (Progressive scan) !!! Followed by RGB scart.

With LCDs/Plasmas, progressive scan is a big improvement.

-Chris

[GDK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

Yes, it can output RGB, but it's not an RGB quality source inside the DVD player.

In what way is it not RGB? There's no composite or s-video involved, so there are effectively separate red, green and blue signals throughout the path from source to screen.

[GDK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ntlhellworld

err, Component is the top quality (Progressive scan) !!! Followed by RGB scart.

With LCDs/Plasmas, progressive scan is a big improvement.

-Chris

Actually I'd agree with progressive scan being an improvement. For film based sources at any rate. Is it never an available option via scart on RGB then, only component?

[Nigel Goodwin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GDK

In what way is it not RGB? There's no composite or s-video involved, so there are effectively separate red, green and blue signals throughout the path from source to screen.

As DVD's are essentially American, and America doesn't use RGB, DVD's are written as Component - so there's no RGB source in a DVD player.

Bit more detail!.

The primary colours are Red, Blue and Green (as I'm sure you all know), and the eventual output from the front of the screen is the same (hopefully!) Red, Blue and Green.

So RGB is pretty obviously the highest quality you can have, because it requires no changes at all.

With Component the RGB is encoded very slightly - but unlike PAL or NTSC there are no deficiencies in the process, because you're not trying to maintain compatibility with monochrome, or broadcast it as an analogue composite signal.

So if RGB is 100% (as it is) than Component is probably 99%, and possibly more?, as it just adds two fairly lossless conversions.

As for Progressive, it's really nothing to do wth Component or RGB - again it's an American thing, so is done via Component (as is HD, again American). There's no reason RGB couldn't be used for both Progressive and HD, but as it's all American, it's never happened - and there's really no reason for it to ever do so.

[GDK]

Thanks for that. I didn't know in what form the video information was held on DVDs.