UK DVD recorder in France

[bg9208]

I have a french TV and run a Sky box. If I bring a dvd recorder out from the UK will it work OK on this set up?

[Clarkkent]

 

French TVs are dual standard (PAL/SECAM). To the best of my knowledge DVDs are encoded only in PAL or NTSC (US standard) and not in SECAM. DVDs bought in French shops are in PAL.  Provided you use a SCART connector you should have no problems. If you want to record downloads from Sky, there is no reason you should not be able to do so, since any DVDs you burn will be in PAL.

[bg9208]

Thanks Clarks. Watch out for Kryptonite!

[Deimos]

My UK DVD recorder works fine through my French TV (TV bring a Philips more than 3 years old). Connected together via a SCART cable.

Ian

[Andyphilpott]

My DVD player is a cheap UK one and works fine with my French TV. If that works, I am sure the DVD recorder will without any problems.

Andy

[Nick Trollope]

[quote user="Clarkkent"]

 

French TVs are dual standard (PAL/SECAM). To the best of my knowledge DVDs are encoded only in PAL or NTSC (US standard) and not in SECAM. DVDs bought in French shops are in PAL.  Provided you use a SCART connector you should have no problems. If you want to record downloads from Sky, there is no reason you should not be able to do so, since any DVDs you burn will be in PAL.

[/quote]

Sorry, but DVD's are not encoded with PAL. NTSC or SECAM - they are digital. PAL etc are analogue encoding standards. Some DVD players (not many) have RF outputs that may only be PAL (or NTSC or SECAM), or some may be multistandard. DVD recorders usually have multistandard TV aerial inputs, so will work anywhere.

Given how cheap these things are, I'd suggest you try it!

 

[Tim]

I'd confrm that - I've a couple of Sony DVD recorders - they both have multi-standard tuners and will quite happily record analogue French TV and they are also quite happy recording UK TV from a sat box and TNT from an old Freeview box. Unless you something really unusual, you should be ok.

Regards - Tim

[Martin963]

As Timco says,  many DVD recorders purchased in the UK have tuners compatible with analogue French TV (system L).

However,  many don't,  such as the three Panasonics we have,  which won't tune system L and won't decode SECAM colour.

A quick trawl through the specs at the back of the manual will probably tell you - the UK uses system I with PAL colour and France system L with SECAM.

I ought to add that the Panasonics are excellent in all other respects,  and if you're only going to be recording off a Sky box and are not bothered about recording French TV from an aerial then a UK-only machine will be fine.

[Gyn_Paul]

[quote user="nicktrollope"][quote user="Clarkkent"]

 

French TVs are dual standard (PAL/SECAM). To the best of my

knowledge DVDs are encoded only in PAL or NTSC (US standard) and not in

SECAM. DVDs bought in French shops are in PAL.  Provided you use a

SCART connector you should have no problems. If you want to record

downloads from Sky, there is no reason you should not be able to do so,

since any DVDs you burn will be in PAL.

[/quote]

Sorry, but DVD's are not encoded with PAL. NTSC or SECAM - they are

digital. PAL etc are analogue encoding standards. Some DVD players (not

many) have RF outputs that may only be PAL (or NTSC or SECAM), or some

may be multistandard. DVD recorders usually have multistandard TV aerial inputs, so will work anywhere.

Given how cheap these things are, I'd suggest you try it!

 

[/quote]

then how come all my DVD's have either 'PAL2" or "NTSC" written on the back of them ?

[Martin963]

My guess is that the nomenclature on the DVD is a sloppy way of saying what the line frequency is.

The only person who really knows the answer on this is Mazan,  but from what I remember his saying some time ago there is mention of PAL and NTSC in the technical spec of DVD's,  but not SECAM.   Like Nick I believe that the colour info is encoded onto DVD's using MPEG 2 techniques (which use digital pixel descriptions (like 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 etc etc)) but presumably and imprortantly a DVD has to reproduce the same number of lines as the corresponding viewing TV, and so in America it would be 525 lines (ie NTSC).    I would assume that a European DVD player would not play back an "NTSC" DVD because it would be looking for 625 lines and only finding 525 lines (maybe they're international DVD players,  I just don't know)

What Mazan was driving at is that the spec does not acknowledge SECAM anywhere, which apparently is why ALL DVD recorders capable of receiving SECAM have to transcode SECAM (running 625 lines) to PAL with 625 lines. 

As I say I know no more than the above!

[CeeJay]

Martin

I too am looking to purchase a DVD Recorder + Hard drive and have come across the Philips 3440h/05 which gives in the spec under Tuner/Reception/Transmission: - PAL 1, PAL B/G PAL D/K SECAM B/G SECAM D/K SECAM L/L , apropos your reply, am I right in assuming it will therefore record Sky in PAL and also French terrestial in SECAM?

Regards from your big County up the road!

[Anton Redman]

The tuner part of the specification describes what TV signals the DVD player will recieve and hence record and is irrelevent to satellite TV unless recording an analogue signal such as French services of 5 degress West. Provided is is conected via the SCART it will record SKY and compress it using MP3 and write it to the hard drive or DVD as that.

Unlike VHS recorders DVD recorders do not record an analogue signal and are not PAL or SECAM but it will work.

[Martin963]

@ ceejay - yes,  should be OK.   My only slight concern would be that if you "set" the tuner to L Secam  (say) it might then not respond to Pal I without being reset - having said that plenty of tuners can be set to automatic and memorise not only the channels but the system used for each one and react appropriately.

In any case it's easy to avoid the problem by hooking the Sky box up to the DVD recorder using a SCART connection and connecting your UHF aerial receiving French TV to the aerial i/p.   Then you select AV 1 AV2 or whatever when you want to record Sky and UHF tuner channels when you want to record French TV.   And you are correct - if it says system L Secam in the spec then it will record the French colour signal correctly to DVD and additionally reproduce it correctly whether hooked up to a UK single standard or French dual standard TV,  because it will have converted the SECAM to something more useful (Pal on the composite o/p's and RGB on the Scart).

I've been thinking about what I wrote earlier on the subject of line frequency and I have a feeling it's a load of b*ll*cks.   Does anyone know whether if you record video on a DVD on a UK computer (say) would it be viewable on an American computer?   If it is then I think my pontification on line standards as regards DVD's is wrong.   Hm....

[Gyn_Paul]

[quote user="Martinwatkins"]@ ceejay - yes,  should be

OK.   My only slight concern would be that if you "set" the

tuner to L Secam  (say) it might then not respond to Pal I without

being reset - having said that plenty of tuners can be set to automatic

and memorise not only the channels but the system used for each one and

react appropriately.

In any case it's easy to avoid the problem

by hooking the Sky box up to the DVD recorder using a SCART connection

and connecting your UHF aerial receiving French TV to the aerial

i/p.   Then you select AV 1 AV2 or whatever when you want to

record Sky and UHF tuner channels when you want to record French

TV.   And you are correct - if it says system L Secam in the

spec then it will record the French colour signal correctly to DVD and

additionally reproduce it correctly whether hooked up to a UK single

standard or French dual standard TV,  because it will have

converted the SECAM to something more useful (Pal on the composite

o/p's and RGB on the Scart).

I've been thinking about what I

wrote earlier on the subject of line frequency and I have a feeling

it's a load of b*ll*cks.   Does anyone know whether if you

record video on a DVD on a UK computer (say) would it be viewable on an

American computer?   If it is then I think my pontification on

line standards as regards DVD's is wrong.   Hm....

[/quote]

the Wikipedia entry for DVD's on the subject of video systems lists a

variety of [a] x [b] pixels resolution depending on what else is

cluttering up the disc, and 50 or 60 frames; the latter being the PAL v

NTSC clincher, I think.

p

[Btuckey]

OK guys, let’s go for it [geek]:

Video on a DVD is stored in digital format, but it's formatted for one of two mutually incompatible television systems: 525/60 (NTSC) or 625/50 (PAL/SECAM).  Therefore, there are two kinds of DVDs; ‘NTSC DVDs’ and ‘PAL DVDs’ as noted by Martin.  Older players only play NTSC or PAL discs, more modern ones play both PAL and NTSC discs. Discs are also coded for different regions of the world.

The aforementioned multi-standard players partially convert NTSC to a 60-Hz PAL (4.43 NTSC) signal.  The player uses the PAL 4.43-MHz color subcarrier encoding format but keeps the 525/60 NTSC scanning rate.  Most modern PAL TVs can handle this "pseudo-PAL" signal. A few multi-standard PAL players output true 3.58 NTSC from NTSC discs, which requires an NTSC TV or a multi-standard TV.  Some players have a switch to choose 60-Hz PAL or true NTSC output when playing NTSC discs.  There are a few standards-converting PAL players that convert from an NTSC disc to standard PAL output for older PAL TVs.  Because the quality of conversion in DVD players is poor, using 60-Hz PAL output with a compatible TV provides a better picture than converting from NTSC to PAL. (Sound is not affected by video conversion.)

There are three differences between discs intended for playback on different TV systems: picture dimensions and pixel aspect ratio (720x480 vs. 720x576), display frame rate (29.97 vs. 25), and surround audio options (Dolby Digital vs. MPEG audio). Video from film is usually encoded at 24 frames/sec but is preformatted for one of the two required display rates.  Movies formatted for PAL display are usually sped up by 4% at playback, so the audio must be adjusted accordingly before being encoded.  All PAL DVD players can play Dolby Digital audio tracks, but not all NTSC players can play MPEG audio tracks.  PAL and SECAM share the same scanning format, so discs are the same for both systems.  The only difference is that SECAM players output the colour signal in the format required by SECAM TVs.  Note that modern TVs in most SECAM countries can also read PAL signals, so you can use a player that only has PAL output.  The only case in which you need a player with SECAM output is for older SECAM-only TVs (and you'll probably need a SECAM RF connection.)

A producer can choose to put 525/60 NTSC video on one side of the disc and 625/50 PAL on the other. Most studios put Dolby Digital audio tracks on their PAL discs instead of MPEG audio tracks.

DVD-Video is an application of DVD-ROM, according to the specification created by the DVD Forum.  DVD-Video is also an application of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Dolby Digital, DTS and other formats.  This means the DVD-Video format defines subsets of these standards and formats to be applied in practice to make discs intended for DVD-Video players.  DVD-ROM can contain any desired digital information, but DVD-Video is limited to certain data types designed for television reproduction.

A disc has one track (stream) of MPEG-2 constant bit rate (CBR) or variable bit rate (VBR) compressed digital video.  A restricted version of MPEG-2 Main Profile at Main Level (MP@ML) is used.  SP@ML is also supported.  MPEG-1 CBR and VBR video is also allowed.  525/60 (NTSC, 29.97 interlaced frames/sec) and 625/50 (PAL/SECAM, 25 interlaced frames/sec) video display systems are expressly supported.  Coded frame rates of 24 fps progressive from film, 25 fps interlaced from PAL video, and 29.97 fps interlaced from NTSC video are typical.  MPEG-2 progressive sequence is not allowed, but interlaced sequences can contain progressive pictures and progressive macroblocks.  In the case of 24 fps source, the encoder embeds MPEG-2 repeat first field flags into the video stream to make the decoder either perform 2-3 pull-down for 60Hz NTSC displays (actually 59.94Hz) or 2-2 pull-down (with resulting 4% speedup) for 50Hz PAL/SECAM displays.  In other words, the player doesn't ‘know’ what the encoded rate is, it simply follows the MPEG-2 encoder's instructions to produce the predetermined display rate of 25 fps or 29.97 fps.  This is one of the main reasons there are two kinds of discs, one for NTSC and one for PAL.

Because film transfers for NTSC and PAL usually use the same coded picture rate (24 fps) but PAL resolution is higher, the PAL version takes more space on the disc.  The raw increase before encoding is 20% (480 to 576), but the final result is closer to 15%, depending on encoder efficiency.  This translates to an increase of 600 to 700 megabytes on PAL discs compared to NTSC discs.

It's interesting to note that even interlaced source video can be rendered as progressive-structured MPEG pictures by a good encoder, with interlaced field-encoded macroblocks used only when needed for motion.  Most film sources are encoded at 24 frames per second (the inverse telecine process during encoding removes duplicate 2-3 pull-down fields from the videotape source and the remaining field pairs, although technically in interlaced form, can be re-interleaved by a progressive player).  Most video sources are encoded at 25 or 30 interlaced frames per second.  These may be mixed on the same disc, such as an interlaced-source logo followed by a progressive-source movie.

Picture dimensions are at maximum 720x480 (for 525/60 NTSC display) or 720x576 (for 625/50 PAL/SECAM display).  Pictures are sub-sampled from 4:2:2 ITU-R BT.601 down to 4:2:0 before encoding, allocating an average of 12 bits/pixel in Y'CbCr format.  (Colour depth is 24 bits, since colour samples are shared across 4 pixels.)  DVD pixels are not square.  The uncompressed source is 124.416 Mbps for video source (720x480x12x30 or 720x576x12x25), or 99.533 or 119.439 Mbps for film source (720x480x12x24 or 720x576x12x24).  In analogue output terms, lines of horizontal resolution is usually around 500, but can go up to 540.  Typical luminance frequency response maintains full amplitude to between 5.0 and 5.5 MHz.  This is below the 6.75 MHz native frequency of the MPEG-2 digital signal (in other words, most players fall short of reproducing the full quality of DVD).  Chrominance frequency response is half that of luminance.

Allowable picture resolutions are:
MPEG-2, 525/60 (NTSC): 720x480, 704x480, 352x480, 352x240
MPEG-2, 625/50 (PAL): 720x576, 704x576, 352x576, 352x288
MPEG-1, 525/60 (NTSC): 352x240
MPEG-1, 625/50 (PAL): 352x288

Different players use different numbers of bits for the video digital-to-analogue converter, with the best-quality players using 10 or 12 bits.  This has nothing to do with the MPEG decoding process, since each original component signal is limited to 8 bits per sample.  More bits in the player provide more ‘headroom’ and more signal levels during digital-to-analogue conversion, which can help produce a better picture.

Maximum video bit rate is 9.8 Mbps.  The "average" video bit rate is around 4 Mbps but depends entirely on the length, quality, amount of audio, etc.  This is a 31:1 reduction from uncompressed 124 Mbps video source (or a 25:1 reduction from 100 Mbps film source).  Raw channel data is read off the disc at a constant 26.16 Mbps.  After 8/16 demodulation it's down to 13.08 Mbps.  After error correction the user data stream goes into the track buffer at a constant 11.08 Mbps.  The track buffer feeds system stream data out at a variable rate of up to 10.08 Mbps.  After system overhead, the maximum rate of combined elementary streams (audio + video + sub-picture) is 10.08.  MPEG-1 video rate is limited to 1.856 Mbps with a typical rate of 1.15 Mbps.

To answer Martin’s earlier question; Yes!  Video recorded on a DVD on a UK computer would be viewable on an American computer.  When the data is streamed off the DVD it is interpreted by a software application such as InterVideo’s WinDVD or VideoLAN (my favourite). As your computer monitor is neither PAL nor NTSC nor SECAM it has to ‘transcode’ the stream from the PAL/NTSC DVD to the resolution set up in Settings>Control Panel>Display>Settings.  (For example 1280x1024.)  I’m leaving aside here the ‘TV out’ video cards such as ATI’s All-In-Wonder as they sort themselves out.  The software also sorts out the aspect ratio with respect to 4:3, 16:9 and ‘letterbox’ etc.  Because of ‘convergence’, (how many years have we been taking about it?!) the old ‘analogue’ systems that digital TV has been saddled with are being swept away by MPEG4.  (Most new DVD players will now accept the latest DivX formats for example.)  This is all being driven by HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) panel ‘TV’s, new computer video cards and ‘stand alone’ HD-DVD and BluRay players.

 

Brian

[Danny]

Help, I just like watching films!!!

Danny

[Bob T]

Then just plug them together with a Scart lead and watch films!

[Martin963]

Well <I> appreciated btuckey's post; real chapter and verse which sometimes is what is needed.

The only point I'd quibble with (and only from what I've read,  not from fundamentals) is that I didn't think that DVD players could exist in a SECAM format,  ie all DVD players o/p PAL as composite along with RGB.   The only time SECAM enters into the debate is in countries such as France where an RF tuning system on a DVD recorder has to cope with incoming SECAM (along with all the other oddities of the French system such as +ve video modulation) but that the SECAM gets no further than the digital converters,  and never re-appears on playback as it's become PAL.   And one doesn't notice 'cos all French TV's post 1985 ish cope with PAL anyway.   Which is jolly useful if like me one uses a (suitable) DVD recorder to convert SECAM off AB3 into PAL.

But as I say that's what I've read,  not what I know,  and I think Brian should be unanimously awarded the Mazan Memorial Medal for an excellent post.

[Danny]

[quote user="Martinwatkins"]

and I think Brian should be unanimously awarded the Mazan Memorial Medal for an excellent post.
[/quote]

I would wholeheartedly agree ( if I understood it)!

Danny

[Gyn_Paul]

Thanks Brian, that was the most exhaustive (and exhausting) 

technical review of DVD that I've ever read. Did you type it all or

cut-and-paste ? If the former, then it was not only a great service to

the forum, but a true labour of love.

I agree; the Mazan Memorial medal, with purple ribbon and (colour) bars.

I'm going to print it out and learn it, a line per day. I'll get back

to you all in 2011. By which time it will all have changed !

p