Whilst the situation has got better, it is still by no means ideal as most NTSC DVD players will not play a PAL disc.
There are exceptions, but I know a lot of folks on t'other side of the pond and most of them are having trouble with PAL discs.
Rich-LMF wrote:
However one thing you should know is that even the ones that do play PAL have to convert the PAL signal to NTSC to play on standard US TV sets. They have to change the frame rate because PAL has fewer frames per second than NTSC, and they have to change the resolution of the picture because PAL has more lines than NTSC. And they have to do this on the fly! To do this conversion well requires software and hardware that are not going to be built into any consumer grade DVD player.
So even if your NTSC player is multi-system and can play PAL, smooth motion will be visibly jerky as the player doubles every sixth frame. And the picture will be softened. Depending on the quality of their player and the content of the DVD, viewers may or may not notice it. (This is not an issue when playing the DVD on a computer, as the computer and its screen can play any frame rate equally well and have plenty of 'lines' of resolution.)
And this is a very accurate descriptV set that will ultimately decide what will play & what will not play, as NO NTSC CRT set will output a PAL signal no matter what the player does, and there are still a considerable number of folks with CRT sets. One thing you must always remember as a DVD author is that not everyone has the latest tech, with around 50% of people having first or second generation players and CRT screens.
But onwards......
Rich-LMF wrote:
My question (probably best answered by people in PAL countries):
I am having a DVD commercially produced, intended for sale in the US. But unfortunately I went ahead and pre-sold a PAL version of the DVD ... which it turns out I won't have.
The DVDs I do have will be NTSC and "all region" and therefore playable on (for example) standard European DVD players.
I don't expect that the NTSC DVD will look as good on those players as it does on an all-NTSC system, for the obverse of the reasons above -- but how bad will it look? Do European buyers expect better, or do they order and play NTSC DVDs frequently and don't seem to really care?
You should be just fine, assuming the standards conversion was done properly - and this is the key.
In one way, NTSC - despite the reduction in vertical resolution - looks better than PAL simply because of 2 factors - the higher frame rate (and the resulting trick of a 2:3 pull with 24p content on DVD meaning there is no issue with audio pitch, but that's another thread altogether) and the less rectangular pixel aspect ratio - remember NTSC widescreen pixels are at 1.2 whereas PAL widescreen is at a whopping 1.4.
However, there is still the issue of those customers with CRT TV sets running older players - we are still in a very nasty recession and buying new DVD or BD players is not exactly top of most priority lists when the gas bills just went up another 20% last week.
If you do NTSC only, you will get some returns but not nearly as many as you would get selling PAL in the US & Japan.
