Hello kind technically superior people out there! Would someone please give me some advice before my baby starts to crawl!

My wife and I have a new baby girl, we would like to take video images of her and be able to send it in one format or another to both Canada (parents in law-NTSC) and the UK(my parents-PAL).

We are planning on emigrating to Canada later this year, and the cameras seem cheaper over there, so I was planning on buying one (Sony DCR-IP1/Canon MVX10i/JVC GR-DVP9 or similar) in March when we visit... but.... Will it be useless for use in the UK? and when I am in Canada can I not send back DVD's in PAL readable format?

Will someone please offer some advice, I have been given such mixed feedback from retail outlets.

Feedback has ranged from .. yes no problems at all .. to .. No Sir you would need to buy two camera!!!

[mossmanfly]

Well a NTSC camcorder will capture the footage in NTSC, and you will be able to burn NTSC DVDs. In the UK nearly every TV can play NTSC via a scart cable or some with out a scart. My TV is 5 years old and does NTSC through a scart(without a scart it comes out black and white), yet the 2-3 year old widescreen downstairs does NTSC in colour through normal phono cables.

Alot of DVD players can do NTSC playback, alot of DVD players sold now are multi-region and can play NTSC and Region 1 discs. So best to make sure the player is one of these, as NTSC discs may be encoded to a specific region when you burn the disc, as I dont know if a specific region is set when burning depending on whether its a PAL disc or a NTSC disc. A multi-region DVD player can be bought for £60 now.

I can not comment on how well PAL DVDs would work in a NTSC region, as I dont know if PAL is supported or whether DVD players sold support PAL.

In the UK the NTSC issue is nothing really. Most TVs and DVDs display NTSC fine. For what you want to do then I would advise you to get a NTSC camcorder, especially if your going to go an live in Canada.

[MarkE19]

As mossmanfly said NTSC playback in the UK is just about a non issue. I think all UK PAL DVD players will be able to play an NTSC DVD with no problems, but the USA/Canada do not support PAL playback on their DVD players or TV's. I would therefore say you would be best to get an NTSC camcorder and as long as the footage is on DVD there should be no probs for your parents here in Blighty playing them (as long as they have a DVD player that is ). The other way round is almost certainly not going to work!

Mark.