Ok, setting up my pal xbox to connect to my Hitachi plasma and in the video options the xbox is asking if I want pal 60 or not? What is it?

[gizlaroc]

It simply means the games will run at the same speed as ntsc titles, which is what most were designed to run at.
However some are tweaked for the Pal sytem 50hz, so there are apparently problems with frame rate, halo judders apparently.


Play a game designed to run at 60hz with no pal optimisation at 50hz, and it will be 17.5% slower than it is meant to be and have black borders at teh top and bottom of the screen, as the 60hz signal only needs 525 lines of image to fill the screen whereas the 50hz signal has 625 thus leaving 100 lines blank which appears as borders.

this is a very very simple way of putting it, and was more of a concern with older sytems like the nes, snes, mega drive, etc. when the games were not optimised at all.

do a search on google for 50 vs 60hz gaming.

[Steve.EX]

Pal 60 has a refresh rate 60fps (2x30) whilst retaining the Pal colour subcarrier at 4.43mhz

[Solar]

Originally posted by gizlaroc
the 60hz signal only needs 525 lines of image to fill the screen whereas the 50hz signal has 625 thus leaving 100 lines blank which appears as borders.

wouldnt this mean the ntsc will have borders ?
shouldnt it be...

ntsc@60htz = 625
pal@50htz = 525 (reason for borders)

im not saying your wrong, it just doesnt make sense to me that the ntsc has less lines and still no borders

[gizlaroc]

To add the extra 100 lines that are on screen, if the game is not re coded with actual infomation/graphics then it will just squash the lines together and add the extra lines at teh top and bottomof the screen, thus leaving borders.

At the end of the day I would leave it at 60hz unless you get problems with certain games.

[CrispyXUK]

How long do you think until we move to a 60hz standard? most consoles these days have a 60hz mode, especially Gamecube as every game i have purchased so far has this option.

Solar> Pal 60 is basically NTSC resolution (525 lines) & refresh rate (60) with the superier PAL colour mode.

No, PAL 60 is just PAL with a refresh rate of 60hz.

[Solar]

Originally posted by gizlaroc
To add the extra 100 lines that are on screen, if the game is not re coded with actual infomation/graphics then it will just squash the lines together and add the extra lines at teh top and bottomof the screen, thus leaving borders.

thats the answer i was looking for lol

[CrispyXUK]

I think you will find it is 525 lines mate

Well some times it can be, but PAL 60 is actually 625 line, PAL colour 60hz, some consoles do 525 lines (PS2, even though this is usually NTSC) but as far as I am aware XBox games use 625 lines (because standard 50hz mode doesn't usually have any borders, although as you point out some unoptimised will use 525 lines). No need top get snappy though

Rich

[fuzzybee]

Originally posted by phenom2003
Well some times it can be, but PAL 60 is actually 625 line, PAL colour 60hz, some consoles do 525 lines (PS2, even though this is usually NTSC) but as far as I am aware XBox games use 625 lines (because standard 50hz mode doesn't usually have any borders, although as you point out some unoptimised will use 525 lines). No need top get snappy though

Rich

You are wrong myfriend, pal60 has 525 lines of information just like an ntsc signal, playing a game in pal60 will give you exactly the same image as a ntsc 3:58 image just with the use of the slightly superior pal colour subcarriers handling the colour.
Pal60 was first and foremost developed to allow compatable pal vcr's display an ntsc videotape on a pal tv.We haved pal60 and the yanks/japs have ntsc 4:43
Pal60 in any form does not display a picture using 625 lines of information, all xbox games have a 50hz optimised fullscreen mode but the refresh rate and fps means the best/fastest version is always the pal60 version. However Halo is an exeption and Bungie admit they cocked up the pal60 conversion.
The ps2 60hz mode is always a pure ntsc 3:58 signal and is not connected to pal60 in anyway, but the use of a RGB scart cable enables tv's that are not ntsc 3:58 compatable to display in colour as RGB has no region.

The perfect signal would include the pal resolution of 625 lines of information with the ntsc refresh rate(60hz) and fps (30).
I'm sure i have read somewhere that Brazil is the only country to utilise this signal but i'm sure someone will correct me

I'll correct you Brazil use PAL-M which is just a variant of PAL (I can assure you this 100%) it is 525 line 50 hz.

Anyway technology develops and just because PAL 60 was developed with NTSC-PAL conversion in mind doesn't mean it can't change. DVDs have seen this where people say the max resolution of the DVD format is x pixels by x pixels, the format can be developed to accomadate almost any resolution (as T2 Hi-def showed, albeit in WM9).

[fuzzybee]

Thanks for the correction phenom2003, it may not be Brazil but some country uses it, your right technology always develops but very slowly in this area. Pal60 only exists as a 525 line signal one day it may change but if/when it does i suspect it won't be called Pal60

[CAS FAN]

hmmm I bet you know how to give the ladies a good time! At the end of the day does it really matter how many lines are in a PAL or NTSC signal as long as the game looks nice? All modern telle's support 60Hz PAL so just select the option and play the game - job done!

[CrispyXUK]

sorry wasnt being snappy mate,

anyway http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-026/_3832.htm

That infomation is correct, apart from one thing, I'm pretty sure brazil use different voltages in different areas (110v some places, 220-240v in others), I'll try find a link for the info.

edit: quick google search shows http://www.psreporter.com/pal_system_tv_standard.html

[Zacabeb]

Aahh... now let's talk about actual resolution.

Out of the 625 lines of standard PAL, only 576 are used for the actual picture. Part of these in turn are reserved for a margin, and are cut off by the screen to allow for the picture to contort and bounce around a bit along with the poor power regulation in the TV. I guess you will see about 520-540 of those lines on most TV sets.

NTSC uses 480 of its 525 lines for the actual picture. This too includes a margin, so maybe 430-450 of the lines are visible.

Games on the PS2 (and probably also Gamecube) tend to make use of 448 lines vertically, which is enough to fill the screen in 60Hz, but not wasting memory and capacity on the margin that is cut off by the screen. The corresponding number of lines for PAL is considered to be 512, and that is what a good 50Hz version will usually run in (whether it runs in 448 or 480 pixels at 60Hz).

The Xbox has a powerful video encoder that can scale the image before output, so games running in 640x480 can be scaled up to fill the screen. Also, with the Xbox memory being shared, developers can choose to use more memory and run games in higher resolutions, such as 1280x720, and scale them down for output.

The other consoles can also scale the image before output, but it's done by a different part of the hardware (at least in the PS2).