This Damn Pal 60 Thing??

[Shady Deal]

OK, done a serach back through the forum but did not get an answer.

TV= 46wh08b Tosh Rear Pro

Does this support 60hz and should I have it turnedon in the X-Box setup all the time?? (Picture looks slightly darker than when in 50hz mode) Only have one game at the moment Gotham Racing.

Thanks for any replies

[alanrob]

Isn't the 60hz thingy to make full use of a PAL screen?
I may be wrong, but I'm sure I read somewhere that a lot of PS2 games have black bars all round the image and if there was a 60hz option within the games then it would use the full screen.

I'm sure someone who knows more about the Xbox will put me right

[astonbilla]

funny thing is, when i turn it on (60Hz) my copy of halo becomes really jerky, not smooth at all. The second i turn it off the game runs ok.

As far as im concerned, 60Hz represents what the japanese and US expect from their video games. Full screen, runnig at full speed. Whereas our PAL conversions tend to be bordered and generally slower.

As it stands i would experiment with 50 and 60. But for the moment i would say dont use it for Halo.

(by the way my set is a Sony FQ75 which supports 60Hz)

hope this helps

Yes, all the recent Toshiba models (apart from some of the 28" sets or 4:3 sets), support 60hz.

Are you trying to play the 50hz version of halo in 60hz mode? I'm not sure if that would be the cause.

[Shady Deal]

Thanks guys..

Regards

[astonbilla]

i take it my version is 50Hz because its British yeah?, or can it be changed in the game?

I thought the point behind the 60Hz thing was so that all games could run at this rate. Does this mean i'll have to experiment with every single game i buy??

[museumsteve]

It seems that the Xbox PAL60 option is not all it's cracked up to be.
Halo isn;t optimised for use with this mode and therefore runs better (albeit slower) in 50hz. DOA3 is designed to use the 60 mode and is awesome..it really is a case of trial and error, although not ideal..

[groundy]

This is why you should never buy PAL. Even when the manufacturer's go to the bother of adding 60hz support to the hardware, it's ultimately in the hands of the developer whether to optimise the code or not. Great when they do but IMHO not worth the risk.

Import gaming is the only way.

[Shady Deal]

I guess being pretty thick i have still yet to understand this Pal 60 hz mode. I mean my Tosh RP is 100hz so is it screen refresh or am I talking utter rubbish?

I tryed the Gotham Racing on a 15yr old 4:3 Panasonic that I use as a spare. This is just using the composite scart that comes with the box, the game still seems to run ok?? All I would say is the game seems slightly darker in 60hz that 50hz. (On this TV and the Tosh)

Could some kind soul spell out in simple terms the PAL 60 hz bit or provide a link where I can look for myself, and just as important if your TV did NOT support this mode, would you just get a blank screen, or scrolling or nothing.......

Thanks very much

Hi Guys

Just bought my UK Xbox today.

This 50/60hz business is confusing Halo set to 60hz is all jerky and looking through the boards it seems favourable to set the dash to 50hz.

However Rallisport is a weird one. Set the dash to 50 and the intro is jerky but the game plays nicely, set it to 60 and the Intro is perfect and the game looks the same as 50 !!!

CONFUSED????? God I hope I don't regret splashing out on a PAL machine. I guess a definitive list will soon appear. I see the mags are no help at all in this issue to

....And how short is the official Scart cable??!!!!?!??

Apart from that, looks nice!

[Mr.D]

Yes the advance AV scart is way to short for the price . Its not exactly built too well either.

PAL60 is effectively a 525/60 picture with a PAL colour frequency instead of the more normal NTSC one. The main reason for this is to allow games to refresh at the higher rate rather than use normal "PAL" which is 625/50 ( 100 lines missing is going to be imperceptable on video games).

Often games designed for a 525/60 system ( 720x486 or even less) will be padded ( images is rendered with black bars to fit the raster) for the 625/50 ( PAL) version (720x576) rather than properly restructured.

The hope is with the Xbox the padding will be a thing of the past and the 60Hz option is there to allow for faster frame rate possibilities ( smoother action). Although as HALO shows this isn't always made effective use of.

I suspect the reason some intros exhibit less or more stutter than the game is down to them being streamed directly off DVD as video rather than rendered realtime. ( the 60Hz option may then crudely transcode them back again similar to certain dvd players) The footage may also have been through an earlier video transcoding system to turn them from 525/60 into 625/50 or they may have been originally rendered and checked animation wise at 30fps for the US and then merely rerendered at 25fps for the PAL version and the camera moves now exhibit stutter at the lower frame rate because of incorrect motion blur , bad spatial filtering etc.

As with dvd the terms NTSC and PAL are moot with video games as they refer to analogue colour transmission systems rather than the image structure itself and as such have little meaning in a digital format. This never stops them being used inaccurately though.

Have just bout outfit for the xbox 360 which requires this Pal 60? When my Xbox is set on to the HDTV settings for my tv (Sony Bravia) it does not give you the option. But if I turn the xbox connector to T.V. which is a bit of amess about it gives the option. Thought all the Xbox games where compatable with HDTV?????

I am confused! ! !

[meansizzler]

It's just a BUG since playing in HD your are at 60HZ and PAL/NSTC does not matter, the 360 is still set to 50HZ in standard definition mode, so you have to go into SD mode, set to PAL 60, then go and play in HD mode, only need to do it once..

[dan653]

Originally Posted by museumsteve

It seems that the Xbox PAL60 option is not all it's cracked up to be.
Halo isn;t optimised for use with this mode and therefore runs better (albeit slower) in 50hz.

if i remember rightly back in 2002/3 at the xbox launch (when i got my first one) i remember reading this big article about the difference between pal 50/60 modes with regards to game developement and region localisation and comparisions between ntsc and pal games.

i seem to remember that one of the things bungie did to the pal version is that they took alot of extra effort to enable Halo to run properly in 50hz for the european market (the reason it doesnt work well at 60) as it was still regarded as the popular format, however i dont think that practice stuck, especially as pretty much all tv's would now accept all kinds of signal (to some degree), it was more than likely just one of the things they did to justify the launch delay between regions, whilst trying to to show that they cared about european gamers.

anyway back to the point (newsposts) it varies between games; and and whether your tv properly supports pal60, my real old goodmans (1998 cheap supermarket jobby) did, a sanyo (2003 cheapy) didnt; the picture looked really ropey and washed out, a mates 15" portable alba (real cheap rubbish) didnt and was just black and white and real fuzzy, and my beloved sony trinitron flat tube did and looked a thousand times better in pal60 mode

all these were using a PAL xbox using the bundled composite cable

hope these help; newsposts

dan