NTSC/PAL issue with HTPC ?

Ray

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Hi,

Often on the DVD players forum there are comments about whether a player can auto detect/auto switch for PAL and NTSC discs and moans when it can't. I never see these comments in the HTPC forum. Is it never an issue ? Do PC DVD players / software players work differently ?

Cheers

Ray
 
Yes it's an issue but not every HTPC owner knows about it. :) Also, if simply playing on a PC monitor/LCD panel then switching refresh rates often doesn't achieve anything.

There are a few solutions, all involve having the grpahics driver switch refresh rates as required .. there is no auto-detect capability 'out of the box' because there is more than one bit of software in the chain, ie. the player software, the decoder and the graphics drivers.

It gets further complicated when graphics cards/drivers don't generate highly accurate clock and so getting exactly 50.0HZ for PAL for example needs something else like Powerstrip to get it approximately right and then Reclock to keep it perfect during playback.

My own solution was to use AnyDVD which can be used to switch the driver via a simple utility as one of its' features, but I am aware there are other options.

In the end I abandoned my HTPC largely because of the endless fiddling needed to get and maintain 48/50/59.9x accuracy and the flick of a switch.
 
My own solution was to use AnyDVD which can be used to switch the driver via a simple utility as one of its' features said:
indeed it is the main problem of using a PC to watch DVD's. i keep hoping a piece of software will come out to seemlessly do all the work for you.
 
I really don't know why software players don't, I can only assume there is no standard (for that read DirectX) way to change refresh.

However, remember that even to this day XP defaults to 60hz .. oh of course, we know why, that's the refresh needed for NTSC so Americans don't need to be able to switch refresh rates ;)
 
Thanks for the replies (again).

Can't remember if my 9600 gives 1280x720 at 50 and 60hz - will check tonight.

If it does is it simply a case of changing ths before fireing up TT ?

What's the consequence of playing a PAL disc at 60hz ? Is it really obvious and I must be blind or is it one of those things you never notice until some bugger points it out to you!

Thx

ray
 
Rayfin said:
What's the consequence of playing a PAL disc at 60hz ? Is it really obvious and I must be blind or is it one of those things you never notice until some bugger points it out to you!
I watch everything (mainly PAL material) at 60hz, and it doesn't worry me. Movies are usually shot at 24hz anyway, and so NTSC DVD's are often jumpy on panning shots anyway, even when viewed on a 60hz display (like all NTSC tv's!). So HTPC's are usually better in this regard, because often you can choose the best frequency, or use reclock.
 
Playing PAL at 60hz will introduce 'judder', whether you notice it or not depends on several factors.

Also, NTSC has two ideal rates, 48 or 60 depending on whether you're watching film or video sourced material .. in the case of PAL film mode is still 50 and gices rise to the [in]famous 'PAL speedup' in which a movie's length in time is reduced by 4%, ie. playback is 4% faster.


A 9600 is perfectly capable of doing 50 and 60, mine does. :)
 
ooh, reclock seriously mashes up your sound
 
CrispyXUK said:
ooh, reclock seriously mashes up your sound
The only time that's happened to me was due to the video card's timings being well out and Reclock needing to do a lot of frame drops/repeats to stabalise it. This resulted in my using Powerstrip to fine-tune the card's clock at which time Reclock never dropped/repeated more than a couple of frames in an entire movie and mostly only had to adjust timing by a few Hz.
 

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