Hi everyone,

I was looking on Amazon's page for the HD DVD version of "The Last Samurai" and noticed that it is coded "Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...695482-0759946

I thought that HD DVD was doing away with the region codes and the Blu-Ray was going to have them but reduce them to three.

Anyone think this is just a mistake on Amazon's part, or is HD DVD adopting the same region codes that standard DVD had.

Larry

I'm confused aswell. I want whichever one is region free.

Amazon is probably just loading in their default DVD specs until they hear differently. I wouldn't take this as confirmation of anything.

the one rumor I have read is that Japan will be included in the new region 1-and as they are NTSC that is a plus,

NTSC is a SD standard, so calling USA/Japan's BR discs NTSC is a misnomer. But you are correct, with HD/BR, there will be no more NTSC/PAL-type issues.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure about that though I'm not sure about how this would affect DVD, because I don't know the technical issues, but with HD, we're going to have the usual world divisions unfortunately.

The U.S., Canada, and some Latin American countries have adopted a new format called ATSC as their preferred HD system called 8VSB. South Korea, in Asia, has also adopted ATSC.

In Europe, they have adopted a digital system called DVB-T (using COFDM modulation). They have adopted 720p only so far as their preferred HD medium, but for now many countires are satisified with digital multicasting instead. There is an HD channel originating from Belgium called Euro1080, which is gaining support.

Japan has adopted a modification of DVB-T, called ISDB-T. Brazil is considering DVB-T over ATSC and is the only other country considering Japan's ISDB system. Argentina had considered ATSC adoption, but is now reconsidering. I think they are a current PAL country.

So, we'll still have some version of the NTSC/PAL/SECAM mess, instead it will be: ATSC/DVB-T/ISDB-T.

The U.S. has aligned with Europe in terms of satellite modulation however using DVB-S for Echostar broadcasts. I'm not sure about DIRECTV.

How this will affect DVD as it is all digital, I'm not sure if at all.

Larry

It won't at all. You are talking about digital television signals. It has nothing to do with BR/HD-DVD.

Okay, well I just thought it might be something to look out for as current SD DVDs seem to be formatted NTSC/PAL, dunno why. I know it doesn't seem to matter as computers can seemingly play either format if you have region codes disabled or region 0.

I'm curious as to why I've heard the PAL discs have the infamous PAL speed-up problem with frame rate in movies. And why this matters in SD discs and not for the future digital formats? I claim ignorance on this one.

Why are they formatted now, and why would this not be an issue in the future? I know it has something to do with MPEG and all of that. I guess what it boils down to is why they are formatted NOW (for SD versions).

Larry

It's nothing MPEG-2 related. Most of the world (aside from North America and Japan) uses PAL, which has a frame rate of 25fps. We use NTSC, which is 29.97fps. If you're in Europe and listening to something transferred especially for that market, you won't have any speed-up. It's when you have something that's transferred at one speed and then converted where you have sound issues.

Not exactly correct. The speedup happens during the transfer of film (which runs at 24 fps) to PAL video (which runs at 25 fps/50hz). Any theatrical movie transferred to PAL video is sped up 4%.

The only material that doesn't get sped up in PAL-land are European TV or video programs specifically shot at 25 fps in the first place.

NTSC video runs at 30 fps/60hz (technically 29.97 fps/59.94hz). In order to accomodate this, a 3:2 pulldown scheme was invented to keep theatrical movies running at their proper playback speed despite the higher frame rate. PAL does not have any sort of pulldown, so everything just gets sped up.

The conversion of PAL video to NTSC video does not cause any additional speedup or slow-down. PAL content still plays too fast when transferred to NTSC, exactly as fast as it plays in its native PAL.

As far as the HDTV goes, I'm still not clear whether Europe and the rest of the world will continue using 50hz or will move to the 60hz standard originally set by NTSC. American HDTVs run at 60hz just like NTSC.

A key point to note is that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content is stored on disc in 1080p/24 format. Regardless of whether the TV you're watching on runs at 50hz or 60hz, it's the player's responsibility to convert the frame rate. This is very different from DVD, where special PAL and NTSC transfers are required for each frame rate, and the content stored on disc is very different in each region. Theoretically, a European HD-DVD will be sped up to 50hz by the player and run that way on a European HDTV, while the same disc will undergo 3:2 pulldown and play at its proper speed on an American HDTV. This should eliminate most of the conversion and compatibility problems we have now (aside from region codes, which are a separate matter).

What I don't understand about it is the way pretty much all PAL TVs (in the UK at least) have been able to display an NTSC signal from, say, a US DVD, correctly for the past decade at least and the movie on the DVD has played back at the correct speed. So why not now just have new HD releases on either format play back at the correct speed (especially since there's no longer going to be the extra resolution PAL has had as an advantage anymore)? If all of the old SD PAL TVs from the last decade or so can handle it, surely the new HDTVs should be able to also. Either that or why not just go one step further and make all new TVs refresh at 48hz (or even 72hz) so film frames can just be repeated evenly and eliminate the problems with the 3:2 pulldown NTSC can have?

This may in fact be happening. As I said above, I'm still not clear on how European HDTVs work.

This will cause problems trying to play material that was shot on video at 60hz. Ideally, HDTVs should be multi-sync capable at 48hz, 50hz, and 60hz, but I think that may be cost-prohibitive.

Because they designed them to do it this way in Europe. And some USA HDTVs do play PAL. Most projectors do, for instance. On mine, I play European DVDs natively rather than converting to NTSC first. And many LCD flat panels can do this, probably because the manufacturers mostly took existing computer LCD tech and modified it a bit to make TVs. The other TVs do not have the electronics to play PAL simply because they didn't bother to make them that way.

HDTVs are another different format called ATSC. So they are converting the NTSC input from USA DVDs anyway. It is silly that they don't all include PAL compatibility.