We all know about the PAL 4% speedup due to the difference in framerates between PAL and NTSC. But surely the PAL countries don't experience all US films at a sped up rate, do they?

My question is, what equipment would be required in order to play PAL discs at the proper speed, eliminating the 4% speedup? I'm guessing:

1) A DVD player which can export a true PAL signal;
2) A display device (monitor or projector) which can display an unconverted PAL signal.

I have such devices in my home, but have been unable to reduce the speedup. Also, why shouldn't it work properly on a PC? What am I missing?

PAL is always sped up. no way around it. I've heard of machines that will lower the pitch but there's no way to correct the speed-up.

Yes, they do. They are just used to it, I guess. PAL is 25 fps, period. You will get the "speed up" whether your player outputs a PAL signal or converts it to a NTSC compatible signal, or if you play it on a PC.

think of all the time you'll save watching things in PAL

Not sure if you want to go this route, but if you have an HTPC, you can use WinDVD Platinum 6 which has a feature called PAL TruSpeed which perfectly corrects video/audio playback to the NTSC standard. It only works through the analog channels so no DD or DTS unfortunatley, but since I won't watch PAL because of the speedup, it's a godsend for me.

Wow. So movie watchers in the UK have never heard great scores like "Star Wars", "Star Trek", "The Sound of Music", etc. at their original pitch?! That boggles the mind. Don't they wonder what's up when they buy the CD and it sounds "off"? Amazing.

PAL does speed up the frame but so does NTSC. So nobody is getting the exact sound that we hear at the cinema.

100s of millions of people use PAL and hear no difference and that's because there is no noticeable pitch difference to normal people. And of course nobody normal notices the pitch difference with NTSC either.

If you can hear a difference on home video you are:

1) A dog
2) A liar
3) Suffer from BPFPSAP (bi-polar frames per second audio psychonemia)


That's by no means an exhaustive list and I shall add to it if this thread stays open

So movie watchers in the UK have never heard great scores like "The Sound of Music", etc. at their original pitch?!


Luckily, Queen Elizabeth II (who was named after a famous American boat) banned that film in 1965, so we've never had the horrible experience of listening to it.

and this is why I love British humo(u)r.

Oh christ...it's always a fun ntsc/pal debate until daniel shows up. Then he makes absolute statements.

*raises hand*

I can hear Pal speedup. Can ALWAYS hear PAL speedup. That will never change.

I'm called abnormal on a daily basis but if you're going to say it's because I have perfect pitch then, so be it. Let's have a singing contest and see who wins. I bet you you'll sing everything 4% faster.

I don't know. Why don't you ask them. I can't stand it

digitalfreaknyc


Ergo, you accept there's speedup with NTSC and you can hear it.

So, how bad is NTSC speedup compared to film and PAL? 1-3% less bad?

It's the Laughton and Olivier of DVDTalk.

I, too, can detect the PAL speedup. The worst offender in my collection is the R2 Star Trek: The Next Generation box sets. Particularly Riker's voice - it is very noticably "wrong"...higher pitched.

Fortunately, most of the stuff I get from the R2 is UK TV stuff, so I have no point of reference for the original pitch. Obviously, if you can't compare it, you can't know what's different. Something like Trek, which I've seen a million times, is really very easy to pick up on.

A search button?