I just bought an Apex 5131 DVD player. When I play commercial VCDs in PAL format on an NTSC TV, the picture is vertically compressed. That's because PAL VCD is encoded at 352X288. It has 48 more lines than NTSC VCD format 352X240. The player does not convert PAL VCD to NTSC. It simply compresses it to fit the TV. I heard some other DVD players trim off those 48 lines. Either way, it's not very pleasant to watch. The best solution would be playing it with a PAL TV but I don't have one. Does anyone know a DVD player brand or model that does convert PAL format VCD to true NTSC format video? Thanks.

-- Xiangru Chang (xchang@nyc.rr.com), April 22, 2002

Answers

Daewoo 5700 Oritron DVD100, DVD200, DVD600, and DVD650(after being hacked) Apex 3201, 1100w, 1200, 500w, 660, 600

-- Yeppers (myho@spam.com), April 22, 2002.

So I got this Oritron DVD600 Firmware 5 that I hacked in order to play DVD I bought in France. The VCD is obviously played but I get this fuzy image. The disc is PAL, my TV is obviously NTSC, but the Oritron has this PAL/NTSC logo. Is there any trick to force the player to turn PAL signal into NTSC on my old TV set?

thanks a lot

-- Doug Frousse (rfrousse@netscape.net), January 09, 2003.