[MacDV] Straight info about DVDs, and TV standards

[Gerhard Kuhn]

 From how I understand this you are going at this backward.  You record 
your video either to PAL or NTSC standard.  You compress this video 
into a mpeg2 file which will contain the video information that you 
originally recorded (frames per second, size and so on).  MPEG2 is not 
a video format but rather a compression standard.  Now to watch it your 
TV will be compliant to the local video standard but the DVD player may 
be capable of playing one format and outputting the other allowing you 
to watch both PAL or NTSC video if however your player can only read 
one or the other format you are out of luck.  The region coding only 
comes into this for copyright protection, eg. you may have different 
distribution dates for Europe and North America, have different 
ownership of distribution channels ect..  Boils down to money and who 
gets it.

On the bright side computers don't care about NTSC or PAL so you can 
always watch either format although region coding is still a issue.


Gerhard
suspice at hay.net

On Dec 15, 2003, at 10:34 PM, Peter van der Linden wrote:

> Here's the straight info on DVD, NTSC and PAL.
> There is only one DVD format used for commercial video.  The video 
> files on a DVD are stored in MPEG-2 digital format.  The files are 
> encrypted, region locked, and with a macrovision degraded signal.  The 
> MPEG-2 video
> encoding on DVD is independent of PAL/NTSC protocols.