[Jerrek]

Originally Posted by towny

You wouldn't - you had nothing to compare it with.

I've lived for half my life in countries that used PAL. We have a PAL television and video player. I have everything I need to compare it with.

If you watch a programme originally recorded on videotape in 625-line PAL on a 625-line PAL TV in the UK, and then you watch an imported American programme recorded in 525-line NTSC videotape, there is a noticeable drop in picture quality. It's inevitable - an NTSC TV picture has 15-20% less information in it than a PAL picture does.

That is true, however, the effect, while it is noticable, isn't that great.

However, if you watched an imported UK TV show recorded in PAL but broadcast in NTSC, I don't believe you would be able to take advantage of the additional picture resolution, because your TV networks are only geared up to transmit 525 lines of picture information.

Thats unfortunate, but it doesn't really bother me. Less than < 0.5% of what I watch is originally PAL.

This is nothing to do with 'old equipment' - my 2-year-old Sony widescreen TV exposes the yawning quality gap between PAL and NTSC just as well today as my old Decca set did 20 years ago. Any imported US TV show made available to UK TV networks on videotape rather than on film shows this phenomenon off admirably.

We were talking about muddy picture quality. I don't experience muddy picture quality. Nor have I seen that on any of the TVs I've used over here.

EDIT: The National Center for Supercomputing Applications notes on its website that the PAL method results in 'more stable and consistent hue' in colour TV pictures. If PAL is noted for consistent colour, it follows that those who use it would berate NTSC for being 'Not The Same Colour' or 'Never Twice the Same Colour'.

More consistent does not imply that NTSC is never the same color. It is just a gross exaggeration. I don't actually recall ever going "wow, she wears a different color shirt now!"

EDIT: Why? Because all TVs come with a hue adjustor that will fix it. That eliminates the "muddy" picture thing.