NTSC to PAL

[Apex]

Hey all,
Was reading a review last night over at some R4 site that moaned about the transfer because of "the usual problems of poor NTSC to PAL conversions" or something to that effect.

Anyone enlighten me as to what they mean? What problems arise in converting an NTSC transfer to a PAL one?

Many thanks

[SvenL]

If you have a inferior format like NTSC and convert it to a superior format like PAL (higher resolution, better colours, no 3:2 pulldown) you get a PAL picture that looks as bad as the NTSC one.
And the movie has been filmed at 24 frames-per-second, has then been converted to 29,97 frames-per-second which is NTSC standard by using the terrible 3:2 pulldown and has then been converted to 25 frames-per-second for PAL.
So it's obvious that this is really bad.

[GarethR]

I think it's important to point out that 525/60 is not an inherently "terrible" TV standard, and 625/50 isn't massively better.

The PAL picture is only very slightly improved by the extra lines (there aren't enough of them to make that much of a difference), and most people aren't bothered by 3:2 pulldown - indeed, lots of people find it less noticeable than the speeded-up audio on PAL versions of 24fps movies!

Where PAL unarguably scores over NTSC is its stability when it is transmitted. NTSC's poor reputation stems almost entirely from its shortcomings as a transmission standard - however, none of these shortcomings apply when you play an NTSC DVD directly into the AV inputs of your TV.

If you want to see a REAL night-and-day difference between TV standards, compare either NTSC or PAL to HDTV!

[Apex]

Originally posted by SvenL

And the movie has been filmed at 24 frames-per-second, has then been converted to 29,97 frames-per-second which is NTSC standard by using the terrible 3:2 pulldown and has then been converted to 25 frames-per-second for PAL.
So it's obvious that this is really bad.

First up, can we not get into a PAL vs NTSC argument... :)
That has been covered many times over in the past.

I was specifically wondering what the visible effects would be that would/could make it worse then the NTSC version?