what exactly is ntsc and pal? i know the US is ntsc and japan for instance is pal... but if i have an US dvd and play it in a US dvd player and hook it up to a japanese television, will it work?

 

no

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC

 

Japan uses NTSC. I think NTSC is slightly inferior to PAL

 

ntsc > *

 

Most PAL systems use 625 lines. NTSC (often lampooned by television engineers as Never Twice the Same Color) uses 525 lines. More lines = clearer picture.

 

hmm.. yeh, i guess japan does use ntsc:

"The NTSC standard has since been adopted by many other countries, for example most of the Americas and Japan."

i wonder why i was thinking they were pal?

 

You're talking about two different things here.

NTSC and PAL are two of the three major television transmission standards used around the world.

NTSC: National Television Systems Committee (the standard used in the US, Canada, Mexico, Central America and Japan, and developed by the committee of the same name in the US). 525 lines at a scanning rate of 30 frames per second.

PAL: Phase Alternating Line (the standard used in most of Europe, Africa, Asia and South America, with the notable exceptions of France and Russia). 625 lines at 25 frames per second.

SECAM: Sequence à Memoire (the standard used in France, Russia and a few other scattered countries). 441 lines at 25 frames per second.

However, whether a DVD will play on a given player or not depends not only on the television standard, but also on the region code. The various parts of the world have each been given a region code, as follows:

1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)

Unless you have an all-region disc or an all-region player (they do exist, but they're hard to find), the region code on the DVD has to match the region code on the player. A mismatch in the region code means that the disc won't play. It is not exactly a secret that many DVD players can be hacked to play discs from multiple regions (and in most countries, it's not illegal to do so). Instructions can be found all over the Internet.

This site will give you, probably, much more info than you would ever need to know about DVDs:

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

 

yeh, i know i was talking about 2 different things, but in my scenario, i will have a US DVD with a US DVD player, on a a Japanese TV, so regional coding is a non-issue. i'll check out that site though, thanks.

 

lol....france has a crappy standard. what else is new with them.

 

it will work fine.