DTT, PAL, NTSC oh my!

[mike.t]

Hi Everyone - I've spent all day trying to resolve my quandry but I'm still stuck so I hope you can help me out. I just moved from the USA to Spain and I brought with me my Magnavox LCD TV. I know, I know, its NTSC and Spain uses PAL...and therein lies the problem. Since spain is moving to DTT (TDT in spanish) I want to buy a set top box that will work with my ntsc TV. Or...do I even need to worry about all this ntsc vs. pal business? I mean, those are analog formats and they're on their way out. The set top boxes usually have scart and RCA jacks which I thought were for analog signals. So, they output an analog signal or is it digital? Will I need some sort of PAL to NTSC converter? help!

Cheers
Mike

[goggles]

You will need a pal to NTSC converter as the output of boxes as far as I know is analogue unless you have hdmi output then that is digital or so I have been told.

[video man]

The difference between PAL and NTSC is mainly the colour(color) content and also the sound spacing will be different so ypu will need to get a NTSC to PAL decoder between the STB(digital) to your set and it should work OK except your set works on 120 volts and europe works on 220 volts and at a different frequency 50 cycles vs 60 cycles

[luggagewarrior]

I'm surprised that the TV doesn't have a PAL / NTSC select option! Most devices that I've seen have it, even our titchy goodmans portable DVD. Presuming that theres a scart conn, then sound isn't a problem cos its at baseband and not 5.5 / 6MHz from vision carrier. It's just a case of converting to PAL.

[sinbrad]

Looking at the Magnavox site, the various LCD sets have different connections. Your set is NTSC only in the fact that the tuner is NTSC. The inputs that are on the set will accept other audio/video inputs. I don't know the specific model so can't comment on the particular connections. But if you have a standard red/white audio input that will accept the sound from a set box output regardless of the country region. You will then have most probably a yellow video input. With the correct output adapter from the set top box that will also give you video. SVHS (Svideo) should also be the same, as the colour output is direct and not as per country per say. You would only have to select one of the AV channels on your set to view/hear the output for the set top box. Don't look like any of the models have euroscart inputs

[video man]

Hi as a retired TV engineer the STB boxs use SCART with just a few using RF out, as to the NTSC set and as long as its connected via a voltage converter (230 to 120) it will work fine The only way to get the set to work using PAL is some videos have a switch which can be selected between PAL and NISC ;Yod can aslo buy a cheap version of a PAL to NTSC converter for about £30:00(st); If you look on the "Elektoe Site and you will fine it listed there and it users scart in and scart out by-passing the tuner and front end of the reciever as does all STBs