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RE: In many cases you are right, but in many DVD are better than that.

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Christine Tham

In Reply to: RE: In many cases you are right, but in many DVD are better than that. posted by Ole Lund Christensen on February 23, 2008 at 13:11:42

I own nearly 2000 DVDs, from Regions 1-4.
I have compared hundreds of Region 2 and 4 DVDs with their Region 1 counterparts. My reviews are posted on www.michaeldvd.com.au.
Apart from a few exceptions, my experience is that Region 1 NTSC DVDs tend to have superior audio and video quality, compared to Region 2/4 PAL DVDs.
There are a few other sites doing these comparisons. You will find on most of these sites, the reviews concur with my experience. Many include screenshots from the Region 1 and 2/4 discs and you can clearly see the difference (in many cases less macro-blocking, less mosquito noise, less HF filtering, often better colour/contrast for the NTSC transfers).
The reason why Region 1 tend to have better transfers is because of bitrate. NTSC has lower resolution so if both NTSC and PAL are encoded at the same bitrate, NTSC will have less encoding artefacts. Plus, Region 1 DVDs tend to have fewer audio tracks, so the video track is encoded at higher bitrates compared to PAL. A typical PAL DVD tend to have multiple language tracks (English, Frech, German, Hungarian, Polish, ...).
As for the 4% speedup, as I mentioned, this occurs on all transfers that originate from 24fps film. Yeah, there might be a few concerts and documentaries based on 50Hz sources, but these are very much in the minority. If most of your collection consist of these sources, well, good on you. Me, I prefer watching transfers from film.

Edits: 02/23/08

Follow Ups:

Your "Boss" have written a very nice guide to PAL and NTSC - Ole Lund Christensen 07:33:52 02/24/08 (1)
He seems to agree with me.

Mainly due to the NTSC 3:2 pulldown problem.

Among Pro TV and Film people I have never heard anyone prefer the "Never Twice the Same Colour" format.

So I am puzzled with your experience. Please give a few names of DVDs.
Using two discs reduce the space problem.

The 4% is a problem. But playing back at 24fps solve that.

And Mozart used an A of 422 Hz, not the 440 Hz we often use today. The A have moved a lot in the history of music, and 422Hz is 4% below 440 Hz.

So these is not an absolute A, it is a compromise.

see link for Michaels view on PAL/NTSC
- http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALvsNTSC/PALvsNTSC.asp (Open in New Window)
- Sorry for taking so long to respond - Christine Tham 18:42:05 03/22/08 (0)
  Last two weeks have been fairly busy for me.
  
  First of all, Michael is not my *boss*.
  
  Secondly, I don't quite see how the article implies "... seems to agree with me.". The article clearly states that it depends on many factors.
  
  The point is if you actually sat down and compared NTSC (R1) vs PAL (R2,R4) titles side by side, as opposed to arguing about theoretical differences, then you can see that typically R1 DVDs tend to have superior picture quality to R2/R4. I have previously suggested that you actually read my reviews (there are hundreds on them on michaeldvd).
  
  For additional information, please refer to the following link which contains comparisons, together with screenshots. You will find on most of the comparisons, R1 picture quality wins.
  - DVD comparisons between R1 and R2/R4 (Open in New Window)

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