We here at JC's Collectibles receive numerous questions on a daily basis on the playability of our DVD's on DVD players in use throughout the world, we are hoping this guide will help answer any questions you may have.

Basically, National Television System Committee (NTSC) and Phase Alternating Line (PAL) are the difference in frames per second used by televisions in different parts of the world.

There are two television display systems in commercial use: PAL (commonly used in Europe and parts of Asia) which delivers a frame rate of 25 fps (frames per second), while NTSC (commonly used in the United States and Canada) delivers a frame rate of 30 fps.

The color information of the signal is also encoded differently. Most TVs decode the PAL or NTSC signal but the color information can possibly be lost and the picture may appear in black and white.

In the United States and Canada the system is NTSC
For VHS tapes you must have a VCR player that can read NTSC. Most European decks are "multi-scan" and can read NTSC. For DVD's, approximately 95% of the world's DVD players can read NTSC.

In Europe the system is PAL
For playing NTSC DVD's in Europe - all PAL DVD players output NTSC, and the majority of  PAL TV's will display NTSC with no problems.

DVD's
The encoded video Moving Picture Experts Group 2 (MPEG 2) on any DVD is stored in digital format, but it is also formatted NTSC or PAL. Some players play only NTSC discs, others play both PAL and NTSC discs. All DVD players sold in PAL countries play both kinds of discs. The majority of  NTSC players can't play PAL discs.

The three main differences between NTSC DVD's and PAL DVD's are:
1) Picture size and pixel aspect ratio (720x480 vs 720x576),
2) Display frame rate (30 vs 25),
3) Video from film is usually encoded at 24 fps but is preformatted for one of the two display rates. Movies formatted for PAL display are usually sped up by 4% at playback, so the audio must be adjusted accordingly before being encoded.

If you have any further questions please contact us at our eBay store JC's Collectibles your shopping home for quality brand new Factory Sealed DVD's at affordable prices.