PAL/NTSC Blu-ray quality differences ?

[Davieboy]

Hi
Just a quick question i live in the Uk and i have occasionally been buying US films from Play.com.
Is there any difference in picture quality between a Uk Blu ray disc and a US a disc. As i know the Uk works of Pal and the US is NTSC and i was just wondering that my Tv has to decode the NTSC signal so is it losing quality.
Should i just wait for the Uk relases to get the best picture quality.

[Davieboy]

Hi
I have been buying some blu rays from the states
I want to get the best picture quality
I know the US is Ntsc and Uk Pal
Is it worth me waiting to buy Uk discs to get the better picture quality or dosent it matter.

[katharsis]

There is no such thing as NTSC and Pal on Blu-rays.
The only thing you have to watch out for is the 3 region codes (A,B,C).

[HumanMedia]

However many extras are in 480i and 576i which do correlate to NTSC and PAL and these may not play on some players (like PAL extras not playing on a Region A PS3).

However if all the extras are in 1080P then you dont need to worry.

[Blaumann]

Originally Posted by Davieboy

Hi
Just a quick question i live in the Uk and i have occasionally been buying US films from Play.com.
Is there any difference in picture quality between a Uk Blu ray disc and a US a disc. As i know the Uk works of Pal and the US is NTSC and i was just wondering that my Tv has to decode the NTSC signal so is it losing quality.
Should i just wait for the Uk relases to get the best picture quality.

The vast majority of releases on both sides of the Atlantic are encoded in 1080p24. If your BD player and HDTV can play UK BD's, then they will also play most (all region) US BD's. There is no more PAL/NTSC regarding the HD content. In many cases the actual HD film will also come from the same master, so there isn't any quality difference between a UK and a US BD.

Extras in SD have been mentioned by the fellow forum members, depending on the player/gear these might not work.

There are very rare instances with exceptions to the rule, like if a different (better) master has been used. Also some odd releases might feature something like 1080i50. But your region B player will more than likely be able to play that, something that can't be said for all most region A players i am afraid.

[DrXym]

Originally Posted by Davieboy

Hi
I have been buying some blu rays from the states
I want to get the best picture quality
I know the US is Ntsc and Uk Pal
Is it worth me waiting to buy Uk discs to get the better picture quality or dosent it matter.

Movie content is usually going to be 1080p 24fps so it doesn't matter. If you were to view it on an SD set it would be downscaled either way. A PAL player might also speed up the content by 4% in SD. Some supplementary content might be in NTSC or PAL depending on region.

[Konrad]

I personally prefer US releases even though I am in Europe. However, extra features on European BD's won't play on US players if they are PAL which is often the case. Also 50 fps HD content won't play on many US machines including my Panny. It works the other way round, though: Extra features on US BD's play fine on European machines as they don't have a problem with NTSC. They also play 60 fps content like the recent release of "Manon" by DG without problems.

[4K2K]

I have a related question:
The same LCD TV makers make both USA and European models of TV. The USA ones don't work with 50hz content (function disabled?) but the European ones can play both 50hz and 60hz content. Internally though, are the European LCDs running at 50hz or 60hz - can they really switch between running at both or, for LCDs is it irrelevant - maybe it's the refresh rate of the liquid crystals that's more important (like 4ms/6ms/8ms?) or, iternally do they convert everything to either 50hz or 60hz?

If I watched 24p content on a 120hz USA LCD HDTV and the equivalent European LCD HDTV (which would be advertised as 100hz), would both look identical? What about 60i content? Is 50i content on a normal (ie. not 100hz) European LCD HDTV really running at 50hz? Is it a similar thing with plasma?