Will VHS tape work.

[florida sun]

Hi There

I am after your help again, if you can. I have a friend in America who I promised, that I would tape tonights Brits awards and send it over for his teenage daughter to see. Now I am wondering if they can actually play our tapes over there. He did say their tapes were VHS but I remember when my daughter had a tape done in Disneyquest on the rollarcoaster simulator, when we got back, we could play it, but it was in black and white and not colour as it should have been. I am sure she will not mind watching it in black and white if that is the only problem. Do any of you have any ideas if it will work.
Thanks for any advice.

Sue

 

[AlanUK]

Hi Sue,

It all depends of whether the person you are sending it to has a VCR capable of playing PAL formatted recordings or not.

The standard for North America is to use the NTSC format and whilst a lot of the VCR's we can now purchase in europe are capable of playing NTSC formatted tapes I am not sure that US VCR's are so compatible with other formats.

I know that there are places in the US that will do a conversion so If the tape won't play then your friends could always take it to the processing shop and get it converted to NTSC.

I hope that helps.

Alan.

 

[florida sun]

Thanks Alan

That's great, I will get in touch with my friend and let him know.

Thanks for your help


Sue

 

[Miffy2003]

Sue,

Just to reassure you, we had a video taped in the US and converted to our format sent over to us by a friend in America and it works fine

I know it's the other way round but it does work!

Bye for now,

Karen

 

[florida sun]

Thanks Karen,

I knew you guys would be able to help

Cheers

Sue

 

[Andrew Bichard]

Hi Sue,

I am not sure that US VCR's are so compatible with other formats.

I know that there are places in the US that will do a conversion so If the tape won't play then your friends could always take it to the processing shop and get it converted to NTSC.

I hope that helps.

Alan.

I am reasonably certain that US VCR's won't play PAL tapes.

When we send tapes to my father in law in US, we get them transcribed to NTSC before sending them.

I use a video shop here in London that will carry out the conversion. If Sue sends me a private message, I will supply the contact phone number. You send them your PAL tape by post and they send you an NTSC tape.

Andrew

 

[Tron[ADS]]

Sue, as a couple have people have stated, its very likely not going to work. American VCR's do not have PAL facilities, of if any models do, they are few and far between. I know it was suggested that you send the tape to a company specialising in video conversions, but why don't you find someone who has a set top dvd recorder (pretty common nowadays), ask them to copy the tape over, then send your friend the disk. They will be able to play it on their PC easy enough, but would encounter the same problem if they tried to play it on a set top dvd player (for the same reasons as vhs).

 

[florida sun]

Many thanks to all of you for your help. I have spoken to my friend in the states and he is pretty sure that the video recorder he has just purchased is capable of playing pal. We are going to give it a try away, nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say. I am seeing him over there in August and so fingers crossed he does 'nt meet me with a useless tape in hand.

Thanks again


Sue

 

[Tron[ADS]]

I just dug a little deeper into this matter, and it would seem the matter is much more complicated than I first thought.
Whereas the majority of our UK TV's can handle NTSC signals, the opposite is true for US televisions. So, even if the VCR is a multi-system model, there is very little chance that the TV will be able to handle the PAL signal being sent to it. What you actualy need is a Multisystem VCR with a PAL-NTSC convertor built in (rather than one which will simply play and output PAL).
I found this specialist site, and as you can see from the link, there are only a handful of models offering this facility, and they arent cheap.
Sorry, but I reckon you've no chance unless your friend has one of these models.
Im not being overly negative, I just want to avoid you being dissapointed.

Anyway, heres the link I found.
http://www.dvdoverseas.com/store/index.html?catalog62_0.html

The "multisystem vcr's" are simply models that can be used all over the world - they do not perform video conversion. Its the convertor vcr's that do the job you need.