PAL60 support, capture cards and TBC?
 

Hi,

I was messing around with the devices I had and I thought I would open a thread regarding this.

The thread is only meant as a discussion, for the sake of science, but I would not recommend capturing PAL60 as a main method to capture NTSC, it is just a hacky workaround to play NTSC, you should prefer using a real NTSC VCR.

Can anyone confirm or disprove the following statements if they have different results?

I have attached samples for the interesting cases.

Capture cards:

• ATI 600 can bypass macrovision on PAL/NTSC, and it can record PAL60 (poorly), but it cannot record PAL60 protected with Macrovision.
• ATI AIW USB will add a green bar at the bottom if no Macrovision, it will freeze if the tape has macrovision (in PAL, NTSC, PAL60, whatever)
  
• Pinnacle 510/710 has no PAL60 in crossbar but they have an NTSC433, but selecting this will only give Black and white picture, no colors... Any one was able to record PAL60 with pinnacle cards?
  
• IO-Data GV USB works great with PAL 60, gives great picture quality, works with amarecTV or virtualDub (if you have the right combination of OS/drivers version).
  
• Hauppauge USB live 2, will do PAL 60 fine in the official software, but it will not work with virtualDub nor amarecTV... it will give a weird screen with green dots, or black and white picture at best if you keep switching back and forth from other standards to PAL 60 [see attachement] (btw on one of my computers -win 10- the hauppauge capture software has no PAL60 option which is why in the attached video I switch from an external tool, on my other computer -win7- the hauppauge capture software has pal60 option, but the same issue happens there, only the software can capture pal 60, amarect and vd will get weird green dots or b&w).

Timebase correctors and PAL60:

• Datavideo tbc-1000 won't work with PAL60
• Datavideo tbc-3000 (set on PAL) will accept pal 60 in and outputs "corrected" PAL but with extra BS for 96 pixels (576-480) at the bottom to be cropped later
  
• Cypress devices (TBC and standard converters CDM):
  They do have an N4 (NTSC4.43) option, so I would expect that to work...
  
  • Still, when I pick N4 on my cypress TBC it outputs B&W only (like pinnacle on ntsc433)
    
  • Cypress standard converters (CDM), will accept PAL 60, but you have to set input as PAL (not as N nor N4), and output to NTSC (preferably). The output will be true NTSC (converted) with colors and relatively very good picture quality.

Conclusion:

It seems I expect n433 to work with PAL60, but I guess my understanding of n433 is wrong since it seems to only do pal60 as B&W.
Any comments on the Hauppauge's weird behavior is welcome.
The GV io data USB 2, has given me acceptable results and earned a spot as my best card for PAL60.

ATI 600 USB does not ignore anti-copy on NTSC, and the signal skews or freezes.

Aside from that, all I can say is .... interesting. :cool:

Do you want a TBC to be able to accept PAL60, and output NTSC? Is there a need for it in the Europe conversion scene? Noting it's probably diminished from the 00s-10s. As you properly state, it's terribly hacky, better is true PAL or NTSC playback and capture.

Why even talk about PAL60 or NTSC50 ? just avoid VCR's or recorders that output this, there are combo's or recorders that can be set to the correct tv system, because they also burn DVD's in PAL or NTSC, …..with the progressive mode over component video out, you can defeat macrovision, work flow is easy, nitpicking: yes, deinterlacing on the fly is not as good as in post, but this way macrovision is gone.

> ATI 600 USB does not ignore anti-copy on NTSC, and the signal skews or freezes.

Oh true, I did not wait long enough when I tested the ATI 600 with a native NTSC copy-protected video, The skewing may take up to 1 minute to appear. ATI AIW and ATI 600 will freeze, skew respectively if the content is protected, regardless of the standard.

Not necessarily, my goal was simply to evaluate what happens with existing devices because I have been asked these questions about PAL60 frequently.
They're often cases of a guy with 50 PAL tapes, and 5-15 NTSC tapes, who wants to get by without importing an NTSC vcr.

I don't think there is a need for it big enough to justify its existence. Especially that people looking at PAL60 to begin with are people on budget, so not the type of people to buy TBCs...

I don't know any TBC that handle it a lot of dvd-recorders fro Pioneer, and ones from Sony sharing internals with them (at least ones sold in europe and australia, not sure about US ones) accept PAL60 and NTSC 4.43 input and can output as either standard NTSC or PAL60, or Component or HDMI. NTSC 4.43 is preferable over PAL60 if you have the alternative as the latter involve color conversion while the former is just putting the color at a different frequency to normal - some VCRs and Sony 8mm camcorders are switchable. They also have some horizintal stabilization capability though not as powerful as panasonic dvd-recorders. At least some PAL macrovision tapes cause brightness flickering on the output. Not sure if it's the case with all copy protected PAL tapes or NTSC tapes with copy protection.

They also have some reaction to certain in-vcr tbcs like the one in the NV-HS1000 when there is no signal on the tape with the result being it outputting a wrong tv system message but I've only seen that happen in that specific combination when there was no signal on tape, not the TBC on JVC SVHS decks.

Models are afaik Pioneer DVR-_3_ and newer, Sony RDR-HX_5_ and newer (check manual if there is PAL/NTSC setting if unsure, Sony model numbers can be a bit confusing). The older Sonys are completely different with different hardware and they also had one or two US models that are different.

So that is a budget option to get by for non-MV NTSC tapes in PAL land. Panasonic dvd-recorders from the DMR-ES10/EH50 lineup and on also accept NTSC though only standard NTSC so need at least a multi-system VCR (you don't need the full converting "worldwide" models, just one with ntsc 3.58 output) to use those which aren't too uncommon but less common than a PAL VCR with NTSC playback.

EDIT: And yeah as noted, the Panasonic DVD-recorder/VCRs like the DMR-ES30, ES35 etc also handle NTSC tapes and come with built in panasonic dvd-recorder stabilization. Using component progressive mode doesn't disable copy protection though at least not on ones I've tested but not all capture cards care about copy protect flag on component out. My ES30 seemed to not exhibit brightness fluctuation when playing a PAL MV tape unlike what I've gotten on pass-through with dvd-recorders at least so if the capture device doesn't care about copy protection that might work. That was not the case with my LG dvd-recorder combo - not sure what that does with NTSC.

Just to add a detail on this,

EH50 on PAL mode, with PAL60 input, will behave a bit like the AIW/tbc3000 above, it will output PAL with an extra blank space at the bottom.

For what it is worth my Happague USB live 2 worked fine with PAL_60 in virtualdub on Windows 11. I think this may be due to there being multiple skews of the same device. I am guessing the only true way to know is by opening the device.

SKU (stock keeping unit), not skew.

I've said this for years. Hauppauge is extremely guilty of sharing model numbers, and long-lived cards always have mid-production changes with them (and others; and beyond even just capture cards, or even video gear).

The reason is precisely because of the SKU, and marketing. Maintaining existing shelf space, or warehouse/Amazon space, is vastly easier than bringing new product to market (due to minor changes, or even major changes), especially when commoditizing your own products. Add to this how some vendors must pay for the shelf space. Plus you don't want clearance out extant product, as opposed to natural attrition and depletion of the now-NOS inventory. And with streamlined existing ad/marketing/PR, no need to craft new campaigns.

This works great for the manufacturers, but the consumer is left ignorant to these behind-the-scenes machinations.

Stuff like this is actually discussed on Shark Tank, if you pay attention. Or for the more learned, by reading business textbooks and case studies.

Yep SKU sorry I deserved a rinsing for that one. Very shady business tactics.

Out of interest, how were these practices being discussed on Shark Tank. What was the general consensus regarding this?

On Shark Tank, it's really more of comments here and there, never a detailed discussion. And since the show is about making money, it's just treated like a normal activity. It's about as savory as them often wanting to shift operations to China/India/etc (more in early seasons, not so much now), so the Euro-American company can make more money from the Euro-American demographic. It really does expose some of the shitty side of business and PE/VC investing, and yet it's brief and shuffled aside, so most without business experience just completely miss what was said.