Posted by Meng on 01/27/06 12:27

Mik F wrote:
> Folks,
>
> As a long time lurker (few lunchtimes are complete without a quick
> visit to u.m.d and u.m.h-c,) I've noticed that there's a huge drop-off
> in requests for region comparisons.
>
> I was curious as to whether this was down to people googling for the
> results or whether it was more to do with the studios 'wising up' and
> releasing virtually identical discs worldwide in order to 'protect
> their territorial markets' hem hem.
>
> At the risk of reopening a can of worms, if price were the only real
> differential between US R1 and UK R2 on any given disc, would you be
> prepared to wait a week extra for delivery in order to save a quid or
> two?
>
> This is essentially the situation I'm facing with regard to a few films
> and TV series I've been meaning to get for a while now, and the only
> thing that keeps nagging at me is the old issue of NTSC vs PAL.
>
> Putting aside the 'PAL speedup' and 'NTSC pulldown' arguments, I think
> it's true to say that regardless of this NTSC and PAL differ in the
> number of scan lines available in the vertical axis of the screen; NTSC
> has 480, PAL has 576.
>
> This would seem to suggest that PAL has more information / detail in a
> 'screen' than the equivalent NTSC frame, or is this just true for
> broadcast images?
>
> If the R2 PAL film has better resolution in this respect it would seem
> to be a better bet but I suppose this might also be affected by the
> overall compression / bit rate of the disc itself.
>
> Thoughts and opinions?
>
>

Don't forget the good ol' BBFC. They may not be as bad as they used to
be but they still snip stuff they shouldn't.

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