Posted by Jukka Aho on 10/13/06 20:28

Edward wrote:

>> Since you said you're from an NTSC country but would be using the
>> player while travelling in Europe, it probably doesn't really
>> matter, though. Reasonably modern [1] European tv sets will
>> typically accept and display both PAL and NTSC signals. [...]
>> If you're visiting little old ladies that have steam-powered tv
>> sets from the 80s, those could be a problem. But sets manufactured
>> after about 1995 (or so) are usually NTSC-compatible.

> No little old ladies.
> Mostally hotels and realitives.

Hotels often set up their TV sets in a special "hotel mode" where some
adjustments, such as retuning the channels, are locked down. They may
also equip the sets with a restricted, dumbed-down "hotel remote" that
does not have all of the buttons that could be found on the standard
remote. In the worst case, the tv sets themselves may be special models
that do not have AV connectors at all (besides the RF input), or the
remote may not allow switching the signal source to the AV connector.

That's not _usually_ the case - I've been to hotel rooms in Sweden,
Latvia, Germany, and France and managed to connect my camcorder to the
house tv set in all of them - but be prepared for surpises.

Another thing you should be prepared for is that the primary AV
connector on European tv sets is the ubiquitous SCART socket:

<http://www.racenight.me.uk/img/scart%20connection.jpg>
<http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/CDE/SCART.GIF>
<http://x6.no/images/articles/scart-tv.jpg>
<http://www.mediawrite.ie/scart.jpg>

SCART cables and sockets are used on VCRs, TV sets, DVD players, set-top
boxes, game consoles, etc. If a given AV device - such as a camcorder -
for some reason does not have a SCART socket on it (the size of the
SCART connector is usually an issue in camcorders and the like), it will
at least come with an adapter (or an adapter cable) that has the SCART
connector on the other end.

Since portable DVD players - at least those sold in the US - are not
likely to have SCART sockets on them, and they are not likely to come
with SCART adapters or adapter cables, either, you would probably want
to buy something like this as soon as you arrive in Europe:

<http://www.com-tra.de/img/p/scart_adapter.jpg>
<http://www.cosh.ag/pics/thumbs/mgaud303.jpg>
<http://www.tvcables.co.uk/images/items/scadap.jpg>
<http://www.hifi-regler.de/scart/scart-adapter.jpg>

These kind of adapters are usually readily available in all stores which
sell consumer electronics, such as tv sets and camcorders.

Some European tv sets may only have SCART connectors on them. Some
others may have SCART sockets and additional, secondary input
connectors - such as front-panel mini-DIN (s-video) and RCA (composite
video) AV jacks for temporarily connecting a camcorder or a digital
still camera.

If plain RCA (composite video) or mini-DIN (s-video) connectors are
available, you can naturally connect the DVD player (or the camcorder?)
to the tv set directly, without an adapter, but a SCART adapter will
probably come handy sooner or later.

* * *

Note that if you use the s-video input connector on a SCART adapter,
some sets will recognize the s-video signal automatically, but others
must be switched into s-video mode manually, which is typically done
using the on-screen menus. If the tv set is set in the wrong mode, you
will usually see a black & white picture, or a picture with strangely
distorted colors.

Some sets may also have additional restrictions about the s-video
signal. For example, a set which only has a single SCART socket may not
necessarily support s-video at all (but it may support RGB signal
through that SCART socket.) TV sets which have two or more SCART sockets
typically either designate one or more of them for RGB, and others for
S-video, or let the user change the signal type between RGB and S-video
from a menu.

All SCART sockets on a normal tv set support composite video, so that's
your fallback if you can't get s-video to work.

You can read more about the SCART connector on these pages:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scart>
<http://pinouts.ru/Home/Scart_pinout.shtml>
<http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/eprebel/SoundAnd
Vision/Engineering/SCART.html>

--
znark

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