Want to Buy PAL TV

[grandta13]

I'm not sure whether this should go in Buy/Sell/Trade or not since this doesn't directly relate to gaming. If a moderator thinks it should go there, then please feel free to move it.

I am looking to buy a cheap PAL TV for playing PAL games on. SCART would be nice, but composite is all I'm really looking for. I would prefer a CRT, but considering shipping costs, I would settle for a small LCD panel.

I would be willing to buy from a RacketBoy member, or from a third party source. I live in the US. If you would like to make me a direct offer, please PM me, otherwise please post your comment below.

EDIT: I am willing to buy from overseas, if the shipping doesn't kill the price.

[emwearz]

In Australia (PAL Zone), pretty much every TV made from the 90's onwards was PAL/NTSC, was this not the case in the states?

[grandta13]

In Australia (PAL Zone), pretty much every TV made from the 90's onwards was PAL/NTSC, was this not the case in the states?

Unfortunately, the US has always used NTSC exclusively. We never even got RGB SCART as a standard; the first RGB standard in the US was component.

[Cronozilla]

It's pretty difficult to find PAL TVs in the US.
I would imagine it's because the entire North American continent used NTSC.

SCART support here is ludicrously rare to find. Basically, someone would have had to have imported it when it was relevant.

I wish you good luck, grandta13!

[skate323k137]

You'd probably be better off hunting down a sony PVM that supports PAL/NTSC. Most of the medical ones do, like the pvm 20M2MDU. Added bonus of being amazing monitors. It's expensive enough to ship a CRT in the states, I couldn't imagine international shipping.

Depending where you are, PVMs can be hard to come by, but I'd imagine it'll be a lot easier than a "normal" PAL set to find in the states.

[grandta13]

You'd probably be better off hunting down a sony PVM that supports PAL/NTSC. Most of the medical ones do, like the pvm 20M2MDU. Added bonus of being amazing monitors. It's expensive enough to ship a CRT in the states, I couldn't imagine international shipping.

I've considered getting a PVM, but the problem that I've encountered is that the 'cheap' ones tend to display no more than 400 lines on the high end; a problem I've had in the past when using PAL games on NTSC systems is that lines will be missing, sometimes making things like text and ammo counts unreadable. While some PVMs may be able to display up to 625 lines, they would likely cost well over $100 USD.
And the cost to ship a CRT is why I would settle for a cheap LCD panel. (It has occurred to me that some people may think of the wrong kind of TV when I mention an LCD panel; this is the type of cheap panel I'm talking about:
I'm not looking for anything fancy; I just want something that will give me a decent picture without having to buy expensive converter boxes.

[skate323k137]

a 400TVL CRT is still going to look way better than any flat panel trying to display SD resolution (barring an expensive upscaler)

And trust me, lines won't be "missing." The TVL (Television Lines) spec is very confusing.

What it means is how many vertical lines, alternating black/white, it can display in a horizontal space equal to the height of the monitor. What this means for 4:3 displays is that it can actually display more than 400 vertical lines across the width of the monitor, since the width is greater than the height.

for a 480i or 240p signal, you won't be missing anything. It'll still be as good, or better than, a consumer grade TV set. Even a cheap PVM is still a PVM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_lines

[grandta13]

a 400TVL CRT is still going to look way better than any flat panel trying to display SD resolution (barring an expensive upscaler)

Granted I haven't seen one used in years, but does that hold true to those old LCDs that only accepted an SD signal?

[theclaw]

I wouldn't be surprised if some TVs have undocumented PAL support.
Not like there's much benefit to willfully strip it from an existing video decoder.

My Sanyo DP42841 HDTV accepts 576p50, 720p50, and 1080p50 via HDMI, if the XRGB mini's options behave right. None of which its online manual mentions.

But I haven't yet tried direct SD content.

[skate323k137]

a 400TVL CRT is still going to look way better than any flat panel trying to display SD resolution (barring an expensive upscaler)

Granted I haven't seen one used in years, but does that hold true to those old LCDs that only accepted an SD signal?

If the native resolution of the panel was SD (not HD) then it would probably look OK. I can't think of one that is though.