Dvd burning NTSC vs PAL . Which is better?

[Room101]

What format is more compatible with most dvd players?

[CatWoman]

1. If I'm not mistaken, NTSC DVD's are made to play in Region 1 (USA)

players, while PAL formats are made to play in Region 2 (Europe, Japan) players.

[Kellanved]

3. nah, it's an orthogonal thing

The region codes are not directly linked to the format.

"NTSC" and "PAL" are not actually the issue anyway. Those are standards for color TV, but the problem is just the same with black and white. The real difference are the frequencies of the power grids, as those were used to synch the signal.

The US (and Japan and Brazil and ...) have a 60 Hz power grid , leading to 60 Hz TV. Europe has 50Hz power grids and thus 50Hz TV (at a better resolution). That difference is from b&w times.

The NTSC and PAL conception comes from analog video (VHS), where the color encoding was important. That's irrelevant with the DVD; nowadays it's just a resolution and refresh rate thing.

[Kellanved]

2. Whatever the source material uses

NTSC <-> PAL transcoding always leads to a loss in quality.

My personal experience is that many US TV sets are not able to display PAL (actually "625 lines at 50Hz" would be a better way to put it) and many DVD players try a (horrible) on-the-fly conversion.