1.When you play back a VCD on a computer, does PAL or NTSC have anything to do with it, or is this only an issue when watching the VCD on a TV. 2.Can a computer in any country watch the VCD? 3.Can a PC watch it the same as a Mac would or would you have to convert the VDD in anyway? 4.If sending a VCD to many computers in many parts of the world would I need to add a player to the VCD so all could watch it? (This may be answered depending a the answer to question #3).

Thanks for your input.

Sincerely,

Eager learner

-- Dan Gillen (gillenfamily@yahoo.com), September 30, 2000

Answers

1. PAL/NTSC has little to do with playing a VCD on a PC. If your player application can do 25 or 29.97fps, can display 352x240/288, and has an MPEG-1 driver, you can play your VCD. Windows Media Player (at least the one bundled with Win98SE), for example, has these capabilities. Watching on a TV is a bit more complex. When the VCD player detects a 29.97fps/352x240 MPEG stream, it modulates the same such that an NTSC signal is present at the video output; it produces PAL when a 25fps/352x288 MPEG stream is detected. ALL VCD players I've encountered so far do this. The next important thing is therefore your TV set; it has to necessarily be able to play back NTSC and PAL properly (multi-system TVs). Most TVs in the US only play back NTSC properly; presented with a PAL signal, they produce a b/w picture, which may be the case when attempting to play a 25fps/352x288 VCD, for which the player will produce a PAL signal.

2. All properly configured Win98SE (for one) PCs with recent CD-ROM drives in any country will be able to play back VCDs, providing these VCDs themselves conform to White Book standards. This leaves out SVCDs (which use MPEG-2, and therefore need extra drivers for the same).

3. If both the MAC and PC have the s/w app with the appropriate driver installed, they will play back the VCD okay. I don't know what particular apps/drivers there are for the MAC, but for the PC see 1. above.

4. I guess 3. and 1. answers this.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), September 30, 2000.