Camcorder Question: Different systems

[pardal51]

Hi guys,

I know zilch of camcorders, therefore help is much appreciated.

Basically my in-laws asked me to buy Sony Handycam HDR-PJ200E. System in Europe is PAL. They live in Brazil where the system is PAL-M, i.e., different. Their TV is a Philips 40PFL6615D/78

From my understanding they will not be able to plug the camcorder to the TV using the mini-hmdi port as it will be incompatible and the image might be garbage only. However they will be able to play the record on computer or plug computer via HDMI port.

What about copying the record from SDcard to blank DVD and playing from a DVD player? Would that work or would it be the same as plugging in the camcorder to TV?

Help is much appreciated.

Cheers

[Funkstar]

As far as I am aware, and I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, there isn't a problem with PAL/PAL-M/SECAM/NTSC with HD footage as there was with SD.

The HD specification is a lot more like how computer deal with video than TVs used to. The only thing that complicates is the different frame rates that are used throughout the world and in cinema. But then TV's are a lot more like computer monitors and can cope with just about everything you throw at them too.

it might be different if you recorded in SD on the camera and wanted to show it on a PAL or NTSC TV, but then what camcorders often do these days is record in a more universal resolution and then just adjust it on the fly for the output format you select in the menus. This kind of processing used to be difficult, but it's a no brainer to do in camera these days.

edit looking at the camcorder spec and the TV spec, you see that they can both handle a range of frame rates, 24, 25 and 30 being the key ones. (24 for cinema, 25/50 for PAL, 30/60 for NTSC). Colour encoding isn't an issue these days, nor is pixel shape (HD uses square pixels, SD footage uses rectangular pixels which was just a nightmare to work with).

[pardal51]

Hi Funk,
thanks for your reply...I will do some more research on that...but believe you are right

cheers