00:00now here's a piece of shall we say retro tech that used to come in handy when
00:05needed it's the what is it it's the com world digital video converter system
00:13sold by world gift center Inc yeah this one's model number is CMD 850 what does
00:21this say digital video converter system NTSC to PAL conversion 525 to 625 line
00:27AC cam to PAL conversion 625 to 625 lines AC cam PAL to NTSC conversion 625 to
00:36525 line yeah now those of you who have absolutely no idea what this was for
00:43there used to be a time television standards was a thing also called
00:48television formats there was PAL and NTSC PAL and its own resolution NTSC at its
00:55own resolution and also frame rate but yeah I know many people used to have
01:02these stories about say they are from England or from South Africa and they
01:08travel to America and they buy themselves there all these nice videos that they
01:14don't find in their own countries and they bring them back to their countries
01:18and then their own video machines and televisions will not play back those
01:23videos it just shows all scrambled signals and whatnot and sometimes they
01:29didn't understand what are tapes faulty but I know it's because those videos
01:35were recorded in NTSC and their home countries use PAL so that was usually
01:40people's nasty introduction to television standards was there a way to convert NTSC
01:47NTSC to PAL or PAL to NTSC yes there was devices like this could do that let me
01:53show you here what it looks like what you would do there's the back of it first of
02:00all there's the switch I love these old switches or well not old necessarily but I
02:09do love these shiny metal switches that sort of have like a little pin that you
02:15push up you hear when it goes yeah it just feels like a real switch I don't
02:22like all these other switches that you just press and you don't know did you
02:26press it or didn't it to you it doesn't make a sound or whatever anyway what you
02:31would do is you see there's an S video and an RCA input and there's an RCA and an S
02:39video output so what you would do is you take your source video the one that you
02:45want to convert say it is PAL and you would plug it in there or there or there
02:51and then on the top you would select let me just stand closer and then here on the
02:58top you would select see there's your input usually it could be selected
03:03automatically okay but there's not a signal now but anyway you will select it
03:10if it selects it wrong yeah it won't go to auto now but anyway and then there's
03:16your output switch you select you want it PAL or PAL-M or PAL-N or NTSC 3.58 or
03:25NTSC 4.43 yeah that's how you would select your in and out signals and then
03:34this device will send out the signal that you selected NTSC or PAL or whatever
03:39well yeah that's basically all you can select the NTSC or PAL different NTSCs
03:45and different PALs yeah I don't even know what the difference was between those
03:50those various PALs and the various NTSCs NTSC 3.58 was basically the most
03:56common one but then of course you need a VCR or a DVD recorder that can record
04:02that NTSC signal you also cannot record that with your PAL VCR or DVD recorder
04:09yeah what was also just important to know is that if you plug in a source into your RCA in it will
04:17come out of the RCA out you cannot then expect the signal to come out of the S
04:23video if your source went in there if you wanted the better quality S video out
04:30then you should plug it plug your source in also into the S video in quite a nice
04:39little device nifty device the quality of the conversion was quite good for the
04:45price range what it did is for example if you want to convert PAL to NTSC is it would sort
04:52of like blend different frames together to make up the difference in the frame rate because for
04:58NTSC you would need 29 point I don't even remember what almost 30 frames per second but
05:05not quite so the machine had to make 25 frames per second 29 point something frames per second and
05:12it did that quite well quite smooth motion it blended some frames into each other so that you would still
05:18get smooth enough motion when you converted the frame rate the video quality it was okay I couldn't
05:28complain although if you say for example you had computer graphics or something that really had bright
05:35colors it wouldn't come out that bright if for example you had a lime green bright lime green character
05:43it would come out a much darker green darker dull green in the NTSC converted signal or yeah bright red
05:52would sometimes come out sort of like a more dull maroon but yeah it basically got the job done this
06:00machine wasn't much to complain about unless you wanted to spend a lot more on a lot fancier
06:06equipment this thing did have its uses and it did a good enough job I would say not really network
06:14broadcast quality but for home use it was more than adequate personally I just used it for conversion
06:22first of videos and later of DVDs so that I could send them to my overseas friends or business colleagues
06:29but today of course that's all history now usually we just send everything over the internet and
06:36nobody has problems watching different standards NTSC or PAL I mean resolutions are now basically
06:43standardized HD is always 1920 by 1080 and 4k is always 3840 by 2160 if I'm not mistaken doesn't matter if
06:57it's in PAL or NTSC the frame rate might still differ but yeah basically as far as I know all digital
07:04televisions can play any video back now any video signal doesn't matter the resolution or the frame rate
07:12anymore so I suppose this is now just a nice piece of memories of the past and it struggles all right
07:21thanks for watching please remember to like this video and if you have not done yet so hit the subscribe
07:30button below I'll see you in the next one
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