PAL and NTSC quality difference. Why on earth is there?

[Nesh]

I was thinking about this for some time.

Many of us in Europe have experienced the stupid black bars or the idiotic speed reduction in many PAL games especially in the old PSX era.

Now I wonder why on earth there was this difference from the beginning.

Normally there is either sacrifice in speed due to lower refresh rate on PAL TVs or they add black bars to keep the speed.

A great example of speed reduction was the Tekken series. Tekken1,2,3 were TOO slow on PAL PS1's. So slow you couldnt enjoy the freaking game. Now with Tekken5 we get to play all these 3 Tekken's on PAL signal, full screen, with no sacrifice on framerate. They run at 60fps. Tekken2 is even faster than the Arcade counterpart.

And I ask WHY ON EARTH COULDNT THEY DO THIS ON THE PS1?

Then we have MGS1. The PAL was slower despite that the NTSC version already run at 30fps. What prevented the game from running at the same speed?
Paradoxically other games ran at fullscreen with over 40fps. Motorhead was one example of this.

And today some games have almost no difference between PAL and NTSC output. Jak2,3 and R&C1,2,3 run at almost identcal speeds both at full screen. Wipeout Fusion is also full screen and 60fps. So why couldnt they make other games like the PAL version of DMC1, TTT and others faster and full screen at the same time?

Why on earth there is a difference in the first place

 

[London Geezer]

I was thinking about this for some time.

Many of us in Europe have experienced the stupid black bars or the idiotic speed reduction in many PAL games especially in the old PSX era.

Now I wonder why on earth there was this difference from the beginning.

Normally there is either sacrifice in speed due to lower refresh rate on PAL TVs or they add black bars to keep the speed.

A great example of speed reduction was the Tekken series. Tekken1,2,3 were TOO slow on PAL PS1's. So slow you couldnt enjoy the freaking game. Now with Tekken5 we get to play all these 3 Tekken's on PAL signal, full screen, with no sacrifice on framerate. They run at 60fps. Tekken2 is even faster than the Arcade counterpart.

And I ask WHY ON EARTH COULDNT THEY DO THIS ON THE PS1?

Then we have MGS1. The PAL was slower despite that the NTSC version already run at 30fps. What prevented the game from running at the same speed?
Paradoxically other games ran at fullscreen with over 40fps. Motorhead was one example of this.

And today some games have almost no difference between PAL and NTSC output. Jak2,3 and R&C1,2,3 run at almost identcal speeds both at full screen. Wipeout Fusion is also full screen and 60fps. So why couldnt they make other games like the PAL version of DMC1, TTT and others faster and full screen at the same time?

Why on earth there is a difference in the first place

Well to be honest i'm not too sure when we first got the choice over 50 and 60Hz here in Europe, so that would answer your question. I've never seen the option in PAL PS1 games, but i have missed most so i'm not the best to comment on this.
Without the option, games HAD to be converted from 60 to 50Hz and when devs wanted to cut corners, the results could be bad, as you described, as there are different levels of conversion, from bad (with slowdowns and/or borders) to very good, with no discernable difference between the two versions, unless seen side by side.

 

[Rolf N]

PAL is 50Hz, NTSC is 60Hz. You can't really rely on a PAL TV to accept 60Hz signals. The current crop generally can, but you'll still find warning texts on the boxes of "PAL60" games that they may not be compatible with straight PAL TVs. Almost all console games use vsync, and running something at 30fps but 50Hz is not possible with vsync. So the framerate changes along with the refresh rate.

Most NTSC games at 30fps get dropped to 25fps when converted to PAL. If the game speed changes in the process, that's an indication that the game measures time directly in frames, which can be a significant performance optimization for some stuff such as prebaked animation phases, or it can be part of the gameplay rules; I think Tekken is about frames.

Also, it's safe to say that American/Japanese developers at large didn't give a fuck about the PAL issue and just did the easiest possible solution, even if it broke the game. It is a cheap hack to base your timing on frames, but ... err ... who cares, right? That's what happened.

Black borders happen because PAL has more pixels, and thus requires more fill rate, especially the PAL60 variant.

 

[rounin]

Isn't PAL higher resolution than NTSC? Perhaps it was too big a difference for older consoles, which had games that ran the machine to its limits.

 

[London Geezer]

Isn't PAL higher resolution than NTSC? Perhaps it was too big a difference for older consoles, which had games that ran the machine to its limits.

Nope, as zeck said, it's because PAL is and will always be 50Hz instead on NTSC's 60Hz, which makes the many 30fps games run at the barely acceptable 25fps.

But no one answered my question, when did we start getting the option in PAL games to run then in 50Hz or 60Hz? Was it with the Dreamcast or did it start before then?

 

[Nesh]

But what annoies me is the fact that PAL games were "downgraded" when its clear they can both retain the framerate/speed and the full screen. If the problem is framerate so a 60fps NTSC/60hz game should be 30fps on PAL/50hz then I am sure they could have had a 30fps NTSC game run at exactly the same framerate on PAL.
Without stupid black bars

 

[hey69]

yup thats also one of the reasons. to make a perfect 1:1 game from ntsc to pal, they needed to use higher rez

 

[Rolf N]

Isn't PAL higher resolution than NTSC? Perhaps it was too big a difference for older consoles, which had games that ran the machine to its limits.

Yes. NTSC is 480 lines while PAL is 576 lines. If you want to maintain the same framerate, you're probably going over the edge on a tightly optimized game.

 

[London Geezer]

If the problem is framerate so a 60fps NTSC/60hz game should be 30fps on PAL/50hz then I am sure they could have had a 30fps NTSC game run at exactly the same framerate on PAL.

Huh? You cannot get 30fps on 50Hz screens, it's very simple. Unless you want constant screen tearing, which would never be acceptable for release.
So it's 25fps for PAL versions of 30fps NTSC games.

 

[Nesh]

Huh? You cannot get 30fps on 50Hz screens, it's very simple. Unless you want constant screen tearing, which would never be acceptable for release.
So it's 25fps for PAL versions of 30fps NTSC games.

But forsaken and motorhead run above 30fps on PAL. Rascal on PS1 was 60fps if I remember well....on PAL.

And thats what exactly find weird
With no choice between 50 and 60hz

And Tekken1,2,3 on T5 are playied at 50hz as well. Only running at 60fps

 

[22psi]

No idea why there is a difference! But I hope with all the hdtvs coming out that there will be more consistency.

 

[London Geezer]

But forsaken and motorhead run above 30fps on PAL. Rascal on PS1 was 60fps if I remember well....on PAL.

And thats what exactly find weird
With no choice between 50 and 60hz

Nope, if they ran at 60fps in their NTSC versions, they ran at 50Hz in the PAL versions, which is totally fine.

 

[Nesh]

Nope, if they ran at 60fps in their NTSC versions, they ran at 50Hz in the PAL versions, which is totally fine.

You mean 50fps? You confused me

 

[London Geezer]

You mean 50fps? You confused me

Yep sorry. Pretty sure Tekken3 PAL ran at 50fps. Like TekkenTag PAL ran at 50fps. Just as an example.

50fps is totally fine unless you played the 60fps NTSC version, or have then side-by-side.

 

[Arwin]

Nope, as zeck said, it's because PAL is and will always be 50Hz instead on NTSC's 60Hz, which makes the many 30fps games run at the barely acceptable 25fps.

But no one answered my question, when did we start getting the option in PAL games to run then in 50Hz or 60Hz? Was it with the Dreamcast or did it start before then?

I remember several games from the Atari ST/Amiga era offering this option, including a favorite I just mentioned in another thread, Blood Money from Psychnosis. I can't really remember if there were PSX games that supported it, though.

But london-boy, he is partly right - the black borders often have to do with the resolution. PAL has a higher resolution than NTSC, and sometimes this is actually used to good effect, or at least games used the full PAL framebuffer. In theory it should always be possible, because as you render fewer frames per second, you should be able to gain some bandwidth. Sometimes however, not, and this is when we get ugly black borders in the PAL game (the NTSC game simply not filling the whole TV screen).

This could well be why (I think) European gamers have been more sensitive to 60fps games like Gran Turismo, as they tended to work out much better - they'd be running at 50fps rather than 25fps. Everything below 30fps counts double, so to speak.

Does anyone remember that Sony touted the PS2 as solving this problem by running at a much higher fps internally, and then downscaling this to either 50 or 60 fps without much problems? I don't think that worked quite as beautifully as they presented it back then, but certainly things were much, much better for us Europeans on the PS2 than they were on the PSX. At least, that's been my personal experience.

@22psi: yes, for the refresh rate that should help, as all HDtvs should support at least 60, and sometimes also 50 or 72 (I think that should be the preferred rate eventually as it's a perfect 3x24 which is great for movies).

But sadly enough, the resolutions are still different somewhat (though not too much this time).

 

[London Geezer]

But london-boy, he is partly right - the black borders often have to do with the resolution. PAL has a higher resolution than NTSC, and sometimes this is actually used to good effect, or at least games used the full PAL framebuffer. In theory it should always be possible, because as you render fewer frames per second, you should be able to gain some bandwidth. Sometimes however, not, and this is when we get ugly black borders in the PAL game (the NTSC game simply not filling the whole TV screen).

He is totally right about the borders yes, i think i was only covering the speed thing. Not the drug.

 

[London Geezer]

@22psi: yes, for the refresh rate that should help, as all HDtvs should support at least 60, and sometimes also 50 or 72 (I think that should be the preferred rate eventually as it's a perfect 3x24 which is great for movies).

But sadly enough, the resolutions are still different somewhat (though not too much this time).

Yep, all TVs sold in Europe as HD-Ready (our equivalent of HDTV in the US) must be able to accept and display 50Hz and 60Hz.

 

[Colourless]

Something that must be remembered about PAL-60 is that it's 480 Lines at 60 HZ with a PAL colour carrier. Not really all that different to NTSC from a programmers point of view.

 

[mrboo]

We get black bars because of a sloppy port, PAL is slightly higher resolution then NTSC. PAL if i remember correctly has an extra 100 lines of video imformation compared to NTSC, now a developer has to make up for these extra lines when they release the game in PAL treritories and they have 2 options :

1. Recode the engine to PAL standard ( The best option for quality )
2. Add black bars at the top and bottom of the screen ( These black bars are 50 horiozontal lines each top and bottom of the display )

Thats why there is also 2 verions of progressvie scan, 480p ( NTSC ) and 576p ( PAL )

Hope this helps

 

[pipo]

I thought it had something to do with the fact most sets over here originally only accepted PAL50, but when due to mass production and world wide distribution the cost of implementing both standards came down (Brazil or Argentina or something use PAL60) it didn't matter anymore.

Didn't some Saturn games have the option to switch to 60Hz? Dreamcast for sure.

You can see the number of lines dropping by the way when you switch from PAL50 to PAL60 (but I thought it was 625 VS 525?). There's more space between them...