davidlaska said:
I got it. Older TV will not work unless it is an uncommon multisystem.
They are uncommon in the U.S. In the rest of the world they are very common.
I don't know about Canada and Mexico, but my guess is that since France is
SECAM, the French part of Canada has some in stores, and that since Spain
is PAL, Mexico is the same way.
When I lived in the U.S. I was able find them in stores that catered to
saliors and other travelers (taxes are higher in many parts of the world)
and Indian groceries.
Last year when we bought our children a new TV set, we got them a Hitachi
21" (glasss tube) set that was multivoltage and multisystem. It was about
the same price here as you could mail order it in the U.S. with U.S.
shipping costs. It has a "universal" tuner, but I'm not sure that it
will work in the U.K. or France.
Since it has composite, S-video and YBCR inputs, it will connect to
just about any vcr, DVD, cable or satellite box.
Most people don't know this, but DVD's are encoded in either PAL
(24 or 25 FPS) or NTSC (24/1001 or or 30/10001 FPS), but not SECAM.
This has nothing to do with zones. U.S. DVD players always convert
the frame rate to NTSC (30/1001), ones made for sale elsewhere have
an option for multisystem, NTSC or PAL. An early one of mine had a
mutisystem/PAL switch on the back, new ones have it as a setup option.
I assume DVD players sold in FRANCE have SECAM as an output option,
possibly replacing PAL. If your TV has NTSC only playback, you can
get a cheap DVD player with the multisystem option and watch DVDs.
If it has a SECAM baseband input, then you can use a cable/sat
box or VCR to drive it.
Note that terrestrial analog TV is a dying thing. It will be gone in
a year from the U.S. and in some places never went far. Here in Israel,
we have the government channel 1 (with 2 other channels on satellite
and cable) and a second commercial channel. Besides imported programing,
there is a second commercial channel and a local Russian language channel,
both cable/sat only.
We used to have Middle East TV from Lebanon, which was relgious
Christian TV on Sunday, and old U.S. programs but they moved to Cyprus
and went satellite only. We also had Jordan channel two, which was mixed
English and French, but it was dropped when Abdulah took over. Both were
VHF, the Israeli channels are UHF.
If you are buying the TV because you plan to move there, even for
a short time, you would IMHO be better off renting/buying one when
you get there. If you are touring around, and just want to see what's
on, you may be disapointed.
Since I assume by your name you are in Alaska, I'll speculate that you
really asked because you want to be able to watch satellite TV from other
places than the U.S. Forgive me if I'm wrong.
If that's the case, feel free to email privately and I'll point you
in the right direction.
Geoff.
