US Systems with PAL SCART TV Question

[DreamTR]

Will US Systems play correctly with a SCART cable on a PAL TV? Will it even work, or will it convert them to the 60 hz PAL speed?

Basically I have a PAL TV and it has a SCART connection, but I only have US systems, and only used this TV for PAL stuff at first.

[CosmicMonkey]

If the TV supports NTSC then you should be good to go. Have a look at the TV specs. Most decent PAL tellys manufactured in the past 10yrs have NTSC support, and at least one RGB Scart socket.

[staxx]

It depends on the TV make and model. By the way, how did you get a Scart TV in the United States? I kinda need one for myself, if you do want that TV, I wouldn't mind 1st dibs :) If the scart cable is rigged for composite or super video (i.e. not true RGB) then I know for a fact it won't work.

[DreamTR]

It's a true PAL Tv. Someone on Atari Age converted it from a Euro socket plug to work on a US plug, but it's a small 13 inch Trinitron

[Mayhem]

Given the size of the TV, it may not support NTSC natively. You would need to get your composite output from the systems and put it into a scart block and shove it in the back. If you get a b/w picture then the TV doesn't support NTSC. If you get colour, then it does! Either way though, the picture will be 60Hz.

But even if it doesn't support NTSC, you'd not SOOL. If the console supports an RGB output then you can get a colour picture because RGB discards NTSC/PAL differences. The scart socket on the TV should almost certainly support RGB in.

Now I know that most US systems don't natively have RGB out sadly. Which is why over here having TVs that support NTSC is a god send for importing! But as a way around things (and because RGB is the best picture quality after component), many people have been able to mod consoles to output RGB (eg. US N64) or produce RGB substitute cables (US GameCube) to fill the gap.

[DreamTR]

Mayhem : thanks for the info, I was planning on just buying all the native SCART cables I could for certain systems and trying it out that way.

[Mayhem]

As noted though, many US systems don't do RGB. It'll default to composite otherwise, assuming all the pins in the scart block are wired properly. I'll be suprised if the scart socket supports s-video, generally it's impossible to have all three on one socket because some of the pins overlap between standards.

[DreamTR]

What about SNES, Genesis, stuff like that?

[CosmicMonkey]

What about SNES, Genesis, stuff like that?

Megadrives have RGB output and first model SNESs do too.

[Mayhem]

Yep... my US SNES is an early one that has RGB output.

[DreamTR]

Saturn, N64?

[CosmicMonkey]

Saturn outputs RGB from it's AV socket. N64 needs to be modded for RGB.

[Mayhem]

And that's only earlyish model US N64s. Anything later into the scheme (the transparents for example) can't be modded.