I’m trying to find some way to plug the various entertainment bits and pieces I have together without spending a fortune on replacing everything. But so far no luck. I have a PC with a VGA output but a TV with a choice of HDMI, SVideo, combination or composite inputs. And I have a UK PS2 which has a power upstepper but still needs to do PAL to NTSC conversion. And if I can’t get neither of those to work I’m going to have to get a multi-regional DVD player. Which does not seem to exist in the US as far as I’ve seen to date. I’m sure I could get them all working together somehow but at the moment, I just feel the need for a nice black box that just appears and does everything for me, or a gadget geek to go out and get everything and then plug it all in.
Hi, okay, I think it breaks down like this:
US TV’s don’t use the European SCART standard – as far as I am aware, which limits things a little – also most US TVs will only play NTSC (Never Twice Same Color) and are unlikely to play PAL – whereas the different standards in Europe mean that most modern TVs destined for Europe will play nearly all formats. Additionally, I have never found multi-region DVD players in the States, as it appears that as the US produces most mainstream entertainment and it is typically released in the US market first, the concept of playing content from another region is baffling in a taking-coals-to-Newcastle kind of a way. Your best bet is to get a VGA to Composite converter which you can buy here: http://tinyurl.com/thqsx for a shade under $20 – you could probably get the same thing in RadioShack if you wanted to watch DVDs over Christmas. I hope that helps.
Perfect – that was just what I was after. It’ll go on order post Christmas when I’m back in the US. Meanwhile, it looks like B&H does some interesting things as well – including multi-region DVD players.