VHS Pal

Great advances in technology have made it possible for movie lovers around the world to watch movies without worrying about things such as region coding or different video formats. In the era of VHS though, this was a major problem for people who perhaps moved from a PAL country to an NTSC one. Even today, many people still have collections of VHS movies and may experience this problem.

Many of today's DVD players can take a PAL video signal, convert it automatically, and then output an NTSC video signal to a television. Unfortunately, things are a little more difficult when it comes to VHS. If you live in an NTSC country but have PAL format movies that you'd like to watch, there are a couple options for you to look into.

The first option would be to take all of your PAL movies to a shop that does video conversion. This type of a service uses equipment that takes your PAL movies, converts them, and then records them onto NTSC VHS tapes. As you can imagine, it would take a long time if you had an especially large collection of tapes, and the cost would end up being quite high as most services charge a flat per-tape fee.

Likely the most streamlined method for PAL to NTSC VHS conversion is to purchase a converter VCR. These devices will digitally convert the format of any tape that you're playing into the format that you desire. These types of VCRs can run anywhere from $500 to $1,000 though, but if you look at online auction websites, you may be able to find a pre-owned unit at a more affordable price.