PAL with NTSC resolutions - how did people deal with it back in the day?

[Anakirob]

The 1084s monitor supports both PAL and NTSC, so on later model Amiga's I would use TUDE, and then later WHDLoad to force NTSC mode on those games with the black border at the bottom.

[lmimmfn]

Didn't Amiga Format or CU Amiga have a coverdisk that allowed to swap from PAL to NTSC? As I remember using it on my A500 and loved the extra FPS in Lotus 1, just the music was annoyingly faster(of course ). That was the first time I realised NTSC was faster.

[rhester72]

FYI, working on my own project to _properly_ categorize every commercial Amiga game release (yes, we're up to 3,587 at this moment LOL) as PAL or NTSC, I've learned something interesting...when it comes to PAL screens, it's an incredibly mixed bag. We have...

- Games whose static art and gameplay are NTSC resolution at the top of the screen with a giant gap at the bottom
- Games whose static art and gameplay are NTSC resolution but properly centered vertically with smaller gaps at top and bottom
- Games whose static art is NTSC resolution but gameplay is PAL resolution
- Games whose static art is PAL resolution but gameplay is NTSC resolution
- Games that are fully PAL resolution throughout

There's basically no rhyme or reason that I can discern whatsoever - Psygnosis and Gremlin seem to be whatever they felt like that day, Team 17 is pretty universally all PAL all the time. So whatever your memory from back in the day, regardless of what type of monitor you had, it's probably correct - but was more dependent on the game than your display. =)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by rhester72

- Games whose static art and gameplay are NTSC resolution at the top of the screen with a giant gap at the bottom
- Games whose static art and gameplay are NTSC resolution but properly centered vertically with smaller gaps at top and bottom
- Games whose static art is NTSC resolution but gameplay is PAL resolution
- Games whose static art is PAL resolution but gameplay is NTSC resolution
- Games that are fully PAL resolution throughout

That's why working on screenshots for HOL is sooo much fun

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by rhester72

- Games whose static art and gameplay are NTSC resolution at the top of the screen with a giant gap at the bottom
- Games whose static art and gameplay are NTSC resolution but properly centered vertically with smaller gaps at top and bottom
- Games whose static art is NTSC resolution but gameplay is PAL resolution
- Games whose static art is PAL resolution but gameplay is NTSC resolution
- Games that are fully PAL resolution throughout

You can add even more categories (IMHO most important one) Pixel Aspect Ratio - different for PAL and for NTSC - some game design may address this some not...
Honestly i think in those times nobody care about such things like proper display aspect and other factors, also PAL display usually was incapable to properly display NTSC aspect ratio source but with 50Hz framerate - many displays was able to alter display aspect ratio when incoming signal was 60Hz (i.e. fill vertically display) - important to remember that CRT tubes sizes are very similar in NTSC and PAL markets so it is quite obvious that where in NTSC market video will fill completely 4:3 CRT area then in PAL same are need to be filled with more lines.

[Retro1234]

Some games are full screen PAL
Some games are official NTSC
Most? Games were/are European made don't take up the whole screen(black border at the bottom on PAL) saves processing power but also works on NTSC - Music 99% of time will run too fast on NTSC - developers didn't care.

[Weasel Fierce]

I will admit I never thought about it at all.

[AmigaHope]

A lot of game assets, especially ports, were made to square pixel aspect, especially later ones as the art was often made on a square-pixel VGA system.

These usually looked fine on PAL 640x512 as those pixels are *almost* square (and on a monitor you could adjust the aspect a tiny bit to make them perfect), but they looked terrible on NTSC.

The worst games were the ones that used assets with mixed pixel ratios, so no matter what pixel aspect you used, some asset looked squashed.

Commodore should have just cut a deal to sell TVs that also could double as monitors. That would be an easier sell than a dedicated monitor, and you could sell them in stores of all kinds. It costs almost nothing to add RGB input to a TV (since the video signal has to be converted to RGB anyway before it goes to the display circuits, so the cost is just the connector and some resistors) and supporting 50/60hz is trivial by just increasing the range of the vertical hold pot that was on every TV. Then expose the internal vertical size pot to the user, and maybe add a switch with a resistor to make it easy to switch between NTSC and PAL aspect.

Essentially just cut a deal with a TV maker to have SCART on all their TVs long before SCART came standard in our real timeline. SCART existed in 1977 so it's not like it was a new standard.

Then you could still sell monitors for people who needed better dot pitch.

The French were spoiled with their mandatory SCART in 1980.

[redblade]

Could be memory constraints too for original 512Kb RAM Amigas. 320/8*200 = 8000 bytes * 4 bitplanes = 32K, 8000bytes * 5 bitplanes = 40K.

320/8*256 = 10240bytes, * 4bitplanes = 40K, *5 bitplanes = 50K.

Especially if you want to double buffer that memory.
:shrug:

[Hewitson]

This was an annoyance, but nowhere near as annoying as having a PAL console and having ALL your games running slowly and with a horrible letterboxed resolution.

At least on the Amiga, SOME of your games were written for the correct resolution/framerate.

[kremiso]

kudos for The Plague developers, for having the time to release both versions bitd

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by musashi5150

I'd imagine most folk just pretended the bottom border wasn't there. That's what I did

Same here .

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

A lot of game assets, especially ports, were made to square pixel aspect, especially later ones as the art was often made on a square-pixel VGA system.

Most PC games 'back in the day' ran in 320x200, which does not have square pixels on a VGA CRT.

These usually looked fine on PAL 640x512 as those pixels are *almost* square (and on a monitor you could adjust the aspect a tiny bit to make them perfect),

640x512 and 320x256 have the same pixel aspect.

but they looked terrible on NTSC.

If so then that's what they were supposed to look like. IBM's CGA card produced NTSC. Standard VGA has the same vertical frequency (60Hz) and exactly double the horizontal frequency as NTSC (31.5kHz vs 15.75kHz), which produces the same aspect ratio in 320x200.

Commodore should have just cut a deal to sell TVs that also could double as monitors. That would be an easier sell than a dedicated monitor, and you could sell them in stores of all kinds.

They had a better idea - just include composite/rf output from the computer and then it could use the customer's existing TV. This is how I use my A1200 today!

The French were spoiled with their mandatory SCART in 1980.

Yes, and the rest of Europe too. Unfortunately SCART didn't make it to other countries like New Zealand where I live. TVs with SCART are very rare here. Even worse, consumer electronics here had a much higher sales tax rate. Commodore used to hot-glue a bung over the composite input on Amiga monitors so we could sell them as a computer part, which was taxed at the lower 'business' rate.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

They had a better idea - just include composite/rf output from the computer and then it could use the customer's existing TV. This is how I use my A1200 today!

Do yourself a favour and get a cheap RGB to Component converter. I use the Cypress CSY-2100, the picture is superb.

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Do yourself a favour and get a cheap RGB to Component converter. I use the Cypress CSY-2100, the picture is superb.

I cannot find it on eBay/Amazon. Do they have it?

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Supamax

I cannot find it on eBay/Amazon. Do they have it?

This particular model may not be available anymore, I purchased it around 15 years ago.

A word of warning though, many of these devices do NOT have an audio output. Not an issue if you're using an Amiga, but on consoles it can be a problem.

[stefcep2]

I don't remember this on my 1084S P, back in the day I think the monitor did something automagically or there was a switch? Now that a I have 1084S D2, I know what you mean and its damned annoying.