For PAL region gamers...PAL50 or PAL60?

[DEBRO]

Hi there,

 

This question has been asked before but I don't think there has been a clear answer. Which would PAL region gamers prefer...PAL50 or PAL60?

 

Most games might not be able to stretch their sprites to accommodate PAL50 correctly but the programmer can force the display to refresh at 50 frames per second. It does take a little more effort and RAM to do the fractional positioning so they turn out right for both regions. Some calculations may not be exact but they can come close.

 

I hear that modern PAL TVs can handle a refresh of 60Hz so should we even bother with worrying about PAL50 or should we just program for PAL60 and just change the colors?

[Rybags]

What computer/console system are we talking here? 2600?

 

My TV handles NTSC just fine, although my video card doesn't have PAL60 mode so I have no idea if it would work.

 

In any case - NTSC looks crap, especially when the display is line-skipped progressive like most vintage systems generate. PAL at 50 Hz is just fine - TVs have much bigger phosphors than monitors and are much less suseptible to flickering.

[cd-w]

My preference is for PAL-60 as it gives an identical gaming experience to NTSC and is much easier to program. Most modern TVs support PAL-60, and most old TV's can work by adjusting the vertical hold. The main problem is with older TVs that don't have a vertical hold control.

 

Chris

[DEBRO]

What computer/console system are we talking here? 2600?

Does it matter? I'm not familiar with the Jag but can't the display or refresh rate be controlled on all the 8-bit systems? Also, given a PAL60 display, let's say music is also controlled by the same rate. For instance, the sound engine takes place during VBLANK without a delay factor for NTSC or PAL. Wouldn't the PAL system play the music slower? Is this okay?

[Rybags]

Many older systems have different hardware for PAL and NTSC. The ST and Amiga can do both, although they can't do PAL60. There might be some tricky software technique to generate such a mode, but I've never heard of it.

No such control exists on other machines like the Atari 800 or C-64.

 

Most older systems had the display synchronous with the system clock - which imposed limitations on what you could do with the display.

 

I suppose if you sped up the master clock on a PAL Atari 800 by a ratio of 6:5, it might generate a PAL60 compatible display, although I have doubts about the CPU and custom chips coping with such an overclock.

[+SpiceWare]

I suppose if you sped up the master clock on a PAL Atari 800 by a ratio of 6:5, it might generate a PAL60 compatible display, although I have doubts about the CPU and custom chips coping with such an overclock.

Wouldn't that overclock make it the same speed as the NTSC models? I would expect that to be within tolerance of the chips.