feelbritish

We have this LCD 42LK520 flat screen tv bought a year ago and at the back it says it can be used with 110 up to 240 voltages so we got quite excited that we could bring it with us to UK, then we thought to look through previous posts to see if it would work over there but I can't find any threads on this. If we got sky tv would we be able to use our North American tv ??

dunroving

There was a thread about this recently - there are additional shortcuts within this thread.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=807638

BritInParis

http://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-42LK520-lcd-tv

Voltage wise you'll just need to change the plug or use an adaptor. You'll have to use a digital box (Freeview/Sky/Virgin Media/etc..) but otherwise it will work in the UK.

Yougetme

Did you have to buy a converter so as to use the PAL system?

dunroving

I didn't bring my TV back from the US, I bought a new one. I did bring a cheap DVD player that allowed me to play US regional DVDs and dealt with the PAL/NTSC thing, but that is a separate issue.

Markie

PAL/NTSC is a non-issue with HDMI. PAL and NTSC are analogue colour standards.

rebs

I don't know how recently that PAL/NTSC has become a non issue, but we purchased a tv in the US in 2008 and bought it home to the UK in 2010 and had to get a PAL/NTSC converter to make it work. The TV does have HDMI ports.

BritInParis

HD makes PAL/NTSC a non-issue. If you're passing a standard definition PAL signal through a HDMI cable to a NTSC only TV you're still going to have problems.

dunroving

The PAL/NTSC/digital/HDMI thing seems to come up pretty regularly and there rarely seems to be a consensus.

Even with the more modern TVs, it seems it isn't always as straightforward as the "non-issue" it is sometimes called.

The most recent thread that addressed this is here.

Caveat: I'm no expert, I just know I keep reading these threads and people who seem to know what they're talking about indicate it requires a lot of research before bring what might end up as a big paperweight or computer monitor all the way across the ocean.

Markie

You cannot, and never will, send a PAL signal through an HDMI cable. PAL and NTSC are analogue colour formats, and are not an issue with HDMI. HDMI does not use either PAL or NTSC, even for SD, because it is digital.

Thus PAL/NTSC is a complete and total non-issue.

HOWEVER, what CAN be an issue for NTSC is video format (broadcast system), aka resolution and refresh rate when used in HDMI terms. This is not the same as PAL vs NTSC. SD in traditionally PAL countries is usually a different resolution and refresh rate from SD in traditionally NTSC countries.

Most PAL countries use one of the 625-line 50Hz systems (B, G, I, etc) and most NTSC countries use the 525-line 60Hz system "M" but this is not a universal truth. For example, Brazil uses PAL-M. In HDMI and other digital formats, you technically aren't using a full broadcast system (since it defines more than just resolution and refresh rate) but the resolution and refresh rate of these systems are what matters for this discussion.

Most, but not all, TV's can take and of the common broadcast system resolution/refresh formats as HDMI input. There will be exceptions to this rule. However, it's very important to distinguish this from PAL/NTSC. PAL and NTSC are purely analogue terms and refer to the colour encoding - NOT to the picture format (again, see Brazil for why this matters - they use PAL colour with the picture format common to most NTSC countries).

Hope this helps some with understanding the (fairly complex) issue!

rebs

Whatever the technicalities and specifics of what is going on in the background, I can categorically state that a TV that we purchased in the US and bought back to the UK is only watchable when we use a converter which is sold as a 'PAL/NTSC' converter.

It may well be that the nuances of what is going on in the conversion have been simplified in order to label the converter in a way that lay people might understand how/when it might be useful to use such a converter.

BritInParis

PAL and NTSC may not be strictly the correct terminology but in my defence I was trying to give a layman's explanation

In considering whether to bring back a US TV set you will need to check whether it can display a signal of 576i at 50Hz (PAL equivalent) as well as a signal of 480i at 60Hz (NTSC equivalent). Some TV digiboxes (e.g. Sky, Virgin) will upscale the signal to 1080i but the frequency will still be 50Hz which a non-compatible US TV will not be able to display.

Check the manufacturer's specifications if in doubt.

Markie

Are you connected with an HDMI cable? I'm very curious what exactly the converter you're using is. PAL vs NTSC doesn't even exist with HDMI so such a converter would be oddly mislabeled if you're using HDMI. Do you have a link to the device? I'm super curious now what you got and what it's doing.

rebs

We have a gadget similar to one of these -
http://www.interneeds.com/converters2.htm (worst website in the world, I'm afraid, but they do the job).

I'm not too sure exactly which gadget we have.... Might be the gadget15 or the av2hdmi or similar.

It is connected to the tv via an hdmi cable (the output), the input is a scart lead from a free view box. It's a bit of a heath robinson affair, but it does the job.

Hope that website is useful - I should imagine the technical details will mean much more to you than they do to me

Vadio

I've said this before on another thread - we brought our US dual voltage TV to the UK in 2011. Bought a Freeview HD box, and have had perfect TV since. No issues, no converter. Many others on another forum have had the same experience. The tuner is in the Freeview box; the TV basically acts like a monitor. I personally haven't used a SKY HD box, but I know others who have. It must be HD to have the HDMI connection. I also used Freesat with no issues here.