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Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:10 pm
by crumpy
I'm from the UK so a PAL region. I've gone for NTSC with my N64 because the PAL consoles have differnet hardware which runs slower to output for old 50hz screens, as opposed to 60Hz for NTSC. Many of the games weren't even patched by the devs for PAL and just ran slow and sluggish. And although you can region mod the N64, playing NTSC games on the PAL N64 still run slow and weird.

So I'm trying to figure out if there is any issue at all like this with the Dreamcast. I'm going to DCHDMI mod, and I might do GDEMU or similar. But simply put, if I region mod a PAL DC, and either run NTSC games via disk or flash card mod, will it run in the same way as an NTSC console would? Is there any benefit in me importing a NTSC Dreamcast?

I have searched the forum for the answer to this but only found half answers, the questions being asked aren't quite the same as what I want to ask.

Thanks

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2020 4:04 pm
by azel
Pretty sure this isnt as much of an issue on Dreamcast. As someone that uses an NTSC console, any PAL games I have tried have a 50/60hz option on startup.

On top of this if you are using VGA output or in my case DCHDMI, PAL games just default to 60hz. For this reason I use the PAL version of Shenmue so that I can continue my save with the PAL Shenmue II.

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2020 4:05 pm
by Anonymouse
There is no need to get an NTSC Dreamcast like you have done with your N64. You can easily change the video output of the Dreamcast with an easy mod. Plus most PAL games give you the option of 50/60hz at the beginning of the game. I have my PAL dreamcast modded to 60hz so it forces 50hz only games to play in 60hz. I believe this will not work with skies of arcadia though.

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2020 4:34 pm
by crumpy
Fantastic, exactly what I wanted to hear. Thanks!

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2020 3:56 am
by Wombat
Seeing you're going to use the DCHDMI you are pretty much playing 99% of the Dreamcast library in "VGA"-mode, which means they run at 60Hz. Games like SEGA Rally 2 (European version) only play on 50Hz if you connect with a regular lead, playing this one with VGA unlocks the 60Hz mode.

There are only a very few games that might get you into trouble, like the US-version of San Francisco Rush, that one will give you troubles on a PAL console. But seeing you're probably going the GDEMU route, just get a PAL-image and you'll be sorted.

Besides that you might encounter some games that don't have VGA mode at all, for those the DCHDMI has a nice mode to still present them properly on your TV. But the games that can't be tricked or patched into VGA-mode are not to be worried about.

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:30 am
by mistamontiel
VGA is 60hz but anywho I may as well have played many other PAL players that were on RF s-vid RGB l0l

I was told when play live everyone's game changes to 31khz?

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 12:05 pm
by Alex_DC
In a similar place to OP having various DC motherboards and want to know which is the 'best' candidate for a DCHDMI install.

With DCHDMI being quite a commit to make, I am also looking for some definitive clarification (and I did try emailing citrus3000psi to sadly no avail). I'm also natively PAL region, and run games from GDEMU. Ideally I want to be able to run games from all regions on the DCHDMI machine, and I wonder if a vanilla board (using the GDEMU menu for multi-region support) is going to be more compatible than a region-free BIOS modded machine, and then which region board is the best start point for either solution?

The last lot of googling I did seemed to suggest that an NTSC machine with region-free mod and R422 mod gave best compatibility, but this was before DCHDMI was a thing, and I have no real understanding of how that affects the video output. It isn't really entirely clear to me quite what standard DCHDMI outputs at; Wombat's post above seems to suggest it uses VGA source in some sense, but it can also play the games without VGA support too.

If anybody can explain it all to me, it would be much appreciated!

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 7:33 pm
by azel
Why the region free mod when GDMENU takes care of that for you? Region free would be great mod for a system that would still play original games, not one with an ODE.

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2020 7:43 am
by XVO
The only reason you might want to consider a ntsc Dreamcast is if you want so build your own dreampi. I've got a ntsc-j console with a build in rpi0 and with a power booster to 9 volt for the line grabbed from the 5v rail.
I think this could also work for 18v though, but I had a ntsc-j DC lying around.

Re: Any need for NTSC consoles in PAL regions?

Posted: Wed Feb 26, 2020 8:32 am
by Alex_DC
azel wrote:Why the region free mod when GDMENU takes care of that for you? Region free would be great mod for a system that would still play original games, not one with an ODE.


A fair comment; my reasoning being that I can slot the GD-ROM back in for the rare occasion of playing new games or titles I don't have the .GDI file for whilst still benefitting from the DCHDMI output. I don't really want to spend twice on the DCHDMI and having it installed just to have one on a vanilla DC and one on a region-free BIOS DC.

I'll probably try and contact the DCHDMI creators again and see if there is any issue installing on a region-free modded console. I'm fairly sure there is not.