Talk:Capriccio discography

PAL and NTSC

PAL and NTSC details are now being added to the list. I am not particularly against this, but what is the rationale for it? Why is it useful information? --Kleinzach 02:41, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

While not being particularly against it either, I can see a rationale in situations where (say) only a PAL version is available and, therefore, not viewable in North America by most people unless they have a DVD player capable of displaying both formats. The reverse would be true for Europeans, where the PAL version is standard. Likewise, many European movies are not available in the US, mostly dues to rights issues- and probably, as far as I know, some US ones not available in Europe, though maybe less likely...? When US Amazon sells a DVD only in the PAL version, they clearly note the limitations of US viewability. I'm not sure about UK Amazon.

But, rather than go through each discography and incorporate the format into each entry (as we are finding here), maybe we can have a blanket note at the top (or bottom) which states that all DVD versions included are available in XXX format, and then note the exceptions. Viva-Verdi (talk) 04:00, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem is not the DVD players: all DVD players built according to the official standards are capable of playing PAL and NTSC DVD's. The problem is the television or display that is connected to the player. In North America all displays and TV sets are NTSC only, while in Europe almost all (except the very old ones) are dual-standard (both PAL and NTSC). This is the reason why for example all DVDs released by Universal Classics (DGG - Decca) are NTSC only: this standard is playable in both America and Europe, so no need for a separate PAL version.

Another problem has to do with the DVD player and the discs, namely region-encoding for DVDs: USA is region 1, Europe is region 2 for DVD encoding. In my experience though, all classical music DVDs are region 0 (i.e. usable worlwide, no region-encoding applied). Regards. Francesco Malipiero (talk) 18:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, allow me to provide my experience in all this. When I had my home theatre system installed in 2005 here in the US, my Integra DVD player could only play NTSC (plus DVD Audio and that other surround audio format) and CDs. My NEC plasma display was quite capable to handling PAL after I installed a Technics "universal" DVD player in addition to the Integra in order to view the many PAL movie DVDs which I pick up in Europe and which are not available in the US in any format (except via Amazon imports). Now, having replaced the Integra, my Samsung Blu-Ray DVD player will not play PAL either, so I still rely on the Technics. Viva-Verdi (talk) 18:45, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I just want to mention the thoughts I had when I added NTSC and PAL: a second DVD version was added for the San Francisco Opera performance and was listed as "DVD Video", while the first was left as simply "DVD". I thought, they are both "DVD Video" aren't they? Is it necessary to say "DVD Video"? Should most instances of "DVD" be changed to "DVD Video"? Perhaps it is enough to use "DVD Audio" for audio DVDs and just say "DVD" for "DVD Videos". (It's my impression that "DVD Audio" is not very common, and might be regarded as exceptional, but maybe I'm mistaken.) Anyway, I thought adding NTSC and PAL served to differentiate the two more accurately than adding "Video" to one and not the other, and people might like to know that's the main difference between the two. (I only added NTSC for the Paris video as an afterthought.) Perhaps we only need to add NTSC and PAL when there are one of each, to differentiate them, or maybe we do not need to mention it at all, I don't know.

Update, after rereading Malipiero's comment: since NTSC region 0 seems to be universal, maybe we just should label "Region 1" and "Region 2" videos which are not universal. In that case, the Paris video would not need any label, and the Kultur video would be labeled "Region 1" and the ArtHaus Musik as "Regions 2, 5". I'll make this change, but feel free to revert, if this is not an improvement. --Robert.Allen (talk) 06:36, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

This is all really complicated! Bearing in mind that we now have 50 opera discography articles which may have to be changed as a result of this discussion, someone will have to propose, via the Opera Project talk page, a revision to the Recordings (Opera Project Article styles and formats) guideline. --Kleinzach 09:21, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it's quite simple really (but that is probably due to the fact that I have been working in the CD/DVD retail business for 16 years):

• we can refer to video recordings as DVD (instead of DVD Video) because the DVD Audio format has lost the multi-channel audio battle to Super Audio CD (SACD) and is now practically obsolete;
• we should mention region coding (1 for USA, 2 for Europe etc) if the DVD is actually region-encoded, which as I said before is very rare for classical music DVDs (it is common practice for movies, to avoid that consumers can buy DVDs of American movies before they are released in cinemas in Europe).

The San Francisco opera DVD is region-encoded because the production rights are owned by different companies for Europe (ArtHaus) and USA (KulturVideo). Francesco Malipiero (talk) 18:03, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

One concern is how will editors know whether "all-region" DVDs have already been checked for region encoding? We may end up wasting a lot of time rechecking DVDs that have already been checked. --Robert.Allen (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)