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Giga pocket. Help me out!

lenkamartin
Visitor

Giga pocket. Help me out!

When I was in US I bought Sony Vaio RZ22G. It works great but I didn't realize that Giga Pocket was made only for US market with NTSC picture standard. :anguished: I need to be able to use it in Europe with PAL picture standard. Sony techn.support in US told me there is nothing I can do. But I still believe that there is Sony European version of Giga pocket. I live in Europe.Can you help me how can I work it out? :thinking:

7 REPLIES 7
VAIOspecialist
Visitor

Hi there,

I am really sorry having to diappoint you, but there is no solution for you problem. The issue is not the software, but the hardware. The TV-board itself is based on NTSC-chips, and there is no way to change it, since there is no Giga pocket as an accesory.

It's really too bad, that there are so darn many different standards in the world.

Good luck anyhow with that system!

David

Jack666
Visitor

Not true, because think of region dvd players? There is ALWAYS a way to disable things like this but I can't help, because I honestly don't know! Sorry

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kee-lo_
Member

Gigapocket is not available to the European Union, which I think is a disgrace, as Gigapocket sounds like a decent piece of kit. Is there no way Sony could start making it for PAL? It would sell for sure....

aaronjb
Visitor

Not true, because think of region dvd players? There is ALWAYS a way to disable things like this but I can't help, because I honestly don't know! Sorry


Firstly, the reason DVD players don't work outside their home continent is the region coding, which means you can only play discs meant for that continent..

They don't usually output a composite signal, it's normally RGB, S-Video or Component video, which is unaffected (well, RGB & S-Video are) by NTSC/PAL/SECAM differences (I believe, I could be wrong, there..).

If you brought an American DVD player into the UK, for example, and had it made region free (discounting the obvious 110v vs. 220v problem), and tried to use a composite output from it into a European TV - you'd get a black and white picture, unless the TV supported NTSC video signals (most modern TV's do, actually). The same as if you tried to play an American VHS casette in your European video recorder - black and white (the chrominance signal is recorded differently, hence you get a picture, but no colour).

Anyway - long story short, the reason GigaPocket won't work over here is because it's a US only product - and therefore the hardware is only tuned to decode NTSC signals.
If it was a dual market product, the hardware would have the necessary components to decode NTSC and PAL (and probably SECAM) signals - just like some of the TV-Out cards the laptops are equipped with have the capability to output in NTSC/PAL/SECAM.

Incidentally, some systems that you think are single market only (like the Playstation, for example) are actually multi-market.. If you put a US game (or Japanese) into the PSX (when chipped, obviously), the PSX would output an NTSC signal, not a PAL one - despite the fact that it was a European market PSX.. How do I know? Coz a mate of mine was most disappointed that the Japanese import Gran Turismo was only in black and white on his ageing TV, when it was in colour on my modern TV (which handily told me when it switched to NTSC).. :smileygrin:

Anyway.. lecture on video standards over :smileygrin:

The only caveat to all that would be if all of the signal decoding in the GigaPocket board was done with a software controlled chip - rather like the WinModems that aren't actually a modem chip, but a universal device..

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kee-lo_
Member

Thanks for that info Aaron, I already knew this due to a lot of people posting about "why is my laptop's output black & white?".

I'm sure it'll help others out.

aaronjb
Visitor

Thanks for that info Aaron, I already knew this due to a lot of people posting about "why is my laptop's output black & white?"


I know you knew it :slight_smile: I was replying to the post above yours though.. It just.. took me a really long time to write my reply :smileygrin: :smileyblush:

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kee-lo_
Member

Yeah, thats why I thanked you for a good guide :slight_smile: