I have bought a Philips TV that it is supposed to be able to handle NTSC signals through the SCART connector. I do not have any NTSC device at hand, but I can test if it works with 60 Hz signals. I have run some japanese games (hinotori, ganbare goemon) selecting with OPF (the flashrom loader by Pazos & Ramones) a 50 or 60 hz output. In 50 hz mode those games do not fill the screen completely, rather there are two blank spaces in the upper and bottom part of the screen. In 60 hz the game and music is faster as expected and the image is expanded to fill all the screen without losing any pixel (well may be 1 or 2 lines at the upper part). It seems that this is the mode in which the games were supposed to run. What I do not know is if this expansion of the image is the normal and expected behaviour when switching to 60 hz and also if this means that this TV is compatible with the MSX2+ and Turbo-R that output their RGB signals at 60 hz.

Yes that is normal.. btw with rgb there is not a real difference between pal and ntsc.. it is in fact not pal or ntsc at al, because pal and ntsc are the signals that are compisite signals. Like CVBS or the signal your tv tuner works on. the difference between 50 and 60 are of course the refresch rate 50 or 60hz and the number of lines. 262 for 60Hz (ntsc) and about 312 for 50hz(pal). But the MSX vdp always displays 212 or 192 lines (in normal modes). This is why the picture looks smaller on 50hz

It does mean that your TV can handle 60Hz frequencies in PAL mode. It does not mean that it accepts 60Hz NTSC signals. It will surely accept NTSC signals through SCART (RGB) and if you are lucky enough it will accept it through SCART (A/V) or RCA (A/V).

msd: thank you for the explanation on the screen size. But if there is a game that uses all the screen in 50 hz, switching to 60 hz will result in loss of part of the image, isn't it ? I suppose that this kind of games are not qualified to run in MSX2+ or Turbo-R computers.

Saeba: Yes, I know that this only means that the TV accepts PAL 60 hz signals through AV SCART, but the feature list of the TV claims that it can shown NTSC playback through the SCART. As you suggest, it surely refers to RGB signals, as the only requeriment for this is to be able to support 60 hz.

Thank you both for your comments!

mouser: the game doesn't decide what to use. It just uses all avaiable MSX lines. But they look smaller on the TV at 50Hz. The same goes in basic, just try it out:

10 COLOR 15,4,0: SCREEN 5
20 A$=INPUT$(1): VDP(10) = VDP(10)XOR2: GOTO 20

The blue part is where the game is running. You won't loose any part of the image, and if you do, you should adjust the TV.

Thanks Manuel! Now I understand better what is behind the 50/60 hz stuff. I have tested my computer with both my 14 and 28 inch TVs. Both are able to handle RGB signals at 50 and 60 hz, but the rounder corners of the 14 inch means that some image is lose at the corners. As Samor predicted, the 28 inch gives a better text 80 image through the RGB input than the 14 inch TV, and it is also less distorted (it is a flatter screen and 100 hz capable).

But overall I'm happy with the 14 inch and I hope that my future MSX2+ or Turbo-R will work well with it (as soon as my budget for hobbies allow )

PAL and NTSC are different standards, PAL has 25 frames per second, of which a frame consists of an odd and even field,
NTSC = 30 (well, 29. something plus a syncframe) frames per second.
PAL has a higher resolution then NTSC, and the way colours are stored is different.

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PAL and NTSC are different standards, PAL has 25 frames per second, of which a frame consists of an odd and even field, NTSC = 30 (well, 29. something plus a syncframe) frames per second. PAL has a higher resolution then NTSC, and the way colours are stored is different.

PAL has higher resolution about Y (luminance)
but PAL has the half the resolution about UV (crominance) than NTSC

Offcourse if you use DIRECT RGB, you will skip all the coding/decoding PAL part, having higher resolution on all.

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But overall I'm happy with the 14 inch and I hope that my future MSX2+ or Turbo-R will work well with it (as soon as my budget for hobbies allow )

glad to hear it's working well