In looking over my CLD-D515, I noticed that it's marked on the back as 230-240 volts and 50/60 hertz, same as some other dual format players I've seen from UK.

However, mine I got from a thrift shop with US plug only, no adapter on it, and it powered on fine there though tray did not open (so they let it go for $10), and when I got it home. it played fine after a belt change-out.

Today I noticed that the plug and wire do not seem to be original. Is it possible for one of these to play even on 110 US voltage, or maybe it was modified internally for such? I have a DVL 919 with internal sensor that plays on 110 or 220-240, but it is marked such on the back.

Switching power supplies, used in most modern electronics, are a lot less picky about what they get in than the old linear power supplies were. That said, it can be bad for the life of the equipment to run them for long periods on voltage which is too high or too low — components may overheat, for example. If it doesn't give any trouble, don't worry about it.

So, I'm guessing you have some PAL discs, since you seem to care about dual-format playback. I have run across at least one PAL LD in the course of trawling the stores here, but confess I never saw any point in adding that capability to my setup.

After a review of switch-mode power supplies, I expect this may have the type that acts as a volage doubler when on 110 current then as a straight regulator when on 220-240 voltage.

Anyway, I started collecting PAL discs when I got Race with the Devil in a lot of discs, which is unavailable on NTSC. So since then I look for ones that are not NTSC releases.

Which brings me to a question about the LDDB search functions. Anyone know, is there a way to filter the search to pull out releases that were only available on PAL and not on NTSC, and filter out the ones available on both?

Just to generate a list of discs which were only released on one format? I don't think so, because that would require the database to know that two different discs have the same movie on them. Unless they are entered under exactly the same title, or have the IMDB number added, which is only sometimes the case, the information doesn't exist to do that. For the subset which fulfills at least one of those conditions, although the current advanced search interface doesn't really provide a means of doing it, Julien ought to be able to run a custom SQL query & generate a partial list.

The advanced search provides an option to set Video is PAL thereby only returning PAL titles.
You can optionally other criteria to filter the search further as required.

Yes, that I figured out, but what I want to do is find all PAL titles not released on NTSC. In other words, after finding all PAL titles, then filter out the ones that were also released on NTSC. I don't see how to do that. Maybe it cannot be done? Julien, are you there?

It will only work on movies where IMDb information has been added. You will also fetch many European artists that were never released on NTSC...

I know one for sure (been keeping this one carefully, Prince won't let it be released again because of Sister, Jack U Off, etc. that he considers offensive today): Prince: Lovesexy Live (1988) [080 844 1]

Although PAL has technically more lines than NTSC it usually suffered from inferior transfers because:

• The total market for Europe paled compared to USA and Japan, Europe would need French, German, Italian, etc. dubbed soundtrack, multiplying the costs of mastering.
• USA/Japan could use the same NTSC master, Europe needed a PAL transfer (usually done from the converted NTSC... with lower quality)

I tried buying PAL releases sometimes but always ended up getting swapping for the NTSC instead, whenever possible.

Trying to see if I can get a quick SQL query to output something meaningful.

Julien

Here is a quick extract from the main database, only looking for PAL titles with IMDB for which I do not have a NTSC title with the same NTSC.

Probably some manual filtering to do, and maybe you will find some titles need an update!

Julien