Took some nice video at 'Grandparents' Day' at the g/c primary school. Shot AVCHD but files did not show on my TV. Then the penny dropped. I bought the GH1 from USA and we are in Australia. The camera is locked to NTSC and I need PAL.

No such problems with Olympus. PAL/NTSC in the menu and Worldwide warranty.

I was able to do a conversion to PAL in Vegas Studio but was not happy with the quality compared to the original. Could play the original files on my PC for comparison.

Since I don't have a warranty I used Ptool to hack firmware 1.3 and add PAL/NTSC to the menu and while there tweaked a couple of other things (battery; bitrate).

Update worked smoothly except I needed to reformat the card after switching to PAL (message said it was still NTSC). Taken some indoor video which is a bit dark but things seem to be working OK.

Will do some more tests in daylight tomorrow. BTW the hacked firmware shows as version 0.0 so switching back to official firmware is not a problem.

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Bill Shinnick
GH1; X-S1; X100; EX1; GRD III; G5(IR).

Flickr.

Wow, I didn't know that about the Panny. Every other digital camera that I have ever used, from the simplest P&S to the highest-end DSLR always had a menu option for video output (PAL/NTSC).

Wow, Bill - it's a good thing you are as knowledgeable as you are! I'd probably be sitting their hitting my head on my desk.

This is an important thread.

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**An evolving camera owner.

~ BB
Flickr photostream

Sounds like you indeed "had to", but you did it and seem to be a winner now.
- End good, all good

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Joep

PS: Try to catch a laugh every day