T.V's

[StevieD]

Older UK tv's will not work over there. Best to keep them for using as a DVD/video/games screen. However I just got a Sanyo from Tesco and it has the NZ tv standard on the system, so yes some will work dual standard!
The reason the older ones will not work is down to the audio (sound sub-carrier frequency) being a different spacing from the video signal in the two systems. A retune of the system is a specialist job and probably not worth bothering with.

Steve

[ErwinT]

For the real techies:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/static/ht...tsc-secam.html
http://www.theavguide.co.uk/worldvideoformats.html
http://www.theavguide.co.uk/tvstandardsbycountry.html
http://www.tvradioworld.com/director...ds/default.asp

From the map on the bottom of the first page above:
NZ uses PAL-B/G
UK uses PAL-I

This means indeed the sound isn't compatible for aired broadcasts (look in the table PAL on the page above and see that the sound carrier has a different value). The story about using a local VCR as tuner remains standing though, that will work, don't worry

If you have a newer TV it might be multi system, so look in the manual if your TV can be set to PAL-B/G and you might be fine. If the frequencies of the TV signals is comparable, and if the way of encoding the sound is the same. The UK uses NICAM for sound and NZ as well, so that might work out just fine.

NL uses the same system as NZ (PAL B/G), so if the frequencies used in NZ are comparable to the NL frequencies, then it looks like Dutch TV's should work in NZ, even for aired broadcasts.
However, as NZ uses digital NICAM for stereo sound, and Holland uses analog A2 for stereo sound, the reception will be mono.

[miep]

Yep, the tv we brought from Holland work just fine here.

I've no idea about the stereo/mono thing though. I think our tv is a stereo one but just haven't paid attention whether it actually does stereo here. I think you can tell I don't watch a lot of tv

Miep