Anything to convert PAL video resolutions to NTSC?

I did have a massive post written about this subject regarding the technicalities of this, but answered a number of queries I had regarding it myself so deleted it and started looking into how to do it, however before I get really stuck into it and waste hours of time, I thought I'd ask here: Are there any devices available that can convert a PAL RGB signal to an NTSC based one? By this I mean something which strips the borders which plague many PAL consoles, leaving the lower NTSC resolution but with the PAL refresh rate.
For example, with the Playstation this would effectively mean cropping the original 720x288 video to 640x240 to remove the border which goes all the way around, or for the SNES to crop the 256x239 video to 256x224.

I have a few PAL consoles and have recently upgraded to RGB cables for all of them and an XRGB Mini. The picture quality is excellent now, however the borders PAL consoles get is rather annoying and I'm trying to find a way of getting rid of it. I can get rid of the bars by playing around with the XRGB using the Zoom facility and V width, but it's not perfect and I'm also unable to use the x2 scalers provided by the XRGB.

I'm aware of the 50/60 modifications you can do to the SNES and Megadrive, but I believe this causes some compatibility issues with some games and I'm reluctant to open up my consoles and start messing with them (I've had them since release and they're my babies XD). I believe this also isn't an option for the Playstation (or I haven't been able to find any information about doing this).

 

Zoom is probably the best you'll get if you don't want to do 60hz mods. Btw, those PAL bars don't go "all the way around", they're just at the top and bottom - if you have additional ones left and right, those are added by the (likely to be 16:9) TV (in which case you'll lose parts of the image when zooming in) or the XRGB (in which case it might work).

 

Thanks for the reply. I know on the SNES and MegaDrive it's just on the top and bottom, however the Playstation does it all the way around as shown in the pic below:

I inverted the output of Civ II to make it show the borders.

Is it just the Playstation that does it on the sides?


I've been reading about how RGB signals actually work and I think it might not be too difficult to do what I want (for the top and bottom at least), I'm currently pricing up the parts that I'll need to try it. I'll probably fail miserably at doing it, but I need a project to try Finally found the information I needed, a bit more difficult than I thought....

 

That's odd. Might just be that specific game, saving resources by not drawing in the overscan areas...? Do others behave the same?

edit: I'm too lazy to plug in my PS1, but I went on youtube and looked at some random games. FIFA 98, Urban Chaos and Ridge Racer showed the same border, G-Police and Tomb Raider seemed fine. I obviously don't know what versions (PAL/NTSC) I was watching though... Anyways, doesn't seem to be Civ2's fault. Maybe it's the PS1 adding those borders in hardware when outputting an internal 640px wide framebuffer to a 720px signal...

 

The only devices that properly convert PAL and NTSC signals between each other are professional and make the XRGB look cheap.

What you want to do is mod your consoles. NTSC 50 is slower than a lot of the games should be, though. Or just get NTSC consoles.