ANALOGUE TELEVISION

PAL , SECAM and NTSC

There are three major TV standards used in the world today.
These are the

1.

American NTSC (National Television Systems

Committee) color television system,

2.

European PAL (Phase Alternation Line rate)

3.

French-Former Soviet Union SECAM (Sequential

Couleur avec Memoire)

 The largest difference between the three systems is the vertical lines.
NTSC uses 525 lines (interlaced) while both PAL and SECAM use
625 lines.
NTSC frame rates are slightly less than 1/2 the 60 Hz power line
frequency, while PAL and SECAM frame rates are exactly 1/2 the 50
Hz power line frequency.

NTSC
PAL
SECAM

Lines

a. lines

525
625
625

484
575
575

v. resolution aspect h.resolution frame rate

242
290
290

4/3
4/3
4/3

427
425
465

29.94
25
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Merging pixels
Similarly, the eye can fuse separate pixels in a line into
one continuously varying line, as long as the spacing
between pixels is sufficiently small.

Persistence of vision:
the eye (or the brain rather) can retain the sensation of an
image for a short time even after the actual image is removed

Frame merging
This allows the display of a video as successive frames as
long as the frame interval is shorter than the persistence
period, The eye will see a continuously varying image in
time.
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 When the frame interval is too long, the eye observes

frame flicker. The minimal frame rate (frames/ second or
fps or Hz) required to prevent frame flicker depends on
display brightness, viewing distance.
Higher frame rate is required with closer viewing and
brighter display.
For TV viewing: 50- 60 fps
For Movie viewing: 24 fps
For computer monitor: > 70 fps
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Line merging
As with frame merging, the eye can fuse separate lines into
one complete frame, as long as the spacing between lines is
sufficiently small.
The maximum vertical spacing between lines depends on the
viewing distance, the screen size, and the display brightness.
For common viewing distance and TV screen size, 500- 600
lines per frame is acceptable

Interlacing
the brighter the still image presented to the viewer ... the
shorter the persistence of vision.
If the space between pictures is longer than the period of
persistence of vision then the image flickers. Therefore, to
arrange for two "flashes" per frame,
interlacing creates the flashes. The basic idea here is that a
single frame is scanned twice. The first scan includes only the
odd lines, the next scan includes only the even lines.
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Basic black and white television

In a basic black and white TV, a single electron beam is
used to scan a phosphor screen. The scan is interlaced, that
is it scans twice per photographed frame.
The information is always displayed from left to right. After
each line is written, when the beam returns back to the left,
the signal is blanked. When the signal reached the bottom it
is blanked until it returns to the top to write the next line

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Trace and Retrace

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Out of the total number of possible scanlines (i.e. 525 or 625),

a small number was reserved to be hidden in order to allow the
electron beam to return to the top of the screen without
displaying a trail during the "vertical blanking interval".
In the NTSC system, 39 lines out of 525 are reserved for the
vertical blanking, leaving 486 lines for TV content. In PAL, 49
lines out of the total 625 are reserved, leaving 576 lines
available.

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Horizontal Scan signal

The horizontal scan signal is very much the same. The
horizontal scan rate is 525*29.97 or 15,734 Hz. Therefore,
63.6 uS are allocated per line. Typically about 10 uS of
this is devoted to the blanking line on the horizontal scan.
There are 427 pixels per horizontal scan line and so each
pixel is scanned for approximately 125 ns.

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 The electron beam is analog modulated across the

horizontal line. The modulation then translates into
intensity changes in electron beam and thus gray scale

levels on the picture screen

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 Horizontal blanking signal and synchronization

pulse is quite well defined. For black and white TV,
the "front porch" is 0.02 times the distance between
pulses, and the "back porch" is 0.06 times the
distance between pulses.

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 The vertical blanking signal also has a number of

synchronization pulses included in it. These are
illustrated below.

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The Television Bandwidth

The television bandwidth is 6 MHz.
The sub-carrier for the color is 3.58 MHz off the carrier
for the monochrome information.
The sound carrier is 4.5 MHz off the carrier for the
monochrome information.
There is a gap of 1.25 MHz on the low end and 0.25 MHz
on the high end to avoid cross talk with other channels.
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CVBS(composite video, blanking

and sync)
signal intended initially for black/white receivers
Composite video (one channel) is an analog video
transmission (without audio) that carries standard
definition video typically at 480i or 576i
resolution. Video information is encoded on one
channel
RCA connector

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 YPBPR is a color space used in video electronics,

in particular in reference to component video
cables. YPBPR is the analog version of the YCBCR
color space; the two are numerically equivalent,
but YPBPR is designed for use in analog systems
whereas YCBCR is intended for digital video.

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TV Transmitter (B&W)

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TV Receiver (B&W)

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COLOR TELEVISION
One of the great electrical engineering triumphs was the
development of color television in such a way that it
remained compatible with black and white television.
A major driving force behind the majority of current color TV
standards was to allow black-and-white TVs to continue to be
able to receive a valid TV signal after color service was in
place.

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Trireceptor Theory Of Vision

why we use RGB monitors
If you ask someone why red, green and blue are used in
computer monitors -- the immediate answer is "Because these
are the primary colors".
If you then ask, "But why are these the primary colors?" -the answer you get is that "If you mix light of these colors
together you can make any color".

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Color information transmission in TV

In the most basic form, color television could simply be
implemented by having cameras with three filters (red, green and
blue) and then transmitting the three color signals over wires to a
receiver with three electron guns and three drive circuits.
Unfortunately, this idealized view is not compatible with the
previously allocated 6 MHz bandwidth of a TV channel. It is also
not compatible with previously existing monochrome receivers.

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 Therefore, modern color TV is carefully structured to preserve all

the original monochrome information -- and just add on the color
information on top.
Brigthness signal, called luminance (Y) has been chosen to
occupy the major portion (0-4 MHz) of the channel. Y contains
the brightness information and the detail. Y is the monochrome
TV signal.
Consider the model of a scene being filmed with three cameras.
One camera has a red filter, one camera a green filter and one
camera a blue filter.
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 To create the Y signal, the red, green and blue inputs to the Y
signal must be balanced to compensate for the color perception
misbalance of the eye. The governing equation is:

For example, in order to produce "White" light to the human

observer there needs to be 11 % blue, 30 % red and 59% green
(=100%).
The luminance signal Y can be used directly for reproduction
by a black/white receiver
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 This is the "monochrome" part of the TV signal. It

officially takes up the first 4 MHz of the 6 MHz
bandwidth of the TV signal. However, in practice, the
signal is usually band-limited to 3.2 MHz.
Two signals are then created to carry the chrominance
(C) information. One of these signals is called "Q" and
the other is called "I". They are related to the R, G and B
signals by:

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NTSC

PAL &
SECAM

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YIQ

NTSC

YUV

PAL & SECAM

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Y value of 0

Y value of 0.5

Y value of 1

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 The positive polarity of Q is purple, the negative is green.

The positive polarity of I is orange, the negative is cyan.
Thus, Q is often called the "green-purple" or "purple-green"
axis information and I is often called the "orange-cyan" or
"cyan-orange" axis information.
It turns out that the human eye is more sensitive to spatial
variations in the "orange-cyan" than it is for the "green
purple". Thus, the "orange-cyan" or I signal has a
maximum bandwidth of 1.3 to 1.5 MHz and the "green
purple" only has a maximum bandwidth of 0.5 MHz.
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 Now, the Q and I signals are both modulated by a 3.58 MHz

carrier wave. However, they are modulated out of 90 degrees
out of phase (QAM). These two signals are then summed
together to make the C or chrominance signal.
The nomenclature of the two signals aids in remembering
what is going on. The I signal is In-phase with the 3.58 MHz
carrier wave. The Q signal is in Quadrature (i.e. 1/4 of the
way around the circle or 90 degrees out of phase, or
orthogonal) with the 3.58 MHz carrier wave.
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 New chrominance signal (formed by Q and I) has the interesting

property that the magnitude of the signal represents the color
saturation, and the phase of the signal represents the hue.
Phase = Arctan (Q/ I) = hue
Magnitude = sqrt (I 2+ Q 2) = saturation
Now, since the I and Q signals are clearly phase sensitive -- some sort
of phase reference must be supplied. This reference is supplied after
each horizontal scan and is included on the "back porch" of the
horizontal sync pulse.
The phase reference consists of 8-10 cycles of the 3.58 MHz signal. It
is called the "color burst" and looks something like this
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Conversion between RGB and YIQ

Y = 0.299 R + 0.587 G + 0.114 B
I = 0.596 R -0.275 G -0.321 B
Q = 0.212 R -0.523 G + 0.311 B
R =1.0 Y + 0.956 I + 0.620 Q
G = 1.0 Y - 0.272 I -0.647 Q
B =1.0 Y -1.108 I + 1.700 Q
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This I and Q stuff is confusing. Why did they do it this

way?
the reason that they exist at all is because they provided a
sneaky way for the color television designers to broadcast
three pieces of information (how strong Red, Green and
Blue color combinations are to be) with just three numbers
(Y, I, and Q), and do it in a way that remained
compatible with the existing black and white televisions,
which already relied on the Y signal.
This meant that all the existing black and white television
systems would continue to be usable and color programs
displayed on them would come out looking reasonable.

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Bandwidth of Chrominance Signals

With real video signals, the chrominance component
typically changes much slower than luminance Furthermore,
the human eye is less sensitive to changes in chrominance
than to changes in luminance
The eye is more sensitive to the orange- cyan range (I) than
to green- purple range (Q)
The above factors lead to
I: bandlimitted to 1.5 MHz and
Q: bandlimitted to 0.5 MHz
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Modulating of Luminance and Chrominance

Position the bandlimited chrominance at the high end of the
luminance spectrum, where the luminance is weak, but still
sufficiently lower than the audio (at 4.5 MHz).
The two chrominance components (I and Q) are modulated
onto the same sub- carrier using QAM.
The resulting video signal including the baseband luminance
signal plus the chrominance components modulated to f c is
called composite video signal.
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 In NTSC Luminance is AM VSB, the Chroma is QAM I&Q,

and the Aural FM.

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CVBS + CHROMA = CCBS

The composite PAL, NTSC or SECAM
video signal is generated by mixing the
black/white signal, the sync information
and the chrominance signal and is now
called a CCVS (Composite Color, Video
and Sync) signal.

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Oscillogram of a CCVS (composite color video and sync) signal

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What is the difference between these two signals?

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Transmitter Block Diagram

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Color Decoder

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Block diagrams of TV receivers

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Color Encoding Principles for the SECAM

SECAM system differs very strongly from PAL and NTSC

In SECAM the R-Y and B-Y signals are transmitted

alternately every line. (The Y signal remains on for each

line). Since there is an odd number of lines on any given scan,
any line will have R-Y information on the first frame and B-Y
on the second.

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 Furthermore, the R-Y and B-Y information is transmitted on

different subcarriers. The B-Y sub-carrier runs at 4.25 MHz and
the R-Y subcarrier runs at 4.4 MHz.
In order to synchronize the line switching, alternate R-Y and BY sync signals are provided for nine lines during he vertical
blanking interval following the equalizing pulses after the
vertical sync.

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Transmission Methods
In the terrestrial transmission of analog TV signals, and
that by cable, the modulation method used is amplitude
modulation
The sound subcarriers are frequency modulated in most
cases
To save bandwidth, the vision carrier is VSB-AM
(vestigial sideband amplitude modulation) modulated, i.e. a
part of the spectrum is suppressed by bandpass filtering.

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Distortion and Interference

Over the entire transmission link, an analog video signal is
subjected to influences which have a direct effect on its
quality and are immediately visible in most cases.
These distortions and interferences can be roughly grouped in
the following categories:
Linear distortion (amplitude and phase distortion)
Non-linear distortion
Noise
Interference
Intermodulation

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SDTV
(Standard definition TV)

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