NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most

of North America, parts of South America (except Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and French Guiana), Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories The first NTSC standard was developed in 1941 and had no provision for color television. In 1953 a second modified version of the NTSC standard was adopted, which allowed color television broadcasting compatible with the existing stock of black-and-white receivers. NTSC was the first widely adopted broadcast color system and remained dominant where it had been adopted until the first decade of the 21st century, when it was replaced with digital ATSC. But even now In the United States a small number of short-range local and TV relay stations continue to broadcast NTSC, as the FCC allows. NTSC baseband video signals are also still often used in video playback (typically of recordings from existing libraries using existing equipment) and in CCTV and surveillance video systems.

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Lines and refresh rate

NTSC color encoding is used with the system M television signal, which consists of 29.97 interlaced frames of video per second, or the nearly identical system J in Japan. Each frame consists of a total of 525 scanlines, of which 486 make up the visible raster.
The color subcarrier has a frequency of approx. 3.58 MHz in the case of analog NTSC. The common NTSC color subcarrier system is also called "NTSC M" or "NTSC 3.58". The refresh rate is 29.97 Hz or 29.97 fps respectively. This corresponds to 59.94 Hz (interlaced - half-images) or 59.94 fields/s respectively which can be derived from the NTSC 2:3-Pulldown based on 23.976 fps of NTSC films. The frame rate of 23.976 fps also conforms to the so-called NTSC-Film standard. The digital standard resolution is 720x480 pixel for DVDs (Digital Versatile Disc), 480x480 pixel for Super Video CDs (SVCD) and 352x240 pixel for Video CDs (VCD). The much-seen "NTSC rounding up" of 59.94 Hz to 60 Hz as well as 29.97 Hz to 30 Hz can be very confusing if we take a more closer look to the TV formats. In former times the values 30 Hz/60 Hz were quite correct, but with the implementation of the color television the NTSC refresh rates were lowered from 60 Hz to 59.94 Hz and from 30 Hz to 29.97 Hz for preventing audio flutter during broadcast. However, the NTSC refresh rate is not 59.94 Hz exactly but 60 Hz*1000/1001 = 59.9400599400599400... Hz 59.94 Hz. In the following sections of the text we will refer to the latter value of 59.94 Hz. The reason why the NTSC refresh rate was changed by implementation of color television is explained by Bob Myers in a detailed article. The 525 525/2 scan lines original interlaced = with a FCC 60 Hz standard: refresh rate lines/field

262.5

262.5 [lines/field]*60 Hz = 15750 lines/[field*s] := horizontal frequency (line rate) (means that 15750 lines are transferred per field and per second) 15750 525 525/2 Hz*455/2 The scan lines = 3.583125 MHz (hypothetical color subcarrier frequency)

NTSC interlaced =

standard with a

of color 60*1000/1001 Hz 262.5

television: refresh rate lines/field lines/[field*s] Hz

262.5 [lines/field]*60*1000/1001 horizontal frequency

Hz

15734.2657... 15734

15734.2657... Hz*455/2 = 3.57954545... MHz (color subcarrier frequency) .

Transmission modulation scheme

Spectrum of a System M television channel with NTSC color.

An NTSC television channel as transmitted occupies a total bandwidth of 6 MHz. The actual video signal, which is amplitude-modulated, is transmitted between 500 kHz and 5.45 MHz above the lower bound of the channel. The video carrier is 1.25 MHz above the lower bound of the channel. Like most AM signals, the video carrier generates two sidebands, one above the carrier and one below. The sidebands are each 4.2 MHz wide. The entire upper sideband is transmitted, but only 1.25 MHz of the lower sideband, known as a vestigial sideband, is transmitted. The color subcarrier, as noted above, is 3.579545 MHz above the video carrier, and isquadrature-amplitude-modulated with a suppressed carrier. The audio signal is frequency-modulated, like the audio signals broadcast by FM radio stations in the 88108 MHz band, but with a 25 kHz maximum frequency swing, as opposed to 75 kHz as is used on the FM band.

Field order
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An NTSC "frame" consists of an "even" field followed by an "odd" field. As far as the reception of an analog signal is concerned, this is purely a matter of convention and, it makes no difference. It's rather like the broken lines running down the middle of a road, it doesn't matter whether it is a line/space pair or a space/line pair; the effect to a driver is exactly the same. Reception problems can degrade an NTSC picture by changing the phase of the color signal (actually differential phase distortion), so the color balance of the picture will be altered unless a compensation is made in the receiver. The vacuum-tube electronics used in televisions through the 1960s led to various technical problems. Among other things, the color burst phase would often drift when channels were changed, which is why NTSC televisions were equipped with a tint control. PAL and SECAM televisions had no need of one, and although it is still found on NTSC TVs, color drifting generally ceased to be a problem once solid-state electronics were adopted in the 1970s. When compared to PAL in particular, NTSC color accuracy and consistency is sometimes considered inferior, leading to video professionals and television engineers jokingly referring to NTSC as Never The Same Color, Never Twice the Same Color, or No True Skin [16] Colors, while for the more expensive PAL system it was necessary to Pay for Additional Luxury. The use of NTSC coded color in S-Video systems completely eliminates the phase distortions. As a consequence, the use of NTSC color encoding gives the highest resolution picture quality (on the horizontal axis & frame rate) of the three color systems when used with this scheme. (The NTSC

resolution on the vertical axis is lower than the European standards, 525 lines against 625) However, it uses too much bandwidth for over-the-air transmission PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries.
This format is used particularly in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and in some areas of Asia. PAL uses altogether 625 scan lines, thereof approx. 575 are visible. The color subcarrier has a frequency of approx. 4.43 MHz in the case of analog PAL (complementary view). Special NTSC or PAL color subcarrier signals will not be transferred via connections like SCART (RGB) and YUV. Such a signal is only transferred via connections like Composite Video, RCA, FBAS and Y/C or S-Video (S-VHS) respectively. The refresh rate is 25 Hz or 25 fps respectively. This corresponds to 50 Hz (interlaced) or 50 fields/s respectively. The digital standard resolution is 720x576 pixel for DVDs, 480x576 pixel for SVCDs and 352x288 pixel for VCDs. Related to NTSC, PAL has a shorter run time because of the higher amount of "fps" - PAL movies are (normally) not cut, but they are "faster" (PAL Speedup).

Both the PAL and the NTSC system use a quadrature amplitude modulated subcarrier carrying the chrominance information added to the luminance video signal to form a composite video baseband signal. The frequency of this subcarrier is 4.43361875 MHz for PAL, compared to 3.579545 MHz for NTSC. The SECAM system, on the other hand, uses a frequency modulation scheme on its two line alternate colour subcarriers 4.25000 and 4.40625 MHz. The name "Phase Alternating Line" describes the way that the phase of part of the colour information on the video signal is reversed with each line, which automatically corrects phase errors in the transmission of the signal by cancelling them out, at the expense of vertical frame colour resolution. Lines where the colour phase is reversed compared to NTSC are often called PAL or phase-alternation lines, which justifies one of the expansions of the acronym, while the other lines are called NTSC lines. The 4.43361875 MHz frequency of the colour carrier is a result of 283.75 colour clock cycles per line plus a 25 Hz offset to avoid interferences. Since the line frequency (number of lines per second) is 15625 Hz (625 lines x 50 Hz / 2), the colour carrier frequency calculates as follows: 4.43361875 MHz = 283.75 * 15625 Hz + 25 Hz.

PAL vs. NTSC

In most cases, NTSC is used with a fps of 60i or 30p, so theoretically offers very slightly smoother motion than PAL, which is generally used with 50i or 25p. The difference is negligible, however, and artefacts caused by frame rate conversion required when video has been recorded at the wrong rate for the display are more severe. NTSC receivers have a tint control to perform colour correction manually. If this is not adjusted correctly, the colours may be faulty. The PAL standard automatically cancels hue errors by phase reversal, so a tint control is unnecessary. Chrominance phase errors in the PAL system are cancelled out using a 1H delay line resulting in lower saturation, which is much less noticeable to the eye than NTSC hue errors. However, the alternation of colour information Hanover bars can lead to picture grain on pictures with extreme phase errors even in PAL systems, if decoder circuits are misaligned or use the simplified decoders of early designs (typically to overcome royalty restrictions). In most cases such extreme phase shifts do not occur. This effect will usually be observed when the transmission path is poor, typically in built up areas or where the terrain is unfavourable. The effect is more noticeable on UHF than VHF signals as VHF signals tend to be more robust.

PAL and NTSC have slightly divergent colour spaces, but the colour decoder differences here are ignored.

PAL vs. SECAM

SECAM is an earlier attempt at compatible colour television which also tries to resolve the NTSC hue problem. It does so by applying a different method to colour transmission, namely alternate transmission of the U and V vectors and frequency modulation, while PAL attempts to improve on the NTSC method. SECAM transmissions are more robust over longer distances than NTSC or PAL. However, owing to their FMnature, the colour signal remains present, although at reduced amplitude, even in monochrome portions of the image, thus being subject to stronger cross colour. Like PAL, a SECAM receiver needs a delay line. SECAM, also written SCAM (Squentiel couleur mmoire, French for "Sequential Color with Memory"), is an analog color television system first used in France.
Sometimes known as "Squentiel Couleur avec Mmoire" - means "sequential color with memory". This format is used particularly in France and still in most areas of Russia. Some eastern European states have reconverted from SECAM to PAL. SECAM has technical similarities to PAL but it is not part of the DVD standards, for we can leave it out here.
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Just as with the other color standards adopted for broadcast usage over the world, SECAM is a standard which permits existing monochrome television receivers predating its introduction to continue to be operated as monochrome televisions. Because of this compatibility requirement, color standards added a second signal to the basic monochrome signal, which carries the color information. The color information is called chrominanceor C for short, while the black and white information is called the luminance or Y for short. Monochrome television receivers only display the luminance, while color receivers process both signals. The color space is three dimensional by the nature of the human vision, so after subtracting the luminance, which is carried by the base signal, the color sub carrier still has to carry a two dimensional signal. Typically the red (R) and the blue (B) information are carried because their signal difference with luminance (R-Y and B-Y) is stronger than that of green (G-Y). SECAM differs from the other color systems by the way the R-Y and B-Y signals are carried. First, SECAM uses frequency modulation to encode chrominance information on the sub carrier. Second, instead of transmitting the red and blue information together, it only sends one of them at a time, and uses the information about the other color from the preceding line. It uses adelay line, an analog memory device, for storing one line of color information. This justifies the "Sequential, With Memory" name. Because SECAM transmits only one color at a time, it is free of the color artifacts present in NTSC and PAL resulting from the combined transmission of both signals. This means that the vertical color resolution is halved relative to NTSC. The later PAL system also displays half the vertical resolution of NTSC (i.e., the same as SECAM). Although PAL does not eliminate half of vertical color information during encoding, it combines color information from adjacent lines at the decoding stage, in order to compensate for "color sub carrier phase errors" occurring during the transmission of the Amplitude/Phase-Modulated color sub carrier. This is normally done using a delay line like in SECAM (the result is called PAL D or PAL Delay-Line, sometimes interpreted as DeLuxe), but can be accomplished "visually" in cheap TV sets using PAL-S (PAL simple) decoders. Because the FM modulation of SECAM's color sub carrier is insensitive to phase (or amplitude) errors, phase errors do not

cause loss of color saturation in SECAM, although they do in PAL. In NTSC, such errors cause color shifts.
Short for High-Definition Television, a new type of television that provides much better resolution than current televisions based on the NTSC standard. HDTV is a digital TV broadcasting format where the broadcast transmitswidescreen pictures with more detail and quality than found in a standardanalog television, or other digital television formats. HDTV is a type of Digital Television (DTV) broadcast, and is considered to be the best quality DTV format available. Types of HDTV displays include direct-view, plasma, rear screen, and front screen projection. HDTV requires an HDTV tuner to view and the most detailed HDTV format is 1080i. * HDTV Minimum Performance Attributes: Receiver: Receives ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions and decodes all ATSC Table 3 video formats Display Scanning Format: Has active vertical scanning lines of 720 progressive (720p), 1080 interlaced (1080i), or higher Aspect Ratio: Capable of displaying a 16:9 image1 Audio: Receives and reproduces, and/or outputs Dolby Digital audio

High-definition television (HDTV) is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems (standard-definition television). HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD (1280 x 720 = 921,600 for 720p, or 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 for 1080p). Early HDTV broadcasting used analog techniques, but today HDTV is digitally broadcast using video compression.
Television formats can be subdivided into different categories like LDTV, SDTV, EDTV and HDTV. Halfimages will be transferred in SDTV (Standard Definition Television). SDTV is hierarchically arranged under EDTV (Enhanced Definition Television). Here, progressive material is transferred instead of interlaced material. HDTV (High Definition Television) which is already used in the USA is desired to replace our old analog PAL and NTSC television formats. Nowadays a resolution of 1920x1080 pixel (progressive, frame rate 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, or 30, format 1080p) is already possible.

HDTV broadcast systems are identified with three major parameters: Frame size in pixels is defined as number of horizontal pixels number of vertical pixels, for example 1280 720 or 1920 1080. Often the number of horizontal pixels is implied from context and is omitted, as in the case of 720p and 1080p. Scanning system is identified with the letter p for progressive scanning or i for interlaced scanning. Frame rate is identified as number of video frames per second. For interlaced systems an alternative [citation needed] form of specifying number of fields per second is often used.

If all three parameters are used, they are specified in the following form: [frame size][scanning [citation needed] system][frame or field rate] or [frame size]/[frame or field rate][scanning system]. Often, frame size or frame rate can be dropped if its value is implied from context. In this case the remaining numeric parameter is specified first, followed by the scanning system. For example, 19201080p25 identifies progressive scanning format with 25 frames per second, each frame being 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 pixels high. The 1080i25 or 1080i50 notation identifies interlaced scanning format with 25 frames (50 fields) per second, each frame being 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 [citation needed] pixels high. The 1080i30 or 1080i60 notation identifies interlaced scanning format with 30 [citation frames (60 fields) per second, each frame being 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 pixels high. needed] The 720p60 notation identifies progressive scanning format with 60 frames per second, each frame being 720 pixels high; 1,280 pixels horizontally are implied.

50 Hz systems support three scanning rates: 25i, 25p and 50p. 60 Hz systems support a much wider set of frame rates: 23.976p, 24p, 29.97i/59.94i, 29.97p, 30p, 59.94p and 60p. In the days of standard definition television, the fractional rates were often rounded up to whole numbers, e.g. 23.976p was often called 24p, or 59.94i was often called 60i. 60 Hz high definition television supports both fractional and slightly different integer rates, therefore strict usage of notation is required to avoid ambiguity. [citation needed] Nevertheless, 29.97i/59.94i is almost universally called 60i, likewise 23.976p is called 24p. For commercial naming of a product, the frame rate is often dropped and is implied from context (e.g., a 1080i television set). A frame rate can also be specified without a resolution. For example, 24p means [23] 24 progressive scan frames per second, and 50i means 25 interlaced frames per second. There is no standard for HDTV colour support. Until recently the color of each pixel was regulated by three 8-bit color values, each representing the level of red, blue, and green which defined a pixel colour. Together the 24 total bits defining colour yielded just under 17 million possible pixel [when?] colors. Recently some manufacturers have produced systems that can employ 10 bits for each colour (30 bits total) which provides for a palette of 1 billion colors, saying that this provides a much richer picture, but there is no agreed way to specify that a piece of equipment supports this feature. Human vision can only discern approximately 1 million colours so an expanded colour palette is of questionable benefit to consumers.