Analogue Television Synchronization - Development - Standards

Standards

Further information: Broadcast television system

Broadcasters using analog television systems encode their signal using NTSC, PAL or SECAM analog encoding and then use RF modulation to modulate this signal onto a Very high frequency (VHF) or Ultra high frequency (UHF) carrier. Each frame of a television image is composed of lines drawn on the screen. The lines are of varying brightness; the whole set of lines is drawn quickly enough that the human eye perceives it as one image. The next sequential frame is displayed, allowing the depiction of motion. The analog television signal contains timing and synchronization information so that the receiver can reconstruct a two-dimensional moving image from a one-dimensional time-varying signal.

In many countries, over-the-air broadcast television of analog audio and analog video signals is being discontinued, to allow the re-use of the television broadcast radio spectrum for other services such as datacasting and subchannels.

The first commercial television systems were black-and-white; The beginning of color television was in the 1950s.

A practical television system needs to take luminance, chrominance (in a color system), synchronization (horizontal and vertical), and audio signals, and broadcast them over a radio transmission. The transmission system must include a means of television channel selection.

Analog broadcast television systems come in a variety of frame rates and resolutions. Further differences exist in the frequency and modulation of the audio carrier. The monochrome combinations still existing in the 1950s are standardized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as capital letters A through N. When color television was introduced, the hue and saturation information was added to the monochrome signals in a way that black & white televisions ignore. This way backwards compatibility was achieved. That concept is true for all analog television standards.

However there are three standards for the way the additional color information can be encoded and transmitted. The first was the American NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) color television system. The European/Australian PAL (Phase Alternation Line rate) and the French-Former Soviet Union SECAM (Séquentiel Couleur Avec Mémoire) standard were developed later and attempt to cure certain defects of the NTSC system. PAL's color encoding is similar to the NTSC systems. SECAM, though, uses a different modulation approach than PAL or NTSC.

In principle all three color encoding systems can be combined with any scan line/frame rate combination. Therefore, in order to describe a given signal completely, it's necessary to quote the color system and the broadcast standard as capital letter. For example the United States uses NTSC-M, the UK uses PAL-I, France uses SECAM-L, much of Western Europe and Australia uses PAL-B/G, most of Eastern Europe uses PAL-D/K or SECAM-D/K and so on.

However not all of these possible combinations actually exist. NTSC is currently only used with system M, even though there were experiments with NTSC-A (405 line) and NTSC-I (625 line) in the UK. PAL is used with a variety of 625-line standards (B,G,D,K,I,N) but also with the North American 525-line standard, accordingly named PAL-M. Likewise, SECAM is used with a variety of 625-line standards.

For this reason many people refer to any 625/25 type signal as "PAL" and to any 525/30 signal as "NTSC", even when referring to digital signals, for example, on DVD-Video which don't contain any analog color encoding, thus no PAL or NTSC signals at all. Even though this usage is common, it is misleading as that is not the original meaning of the terms PAL/SECAM/NTSC.

Although a number of different broadcast television systems were in use worldwide, the same principles of operation apply.