BROADCAST STANDARDS

BAJMC-3
 MEANING OF BROADCAST
STANDARDS

• Protocols followed to broadcast

and receive television signals.
• Television sets require a source of reference signals that tell the TV
receiver to be ready to receive the next picture in the stream of images.
Early TV set designers decided to use the mains power supply
frequency as this source for two reasons. The first was that with the
older types of power supply, one would get rolling hum bars on the TV
picture if the mains supply and the signal were not at exactly the same
frequency. The second was that the TV studios would have had
enormous problems with flicker on their cameras when making
programmes. This resulted in a division of the world's TV systems into
two camps—the 25 frames per second (50 Hz) camp and the 30 frames
per second (60 Hz) camp. Later, for reasons both political (remember
the two World Wars!) and technical, countries began to develop their
own broadcast standards.
 National Television Systems Committee

•The National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) standard was introduced in

the US in 1940 as the first set of standard protocols for television. It is used
throughout the US, Canada, and Japan and has been adopted in other countries
as well. NTSC has 525 lines displayed at 30 rames per second. It has a lower
resolution than PAL (Phase Alternating Line) or SECAM ('sequential colour with
memory') but a faster Frame rate, which reduces the flicker.
•Owing to the fact that it is often received in different variations of colour within
a given broadcast, it is nicknamed 'Never the Same Colour'.
• The first broadcasts were made in 1939, transmitting 340 lines
at 30 frames/sec., as demonstrated at the opening of the New
York World Fair. The NTSC standard for television defines a
composite video signal with a refresh rate of 60 half-frames
(interlaced) per second. Each frame contains 525 lines and can
contain 16 million different colours.
• The NTSC standard is not compatible with most computer video
standards, which generally use RGB video signals. However, we
can insert special video adapters into the computer that convert
NTSC signals into computer video signals, and vice versa.
 P H A S E A LT E R N AT I N G L I N E ( PA L )

• PAL or Phase Alternating Line broadcast standard was developed by Walter

Bruch at Telefunken (German State Television), Germany, and is used in much
of Western Europe, Asia (India too uses PAL as the broadcasting standard),
throughout the Pacific, and in southern Africa.
• PAL was first introduced in Germany in 1967. It has a higher resolution than
NTSC, with 625 lines, but uses only 25 frames per second. PAL video has a
slight flicker in comparison to NTSC because of its lower frame rate.
• However, PAL offers noticeably improved resolution and colour stability. After
several minutes of viewing a PAL video, our eyes get used to it, and the flicker
becomes unnoticeable.
•PAL is used in most of Europe (except France,
Bulgaria, Russia, Yugoslavia, and some other
countries in Eastern Europe, where SECAM is
used), Australia, and some Asian and African
countries. Each of the 25 frames in a second
consists of two fields (half a frame). Fields are
transmitted and displayed successively. There
are 50 fields per second. Sequential Colour with
Memory.
 SECAM

• sequential couleur a mémoire, French for 'sequential colour with memory', is

so named because it uses memory to store lines of colour information in order
to eliminate the colour artefacts found on NTSC systems. It is also nicknamed
System Essentially Contrary to American Method.
• It was developed for the same purpose as PAL, but uses a different mechanism
to read signals. Video information is transmitted in alternate lines, and a video
line store is used to combine the signals together. SECAM uses the same
resolution and frame rate as PAL, but its processing of the colour information
makes it incompatible with PAL.
• SECAM was introduced in France in 1967, where it is still used. It has
also been adopted in many former French colonies, as well as parts
of Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Yugoslavia) and the former Soviet
Union. It is alleged that the primary motivation for the development
of SECAM in France was to protect French television equipment
manufacturers and make it more difficult to view non-French
programming.
• Political factors from the Cold War have also been attributed to the
adoption of SECAM in Eastern Europe, as its use made it impossible
for most Eastern Europeans to view television programmes that
were broadcast from outside, which were mostly using PAL or NTSC.