How it works

NTSC, PAL, and SECAM describe ways to encode color in analog television. A color system is only part of the picture: line counts, field rates, channel bandwidths, and sound offsets depend on the associated transmission system and regional variant.

In common 525-line NTSC color systems the field rate is approximately 59.94 Hz, not exactly 60 Hz. Many 625-line PAL and SECAM systems use 50 fields per second. Interlaced field rate is not the same as complete-frame rate.

Original archive figures

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The original page linked to externally hosted illustrations. Those files are absent from the backup; the text has been restored without substitute images.

On the bench

This is background for restoring analog video circuits. The old table incorrectly mixed PAL variants and field rates; use the specifications of the actual source and receiver instead of treating the color-system name as a complete compatibility guarantee.

Resources & provenance

Rewritten from the original articles/tut/d3mn6sf_tut002.php page. Component values and historical performance claims have not been independently bench-tested.

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