Talk:NTSC

The following was formerly in NTSC standard which, being redundant, I have redirected to NTSC:

NTSC standard: Abbreviation for National Television Standards Committee standard. The North American standard (525-line interlaced raster-scanned video) for the generation, transmission, and reception of television signals.

Note 1: In the NTSC standard, picture information is transmitted in vestigial-sideband AM and sound information is transmitted in FM.

Note 2: In addition to North America, the NTSC standard is used in Central America, a number of South American countries, and some Asian countries, including Japan. Contrast with PAL, PAL-M, SECAM.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C

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I think it should be made more clear that the actual frame rate of NTSC is 30/1.001 Hz. 29.97 Hz is an inexact approximation. That 29.97 is the actual rate is a common misconception which I would prefer not to propagate.

Unsharp

Why is NTSC so unsharp and blurry compared to PAL? --Abdull 21:17, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Because both the vertical line count and bandwidth available for horizontal resolution are higher (effectively about 338x483 compared to 403x576 according to one source (http://www.maxim-ic.com/appnotes.cfm/appnote_number/750). The PAL image has nearly half-again as many "pixels". There is less motion information (lower frame rate) and colour information, but the sharpness you perceive depends mostly on the luminance info in individual fields.

Now that you mention it, there is a general POV cast to the article that seems subtly defensive of NTSC and critical of PAL. Hopefully it can be gradually rewritten to strain that out (a more accurate assessment might be that both systems suck ;). - toh 21:00, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Be a little cautious. The video bandwidth of the various PAL implementations varies from a low of 4.2MHz (the same as NTSC) up to a much-nicer 6.0MHz. It's only the systems with video bandwidths greater than NTSC that have horizontal resolutions better than NTSC. (Admittedly, I think this constitutes the majority of PAL systems in the world, although the less-great 5MHz video bandwidth seems most popular).

There's a pretty nice description (and table) at Broadcast television system.

In the final analysis, I think you got it right: both systems suck ;).

Atlant 22:18, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes I've just read this and I definately get the feeling that NTSC is being painted in a better light than PAL. I'm not sure what it is, something subtle in the way it's written. BTW the PAL entry is very poor compared to this and the SECAM one !

--GeorgeShaw 17:49, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

Well come on, some PAL people! The gauntlet is cast, step up to the plate, and all those other sportsy metaphors! Let's see some activity over there on the PAL article! After all, we'll soon all be swept away by digital TV systems. :-)

Atlant 18:11, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Map

Note that the map (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NTSC-PAL-SECAM.png) is cropped such that a good half of New Zealand is missing. Does anyone have the original image? Or is a completely new one necessary to fix this? --abhi 17:18, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)

Consumer-grade equipment

Reading magazine reviews of both HDTV and SDTV sets, it seems to me that many TV manufacturers deliberately deviate from the NTSC specification; apparently it's normal to have some amout of "wide angle color demodulation" and "red boost" inherent in NTSC color decoders; this does not seem to be a common manufacturing practice with PAL devices. That of course contributes to the "Never the same color" stigma as well; maybe someone with a more in-depth technical understanding of this could write about this in the article. NewRisingSun 16:10, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

IIRC, this was introduced in something like the 70s where the decoders were "rigged" so that a wide range of colors in the hue range around caucasian flesh tones rendered closer to some appropriate value. This was done, of course, because NTSC sets have a hue (phase) control and folks were always mis-setting that control, making people's faces green or red instead of whatever color caucasians nominally are. I had assumed that this sort of thing was phased out as more consistenty-accurate decoders became available; certainly most NTSC sets bury the hue control somewhere in some menu these days and I don't think I've touched one for years.

Atlant 16:49, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

From what I've read, it actually has gotten worse with all those "improvement" features. One TV reviewer wrote that they use nonstandard color decoders that produce "warmer" colors because they use "colder" phosphors to make the picture look brighter. It also seems that these nonstandard algorithms are different for Japanese and American TVs, probably because Asian fleshtones are different than caucasian ones. Compare this data sheet for some TV chip thing: http://www.sony.co.jp/~semicon/english/img/sonyde01/a6801857.pdf

On page 17, it reads:

AXIS (1) : R-Y, G-Y axis selector switch

0 = Japan axis R-Y: 95° ´ 0.78, G-Y: 240° ´ 0.3

1 = US axis R-Y: 112° ´ 0.83, G-Y: 252° ´ 0.3 (B-Y: 0° ´ 1)

I would assume that a TV set using this chip could not correctly reproduce colors at all (no matter what the "Hue" setting is), as R-Y should be at exactly 90° (don't know what that fraction number means, maybe "gain" or something). Again, I wonder if and how to best write this up for the main article. NewRisingSun 19:32, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)