What is the Difference Between NTSC and PAL?
Well, it’s a technical answer…, but all you need to know is where you live. North America – NTSC Australia – PAL See complete country listing at the bottom of this page. All of our VHS video tapes are available in the NTSC format. Almost all are available in the PAL format. See the list below of titles not available in PAL format. Sorry we do not offer any titles in the SECAM format. Our DVDs are only available in NTSC format. During the order process you will be given the oportunity to specify if you would like DVD or VHS and NTSC or PAL.
Some Americans may have sent video home movies to a European relative, only to discover that the images are scrambled and the sound quality is very poor. This is caused by a major difference in broadcast formats used by the United States and many other countries. The United States favors a format called NTSC, which is short for National Television Standards Committee, while Europe, Australia and parts of Asia use a competing format called PAL, or Phase Alternating Line. Most of us would not be able to recognize the difference between NTSC and PAL, but then again most of us aren’t television broadcast engineers. The differences really start with the electrical power system behind the transmissions. In the United States and other countries, electrical power is generated at 60 hertz, so for technical reasons the NTSC signal is also sent out at 60 ‘fields’ per second. Since most televisions use an interlaced system, this means that 30 lines of the image are sent out, followed by the altern
The two TV formats (NTSC and PAL) have been adopted as standards by television broadcasters around the world. The main difference between the two formats is the number of frames per second they offer: 30 in NTSC, and 25 in PAL. This difference means that a movie recorded in NTSC format is unplayable by a PAL player and vice versa. NTSC (National Television Systems Committee) A standard format adopted by the FCC for television broadcasts in the United States, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. NTSC offers 525 lines of resolution per frame at 30 fps. PAL (Phase Alteration Line) The standard format for television broadcasts in Germany, Great Britain, South America, Australia, and most of Western European and Asian countries. PAL offers 25 frames per second.
