What Is The Difference Between PAL & NTSC?
PAL and NTSC are the television standards for different parts of the world. There is also a third – SECAM. NTSC covers the United States, Canada, Japan, and a few other places. SECAM covers France and Russia. PAL covers the rest of the world. Click here for a map. PAL, SECAM, & NTSC are basically a different way of displaying the picture on the television. The main differences are in the number of horizontal lines displayed on the screen, and the number of frames per second displayed. Because of these differences, something formatted for PAL will not play on a television made for NTSC (and vice versa). Some televisions are now made to handle both PAL and NTSC. Also, some DVD players are able to adapt the signal to something your television can understand. However, before buying something in a standard not commonly used in your area, you probably want to verify your electronics can handle the conversion. DVDs made for PAL are also compatible with SECAM.
It is worth noting that PAL color encoding can be applied to 29.97 Hz signals and NTSC to 25Hz signals. There are specialist applications that sometimes make use of this ability; A European VHS player, for example, may use PAL encoding when playing an American tape but the line and frame rates remain unchanged. This halfway house allows foreign material to be played on European televisions. Although these specialist applications exist, it is normally safe to use NTSC and PAL as descriptions for North American and European television standards.
