Pal to NTSC Multisystem Video Converters

By: John Dulaney
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:23:25
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PAL Standard

PAL technology is a colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in a larger section of the world. The other common standards are NTSC and SECAM. PAL is an analogue broadcasting system and is a standard which uses in all 625 alternating lines. It is used on 50Hz power frequency cycle and operated in those countries where such frequency is the standard specification of its electrical power. PAL was introduced as a standard in the year 1967 and has eight different types - PAL B, PAL G, PAL H, PAL D, PAL I, PAL K, PAL K, PAL N and PAL M. These offshoots of PAL have different specifications. PAL is used in China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, and United Kingdom, some European countries, some countries in South America and also in Africa.

Within Europe, France, along-with some of its neighbours, use SECAM technology, where-as, rest of the Europe uses the PAL standard. It is the dominant standard in the world, with the United States and Japan using the NTSC standard. PAL delivers 625 lines at 50 half frame per second and works on 50Hz power cycle.

NTSC

NTSC is the technology which sets the standard in television and video standard in the United States and provides a composite video signal having a refresh rate of about 60 half-frames per second, interlaced. A frame consists of a packet of data and in this case it would be a packet of composite video signals that a frame would contain. NTSC contains 525 lines and can contain 16 million colours. A composite video would mean a video signal in which all the colours are present, such as, red, blue, and green signals. It may also consist of audio signals at times. These are mixed together to form the composite video signal.

NTSC is essentially an analogue system, developed in the United States and in use in Canada, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, the United States, and some other countries, mostly in the Americas. The refreshing rate of NTSC standard is 60Hz, and consists of 525 lines per frame. Out of these 525 lines, 485 carry the video information, with the rest are sync pulses, which are not visible. The bank lines have been deliberately put there to give time to the electronic gun in a television to reposition itself.

SECAM

SECAM is an analogue colour television system, first used in France, as a video standard, at the early part of 1960. It is historically the first European colour television standard. SECAM uses the same bandwidth as PAL but transmits colour sequentially. It runs on 625 lines per frame and uses the same frame rate as PAL, 25 frames per second. SECAM is used in France and former French colonies. It is also used in the former communist countries in Europe. Due to the same characteristics that SECAM has with PAL, especially as far as resolution and frame-rate are concerned, DVDs, VCDs, and SuperVHS use PAL internally, but before the signal is available at the output, the colour encoding is changed to SECAM to be displayed on a SECAM TV.

Due to the incompatibility in the video standards, video tapes from one region cannot be viewed in the television of another country, which has a different standard. This means, that a video tape from the United Kingdom cannot be viewed in the United States. The VCR has no capability to convert a PAL video tape to NTSC for viewing. Multi-system VCRs can play video tapes of all standards but it cannot convert the standard to make the video standard compatible with the existing standard of a television. Solution to this problem is to have a VCR with the capability of converting the output signal into a compatible standard for viewing it on a television. This multi-system VCR would have to have a built-in converter for the purpose.

A basic multi-system VCR does not have such a converter built in and a separate stand-alone converter is required to be used, in between the VCR and the television or otherwise you would need a multi-system TV to view the tape. A multi-system TV also has a converter built in, and any VHS tape can be played in any basic multi-system VCR for viewing. Suppose you need to view a PAL video tape on a NTSC television. You shall not be able to view the tape, unless your VCR is a multi-system one and has an inbuilt converter. The PAL tape is read by the VCR and converted to NTSC signals when the output of the VCR is being applied to the TV. If your multi-system VCR does not have a converter, you must have a multi-system television in-order that you may view the tape. The other alternative would be to hook up an external converter in between your multi-system VCR and your NTSC television, when you can view that video tape.

In converting PAL into NTSC, the point to remember is that NTSC video standard has a resolution of 720x480 and a frame rate of 30 frames per second, while PAL has a resolution of 720x576 with a frame rate of 25 frames per second. Therefore, from the above specifications, it can easily be determined that PAL has a better picture quality than NTSC, while NTSC has a better motion picture display because of its higher refresh rate.

Tenlab offers Tenlab converters which is capable of converting any of the video standards into the other. These are stand alone video broadcast standard converters, supporting PAL, SECAM and NTSC. The converter equipment connects to the VCR output with the converter output going into the television's signal input. Therefore, if you are playing a PAL video tape/disc on your multi-system VCR/DVD, the output of the converter is available as a NTSC standard, compatible with the standard of your television.

Some of the Tenlab models stabilise the picture processing, using a bult-in time corrector and has a video enhancer to provide you with a crisp and clearer picture quality. Tenlab converters are also used by number of corporations. The converters are used exclusively for their professional applications such as worldwide satellite transmissions, MTV Latin America and Gulfstream Aerospace for their on-board multi-system entertainment systems.

Tenlab was established in the year 1988 with a mission to create products solving incompatibility between the different standards existing in video systems around the world. The company introduced the first NTSC VCR capable converter, playing other standard video tapes. Since then Tenlab has gone on to introducing new models and offered upgrading the older ones to the new standards.

Article source: Expert Articles