NTSC or PAL: What do you prefer (and why)?

[bbernardini]

Poll question: NTSC or PAL: What do you prefer (and why)?

[LibLabUK]

1. PAL

Better resolution and colour fidelity.

[vicman]

2. As I understand it...

it all depends upon the quality of the source broadcast. Technically, the major difference between the two formats is a reversal of the way each treats electrical polarity. A negative pulse equals black, a positively charged pulse equals white, and that relationship is reversed in the other standard. Color information is "added on" to the basic signal in short "bursts" at the end of each line of video detail. If good equipment is used at all spots from creation through final broadcast, it would be damn near impossible to discern any appreciable difference. Any bored TV engineers out there to expand on this? Does PAL treat the color "burst" any differently than NTSC?

[LibLabUK]

3. Hmm

There are considerably more horizontal scan lines in a PAL picture than in NTSC picture.

NTSC 720x480 29.97fps

PAL 720x576 25fps

[vicman]

5. Information I didn't have

Thanks. But isn't that about the same difference as between VHS and BetaMax tape recorders (as percentage of information - not actual scan lines)? Based on what I've seen, my tired old eyes can't actually see the difference. Turn the TV on... if the program is good, I watch it. Crap, I turn off. I'm all about the content. Although I do appreciate that the technical differnces are very real.

[Kellanved]

8. yes, it does

In every second line PAL shifts the red carrier's phase by 180°.

To get the actual color, two lines are combined (the TV needs the next line to draw the current one). The shifted phase is un-shifted and combined with the other line's signal (assuming that the color does not differ much). This way an error in the color gets corrected to an error in the saturation.
This produces a picture with less possible colors, but almost none "bleeding" or hue errors.

IMHO the only real difference today is the resolution. Using components, SCART EURO-AV, S-Video, ... etc cables, the color system has no influence whatsoever. However, with a composite cable the difference is very easy to spot - even with a cable length < 1 m.

[Kellanved]

4. PAL

The color system simply is better.

As to the resolution/refresh rate, I don't know. Technically those have nothing to do with NTSC nor with PAL, as they come from the older B/W systems. It is all a matter of the frequencies in the power grids; 15.7 kHz at 50Hz means the 625 lines resolution associated with PAL; 60Hz the 525 lines.

I was never able to understand, why all PAL TV sets and VCRs are able to display/play back 60Hz sources, while NTSC sets are almost never able to "understand" a 50 Hz signal. (My best guess is Brazil's PAL@60Hz standard).

[Deja Q]

6. PAL, for many reasons

* Higher resolution (625 lines vs NTSC's 525)
* True color signal (NTSC is b/w with a color signal overlaid)
* Greater color saturation (see above)
* Fewer letters in acronym

[vicman]

7. And British vinyl records

were always technically superior to records manufactured in the U.S. And that was a difference I could actually hear (back in the day, that is). Plus, on average, UK vinyl prsssings contained more music per side than U.S. pressings. I've never really cared about TV, but audio was always important to me. But it seems just another case that we get screwed over here in the USA. Why is that?

[Kellanved]

11. small "Advocatus Diaboli" interlude

-PAL Videos/DVDs suffer from PAL speedup. PAL is one picture per second faster than cinema, as a result movies are faster, the sound higher.

-console games are often converted sloppily (or not at all): the hundred extra lines get filled with black, ruining the ratio. Also they often suffer from timing errors and slowdowns. This could easily be avoided by using the PAL60 mode -yet that hardly ever is done.

-PAL needs more bandwidth, i.e. fewer channels (hey, wait! is this an advantage?)

[Endangered Specie]

9. NTSC: Not The Same Color

:)

[BiggJawn]

12. PAL: Perfect At Last

All said, I prefer NTSC. Why?

I make my living with it. Everything I know will be obsolete soon enough, what with all these DTV standards that the "market" hasn't weeded out yet (shades of AM stereo again. thanks, FCC!)

"Married: With Children" looks like shit no matter what format it's in...

[bbernardini]

13. Yeah, whatever happened to AM Stereo?

I remember that being part of the tag line on Philadelphia's big AM news station for a while, but it disappeared one day.

[BiggJawn]

14. 2 non-compatible systems....

And a decree from the FCC that they "would let the market decide" which system would become the standard.

So much confusion, if your local stations ran one system, and your new Alpine received the other, you didn't get Stereo...
So people quit paying extra for stereo AM radios in their cars and station owners quit spending money on stereo exciters.

Same thing's going on with DTV. Part of the reason the sets are so expensive (besides Corporate GREED) is that they have to be compatible with EIGHT different systems...It's like having 8 complete IF/Detector-Demod sections in your TV tuner...

Again, courtesy of your Caveat Emptor FCC....

[Bjornsdotter]

10. PAL...

...better color, better picture hands down.

Cheers,
Kim

[hunter]

15. Both PAL and NTSC were crappy kludges.

PAL was the more sophisticated of the two, and for a time, and in some situations, it sometimes sucked less than NTSC.

In the very beginning the problems these two systems were designed to address were:

1. cramming the color signal into the available bandwidth
   
   
2. making a moving picture that wouldn't look like crap on a black and white television
   
   
3. lowering the component count in color television sets.
   
   

That's all. There were no other lofty design considerations.

The color balance in NTSC sets drifted more than PAL -- thus the need for those old analog "tint" and "hue" controls, and the origin of the "Never The Same Color" joke. But PAL had it's own problems that couldn't be satisfied by twidling knobs.

Modern television sets have sophisticated filters and digital signal processors that are very good at extracting the proper pixels from a messy composite television signal, therefore the differences between PAL and NTSC are less important than they once were. Even frame rate differences can be compensated for with modern digital processing.

On inexpensive television sets I think the higher frame rate of NTSC (30 frames per second rather than 25) is less distracting. "PAL 60" is a strange and interesting brew, but pure digital video is better.

The picture quality and capabilities of almost any modern computer monitor far exceed those of the expensive studio monitors I used twenty five years ago.

The current situation with digital video standards is ugly and confused. Satellite, cable, internet, and DVD digital video formats will determine the quality of most television pictures. Traditional "broadcasters" will be marginalized. I don't believe "HDTV" will become popular until inexpensive DVD players are capable of HDTV quality.

So, to answer your question, the PAL / NTSC argument is archaic... but that's okay, I like it.

BTW, do you like 'fifties Fords or 'fifties Chevys?