CAVSI - Technical Questions & Answers

MESECAM stands for Middle Eastern Secam. MESECAM is not a broadcast standard. It is a VCR “standard” by which the color under process in VCRs is done by subcarrier shift instead of by frequency division. This means that an original Secam recording (frequency division) does not play back in a MESECAM player.

MESECAM uses an AM subcarrier and SECAM uses FM subcarrier. When MESECAM records a color signal onto VHS or Betamax video tape, the luminance signal is recorded in its original form (albeit with some reduction of bandwidth) but the chrominance signal of about 4.4 MHz is too sensitive to minor changes in frequency caused by inevitable small variations in tape speed to be recorded directly. Instead, it is first down-converted to the lower frequency of 630 kHz, and the complex nature of the PAL subcarrier means that the down-conversion must be done via a superheat mixer to ensure that information is not lost....

Yes! There are some ways you can use to convert from PAL to NTSC or vice versa.

1. The easiest way is buying a region-free DVD player, many modern DVD players will play and convert both NTSC and PAL DVDs and will also play DVDs that may have specific regional encoding, helping to avoid the regional problems created by the different formats and specifications....

PAL-60 is NTSC with the chroma part converted to PAL (both encoding and subcarrier frequency, 4.43 MHz). PAL-60 or “pseudo PAL” stands for 60 Hz, instead of 50 Hz. The PAL color system, either baseband or with any RF system, with the normal 4.43 MHz subcarrier unlike PAL-M, can also be applied to an NTSC-like 525-line (480i) picture to form what is often known as “PAL-60”, sometimes “PAL-60/525” or “Pseudo PAL”.

This non-standard signal is a cheap method used in European domestic VCRs and DVD players for playback of NTSC material on PAL televisions. It’s not identical to PAL-M and incompatible with it, because the color subcarrier is at a different frequency; it’ll therefore display in monochrome on PAL-M and NTSC television sets....

There are 3 main analog video standards in use around the world.

PAL (Phase Alternating Line)
NTSC (National Television System Committee)
SECAM (Séquentiel couleur à mémoire – Sequential Color with Memory)...

The NTSC 3.58 is a pure US and Japanese TV system. NTSC 4.43 is used on PAL video recorders which can play NTSC on PAL and allow the reproduction of American video tape on PAL TV.

NTSC 4.43 is also known as NTSC-J. It is a “PAL-type” NTSC in that it uses the same sub-carrier color frequency as PAL (in comparison to o NTSC-J (4.43) is used only in Japan. NTSC-M (3.58) is used elsewhere in other NTSC countries....

NTSC 4.43 is also known as NTSC-J. NTSC 4.43 is a pseudo color system that transmits NTSC encoding (525/29.97) in a color subcarrier of 4.43 MHz instead of 3.58 MHz

The resulting output is only viewable by TVs that support the resulting pseudo-system (usually multi-standard TVs). Using a native NTSC TV to decode the signal yields no color....

There are five varieties of SECAM:

1. French SECAM (SECAM-L)
French SECAM (SECAM-L) is used only in France, Luxembourg (only RTL9 on CH 21 from Dudelange), and Tele Monte-Carlo Transmitters in the south of France....

There are five varieties of PAL:

1. PAL B/G/D/K/I
The majority of countries using PAL have television standards with 625 lines and 25 frames, differences concern the audio carrier frequency and channel bandwidths. Standards B/G are used in most of Western Europe, standard I in the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Macau, standard D/K in most of Eastern Europe, and Standard D in mainland China....

There are three varieties of NTSC:

1. NTSC-M
Unlike PAL, with its many varied underlying broadcast television systems in use throughout the world, NTSC color encoding is invariably used with broadcast system M, giving NTSC-M....

Standard Definition TV (SDTV)

SDTV is the basic level of quality display and resolution for both analog and digital. Transmission of SDTV may be in either the traditional (4:3) or widescreen (16:9) format. Digital SDTV provides pictures and sounds comparable to the best available analog TV....

The difference between Analog TV and Digital TV boils down to the way the TV signal is transmitted. Standard analog TV is transmitted in a manner similar to radio.

In fact, the video signal of analog television is transmitted in AM, while the audio is transmitted in FM. Analog TV is subject to interference, such as ghosting and snow, depending on the distance and geographical location of the TV receiving the signal....