What does it mean for a monitor to be NTSC or PAL and how are they different?

There is a third standard called SECAM, an abbreviation from the French meaning "sequential color with memory". SECAM was mainly used in France, the Soviet Union (and post-Soviet states), and some African countries; it is similar to PAL, but processes color differently.

Introduction to Analog CRT Displays

To understand NTSC and PAL standards, you must first understand at least a little about how analog CRT displays, also known as "cathode ray" or simply "cathode ray" displays, worked. of tube”.

The first displays were CRTs, which flickered very quickly to produce images on the screen. A low refresh rate (the speed at which images on the screen are updated) caused that characteristic flickering, which was distracting and even caused symptoms of discomfort in many people, so obviously not ideal.

Since bandwidth was very limited at the time, it was not feasible to output TV signals at a high enough refresh rate to avoid those flickering issues while maintaining the image at a low resolution. high enough to be visible. As a workaround, TV signals used a technique called interlacing to effectively double the frame rate per second without using additional bandwidth.

Interlacing is the act of dividing video into two separate "fields" and displaying them one after the other. All the even lines of the video are displayed in one field, while the odd lines are in the second. The video is switching between odd and even lines so fast that the human eye doesn't realize it can be a good viewing experience.

Interlaced scan contrasts with progressive scan, where each line of a video is drawn in a normal sequence. This results in higher quality video (it's what's used today), but it wasn't feasible in the past again due to bandwidth limitations.

Now that you're familiar with the interlacing process, let's look at how the NTSC and PAL standards handle this process differently. We've covered frame rates and refresh rates before on this site, so if you're not familiar with it, we recommend checking those articles.

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The History of NTSC

In the United States, the FCC established the National Television System Committee in 2940 to standardize broadcast TV, since manufacturers at the time were not consistent about it. The NTSC standard came into effect in 1941, but it was not until 1953 that it was revised for color transmission. It is important to note that NTSC continued to be supported on black and white displays since then as color data was easy to leak on older grayscale displays. The committee opted to use 525 scan lines (480 of them visible) divided into two interlocking fields of 262.5 lines each.

Meanwhile, the NTSC refresh rate was initially 60Hz, as that's what mains power runs at in the US, as choosing a refresh rate that didn't sync with the mains would have produced interference. So, due to interlacing, NTSC actually has an effective frame rate of 30 FPS...or close to it.

However, when the color video signal was introduced the refresh rate of the standard was reduced by 0.1% to accommodate differences with the added color information. So technically NTSC in color runs at a refresh rate of 59.94 Hz and 29.97 FPS.

History of PAL Coding

PAL emerged when countries in Europe were ready to introduce color video transmission. However, they did not like the NTSC standard due to some of its weaknesses, such as changing colors in bad weather. These European countries waited for the technology to improve, and in 1963, West German engineers submitted the PAL format to the European Broadcasting Union. First used for color broadcasts in the UK in 1967, its name refers to the way in which some of the color information is inverted on each line, averaging any color errors that might have occurred during a transmission.

PAL runs at a higher resolution than NTSC; includes 625 interlocking lines of which 576 are visible. Also, in most regions where PAL has been implemented, mains power runs at 50Hz, so PAL displays run at 25FPS due to interlacing.

NTSC and PAL in the gaming world

Despite the fact that they are no longer used for television broadcasting (which does not have much to do with this website but it was necessary to tell you about it for what comes next ), the NTSC and PAL standards are still relevant in some spheres today, and one of them is video games, especially those known as "retro".

Since older game consoles used analog video output, we had to pair them with a TV or display from the same region for it to work properly. For example, if you have a Super Nintendo compared to Spain (PAL), it does not work on an analog TV in the US (NTSC) due to the difference in encoding, as we have mentioned before, and it would be necessary to purchase a signal converter between the two or an analog-to-digital converter to connect to an HDMI TV.

In the days of analog consoles, some games played differently on consoles in PAL regions than in NTSC countries. To avoid issues with frame rate-based timing, developers often slowed down games on purpose to compensate for the lower frame rate per second in PAL regions. That was especially noticeable in fast-paced games like SEGA's Sonic series, and this slowdown is why video game speedrunners prefer to play in NTFS mode over PAL.

NTSC and PAL are still used colloquially today to refer to differences in refresh rates between regions. For example, someone might tell you that they cannot play an "NTSC disc" on their "PAL player", even though this is technically incorrect since NTSC and PAL are strictly analog color coding standards, as we explained to you at the beginning.

However, due to the (unrelated) regional restrictions on media like DVDs and video games that still exist, these terms are an easy way to refer to media from different countries. Fortunately, most of today's video game consoles no longer have a defined region (except in some cases Japan) which means that you can, for example, buy a Japanese game and run it on an American console.