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> [PAL colour] was designed in the 1960s to be backwards compatible with black-and-white TV receivers. Fun fact: unlike for NTSC, this technically isn't true,

> [PAL colour] was designed in the 1960s to be backwards compatible with black-and-white TV receivers. Fun fact: unlike for NTSC, this technically isn't true, because there is not a preceding black-and-white format that PAL was compatible with. Rather, PAL's black-and-white format (the line count and refresh rate) was defined at the same time as the colour standard. They chose their number of lines (625) to avoid having to do NTSC's 29.97fps thing. Or so I think I have heard. Please correct me if I am wrong.

makomk 7y ago
It's complicated and I don't know the full history, but the reason it's 625 lines is so that the horizontal refresh rate is approximately the same as for NTSC, allowing monochrome sets to be relatively easily converted. Also, 625-line television was developed at roughly the same time as early colour but I'm not sure they necessarily arrived at the same time depending on the country.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  Standupmaths has a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJUM6pCpew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJUM6pCpew
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  That might explain why 60Hz PAL modes (on games consoles etc) work so well.
interfixus 7y ago
Ah, memories! I was a teenager in Denmark in the seventies. We easily picked up TV from both of the two Germanies. The channels from the west were sleek and modern in full color, while those from the DDR were in lifesapping greyscale ("black and white", as some like to call it). I knew this was an artifact from the SECAM -> PAL conversion, but it still managed perfectly well to reinforce our hazy notions about the Eastern Bloc as a strange, grainy, not-quite-real kind of place - a slightly subconscious impression many of my age will no doubt recognize. And then there were the occasional American clips on the evening news, and sometimes even whole shows that noone had bothered to give a quality conversion: Poor resolution and loud, garish, oversaturated colors. This I also knew to be a conversion artifact, but just like the eastern greyscale, it tended to reinforce certain preconceived notions. Perception is an interesting thing to hack.

makomk 7y ago

It's complicated and I don't know the full history, but the reason it's 625 lines is so that the horizontal refresh rate is approximately the same as for NTSC, allowing monochrome sets to be relatively easily converted. Also, 625-line television was developed at roughly the same time as early colour but I'm not sure they necessarily arrived at the same time depending on the country.

EvanAnderson 7y ago
Standupmaths has a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJUM6pCpew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJUM6pCpew
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
That might explain why 60Hz PAL modes (on games consoles etc) work so well.

interfixus 7y ago

Ah, memories! I was a teenager in Denmark in the seventies. We easily picked up TV from both of the two Germanies. The channels from the west were sleek and modern in full color, while those from the DDR were in lifesapping greyscale ("black and white", as some like to call it). I knew this was an artifact from the SECAM -> PAL conversion, but it still managed perfectly well to reinforce our hazy notions about the Eastern Bloc as a strange, grainy, not-quite-real kind of place - a slightly subconscious impression many of my age will no doubt recognize. And then there were the occasional American clips on the evening news, and sometimes even whole shows that noone had bothered to give a quality conversion: Poor resolution and loud, garish, oversaturated colors. This I also knew to be a conversion artifact, but just like the eastern greyscale, it tended to reinforce certain preconceived notions. Perception is an interesting thing to hack.