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From BBC Engineering in the 1970s: NTSC - "Never Twice the Same Colour" (US) SECAM - "System Exactly Contrary to the American Method" (France) PAL - "Perfect

• dylan604 4y ago
  Most people don't realize that PAL came 10 years after NTSC. It also did not have to worry about maintaining backwards compatibility with the pre-existing black&white only format that was only a couple of years old. As much as I hate all of the pain that compatibility caused, it was an impressive feat of engineering. 30000/1001 was such a magic number that haunts me to this day.
  • tialaramex 4y ago
    > It also did not have to worry about maintaining backwards compatibility with the pre-existing black&white only format that was only a couple of years old. The BBC was broadcasting TV shows in black and white, and they were being received, in black and white, on people's black and white televisions for many years before PAL was developed. So yes of course compatibility was important, the existing sets continued to show (in black and white) newer colour shows, PAL is a method to encode colour on an existing black and white television signal just like NTSC. PAL isn't better because of somehow not worrying about backward compatibility, it's just a better technology.