Television systems
Televisions across the world use slightly different systems. This is partly historical, partly political. NTSC, PAL and SECAM are the three main systems you’ll hear about, although each have local variations.
America introduced colour television (NTSC) in the 1950s, a 525-iine 30-frames per second system. The rest of the world watched and made a few modifications before introducing their own systems. SECAM, a 625-line system started in France in the late 1960s, about the same time that PAL was developed.
One of the main defining criteria of a national television system is the local electricity supply. American electricity has 60 cycles per second (Hz), so it was logical for them to use 60 fields/30 frames per second. The British, ...
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