NTSC

This article is about the television system. For NTSC regions in videogames, see Regional lockout § Video games. For the Indonesian government agency, see National Transportation Safety Committee. For the organization in China, see National Time Service Center. For the standard-definition digital video mode sometimes referred to as NTSC, see 480i.

Analog television encoding systems by nation: NTSC (green), SECAM (orange), and PAL (blue)

NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941.[1] In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170.[2]

In 1953, a second NTSC standard was adopted,[3] which allowed for color television broadcast compatible with the existing stock of black-and-white receivers.[4][5][6] It is one of three major color formats for analog television, the others being PAL and SECAM. NTSC color is usually associated with the System M; this combination is sometimes called NTSC II.[7][8] The only other broadcast television system to use NTSC color was the System J. Brazil used System M with PAL color. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos used System M with SECAM color - Vietnam later started using PAL in the early 1990s.

The NTSC/System M standard was used in most of the Americas (except Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay), Myanmar, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Japan, and some Pacific Islands nations and territories (see map).

Since the introduction of digital sources (ex: DVD) the term NTSC has been used to refer to digital formats with number of active lines between 480 and 487 having 30 or 29.97 frames per second rate, serving as a digital shorthand to System M. The so-called NTSC-Film standard has a digital standard resolution of 720 × 480 pixel for DVD-Videos, 480 × 480 pixel for Super Video CDs (SVCD, Aspect Ratio: 4:3) and 352 × 240 pixel for Video CDs (VCD).[9] The digital video (DV) camcorder format that is equivalent to NTSC is 720 × 480 pixels.[10] The digital television (DTV) equivalent is 704 × 480 pixels.[10]

  1. ^ National Television System Committee (1943). Donald G. Fink (ed.). Television Standards and Practice: Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the National Television System Committee and Its Panels. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. Retrieved September 16, 2024.
  2. ^ Canon ES8400V Instruction Manual, Canon, p. 72
  3. ^ Federal Communications Commission (September 29, 1954). 20th Annual Report to Congress (1954) (PDF) (Report). p. 90. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 8, 2024. Retrieved September 16, 2024.
  4. ^ National Television System Committee (1951-1953) (1953), Petition of National Television System Committee For Adoption of Transmission Standards for Color Television, retrieved September 16, 2024{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Radio Corporation of America; National Broadcasting Company, Inc. (1953), Petition of Radio Corporation of America and National Broadcasting Company, Inc. for Approval of Color Standards for the RCA Color Television System, retrieved September 16, 2024
  6. ^ National Television System Committee (1951–1953) (1953). Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12-19, with Some supplementary references cited in the Reports, and the Petition for adoption of transmission standards for color television before the Federal Communications Commission (Report). LCCN 54021386.{{cite report}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ "Engineers and Electrons: A Century of Electrical Progress (chapter list)". doi:10.1109/9780470616321.ch9. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
  8. ^ Wilt, Adam (June 12, 2019). "10 Years Ago: The Analog Shutoff". provideocoalition.com. Retrieved October 11, 2023.
  9. ^ NTSC (National Television System Committee) in Television Standards - formats and techniques by Raffael Amadeus Trappe, 2013.
  10. ^ a b NTSC in PCMag Encyclopedia