NTSC 525 Line / PAL 625 Line TV Standards

 

Enlarged 525 line picture     Enlarged 625 line picture    

Pure unconverted NTSC 525 line picture - 320 x 240     PAL 625 line picture - 320 x 240    

 

I haven't really picked a good example to demonstrate this point, and I'll look around to find a better one in the near future, but just for the sake of interest I've put up an example of the picture you get from an American / Canadian 525 line video cassette and a European PAL one.   A lot of people will probably not get to see the two compared together.   The NTSC original on the upper left has been standards converted to an S-VHS tape, which keeps as much detail as you could get, and is more than adequate to copy a normal VHS tape near perfectly.   The image on the upper right is from a VHS PAL original.   The lower image pair are from pure unconverted signals, the left as it appeared directly from an original VHS tape I just got today, the one on the right is a PAL signal from the Disney Channel.   Its not possible to show the true line detail because my capture card has a 640 x 480 limit, so can only caputre 480 of the 580 lines of PAL resolution (the other lines being used for teletext etc), but 480 is about right for NTSC.   Oh, and yes, the image on the left really did look that faded blue colour!   I had to take another look myself to be sure.   That's as likely to be due to the film to video conversion process going "pear-shaped" (horribly wrong!) as it is to be due to the NTSC standard, although NTSC is capable of creating this affect, requiring a tint control to correct it.   PAL is auto-correcting, so PAL TV's don't require tint controls unless they're NTSC compatible and need it to correct NTSC material.

With people starting to go on about DVD and such, it being better than VHS etc, it might be worth remembering that there are two grades of picture quality going around already, and this is true for VHS and DVD, both English language, but one with 20% higher picture detail (and runs 4% faster, which is not ideal, but isn't really noticable).   If such things as picture quality interest you, and you have 625 line compatible equipment TV equipment (for DVD), which you most likely do have, or a PAL 625 compatible video recorder, which is less likely to be the case but they'll be around, and a TV as before that will accept the signal (for VHS), you might like to consider 625 line imported films instead of 525 line ones.   This is easy to arrange with VHS, but you would need a multi-region DVD player for DVD, but if you're planning to get a DVD player, and you want to keep the option open, you might think about getting a player that will play other regions as well as US region 1.

I'm not disparaging the TV standard of the USA / Canada, its a perfectly good system and its not like the quality difference jumps out at you with a chainsaw or anything like that! :), and I'm not trying to sell you anything, but having seen both, even from a Laserdisk, NTSC 525 visibly lacks a PAL 625's picture's 'crispness', and if you're a fiend for the best picture quality, you might be looking in the wrong place getting US 525 line stuff.

 

 

Above images © 1977 The Walt Disney Co., and used for educational purposes.

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This page was created Sunday 31 October 1999