RCA TK-42 in Australia broadcasting Pakenham races on ATV-0 1967

[Aussie Bloke]

From my understanding of what I've learned about the PAL and the NTSC colour standard:

NTSC suffered from colour phase errors (at least in the early years) which the received image on the telly would come up the wrong colours so you would have to adjust the hue control on the TV to get the colours right

PAL system developed overcame that problem by a phase alternating line system which converted hue errors into luminance errors e.g. a rich red would appear to be a lighter red instead of another colour which is less of a nuisance than getting a hue error

That was the main advantage PAL had over NTSC.

Another advantage was the PAL system used 625 lines whereas NTSC used 525 lines, hence a higher resolution/detailed picture. Watching DVDs of both standards I can clearly see the difference in resolution between the two pictures and I admit PAL pictures do look more detailed for that reason.

The advantage NTSC had over PAL however was the scan rate being 60 fields/sec whereas PAL was 50 fields/sec, hence a more smoother fluid motion picture. I however find it hard to tell the difference in fluidity of a NTSC picture to a PAL picture when viewing DVDs of both standards.

More details on the PAL and NTSC and SECAM systems can be viewed on Wikipedia:
PAL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL
NTSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC
SECAM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECAM
I haven't touched on SECAM as I am not heaps familiar with how it works opposed to the other two.

Now from memory from what I read, Australia chose to adopt the PAL system in 1968 likely be for the above advantages of the PAL and colour television was meant to start here in 1972. Unfortunately for whatever reason (probably slow to change conservativism of the government) the official introduction of colour on all networks didn't start till the 1st March 1975.

Anyways to my opinion both systems had their advantages and disadvantages, I think NTSC should of stepped up their line resolution to 625 lines and I think PAL should of stepped up the field rate to 60 fields/sec then there would of been equality between the 2 systems, though that would of cause a big hassle in having to modify all equipment at all TV stations so hence once a standard was set it has to stick! I do say PAL's method of converting colour hue errors into luminance errors will be superior over NTSC's hue error problem as seeing less saturated colours is less annoying and preferred to seeing green faces, blue grass and purple bananas.