NTSC

NTSC, named after the National Television System Committee, is the analog television color system that was used in North America from 1954 and until digital conversion, was used in most of the Americas (except Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and French Guiana); Myanmar; South Korea; Taiwan; Philippines; Japan; and some Pacific island nations and territories (see map). NTSC, named after the National Television System Committee, is the analog television color system that was used in North America from 1954 and until digital conversion, was used in most of the Americas (except Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and French Guiana); Myanmar; South Korea; Taiwan; Philippines; Japan; and some Pacific island nations and territories (see map). The first NTSC standard was developed in 1941 and had no provision for color. In 1953 a second NTSC standard was adopted, which allowed for color television broadcasting which was compatible with the existing stock of black-and-white receivers. NTSC was the first widely adopted broadcast color system and remained dominant until the 2000s, when it started to be replaced with different digital standards such as ATSC and others. Most countries using the NTSC standard, as well as those using other analog television standards, have switched to, or are in process of switching to newer digital television standards, there being at least four different standards in use around the world. North America, parts of Central America, and South Korea are adopting or have adopted the ATSC standards, while other countries (such as Japan) are adopting or have adopted other standards instead of ATSC. After nearly 70 years, the majority of over-the-air NTSC transmissions in the United States ceased on January 1, 2010, and by August 31, 2011 in Canada and most other NTSC markets. The majority of NTSC transmissions ended in Japan on July 24, 2011, with the Japanese prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima ending the next year. After a pilot program in 2013, most full-power analog stations in Mexico left the air on ten dates in 2015, with some 500 low-power and repeater stations allowed to remain in analog until the end of 2016. Digital broadcasting allows higher-resolution television, but digital standard definition television continues to use the frame rate and number of lines of resolution established by the analog NTSC standard. The National Television System Committee was established in 1940 by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to resolve the conflicts between companies over the introduction of a nationwide analog television system in the United States. In March 1941, the committee issued a technical standard for black-and-white television that built upon a 1936 recommendation made by the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA). Technical advancements of the vestigial side band technique allowed for the opportunity to increase the image resolution. The NTSC selected 525 scan lines as a compromise between RCA's 441-scan line standard (already being used by RCA's NBC TV network) and Philco's and DuMont's desire to increase the number of scan lines to between 605 and 800. The standard recommended a frame rate of 30 frames (images) per second, consisting of two interlaced fields per frame at 262.5 lines per field and 60 fields per second. Other standards in the final recommendation were an aspect ratio of 4:3, and frequency modulation (FM) for the sound signal (which was quite new at the time). In January 1950, the committee was reconstituted to standardize color television. The FCC had briefly approved a color television standard in October 1950 which was developed by CBS. The CBS system was incompatible with existing black-and-white receivers. It used a rotating color wheel, reduced the number of scan lines from 525 to 405, and increased the field rate from 60 to 144, but had an effective frame rate of only 24 frames per second. Legal action by rival RCA kept commercial use of the system off the air until June 1951, and regular broadcasts only lasted a few months before manufacture of all color television sets was banned by the Office of Defense Mobilization in October, ostensibly due to the Korean War. CBS rescinded its system in March 1953, and the FCC replaced it on December 17, 1953, with the NTSC color standard, which was cooperatively developed by several companies, including RCA and Philco. In December 1953 the FCC unanimously approved what is now called the NTSC color television standard (later defined as RS-170a). The compatible color standard retained full backward compatibility with then-existing black-and-white television sets. Color information was added to the black-and-white image by introducing a color subcarrier of precisely 315/88 MHz (usually described as 3.579545 MHz±10Hz or about 3.58 MHz). The precise frequency was chosen so that horizontal line-rate modulation components of the chrominance signal fall exactly in between the horizontal line-rate modulation components of the luminance signal, thereby enabling the chrominance signal to be filtered out of the luminance signal with minor degradation of the luminance signal. (Also, minimize the visibility on existing sets that don't filter it out.) Due to limitations of frequency divider circuits at the time the color standard was promulgated, the color subcarrier frequency was constructed as composite frequency assembled from small integers, in this case 5×7×9/(8×11) MHz. The horizontal line rate was reduced to approximately 15,734 lines per second (3.579545×2/455 MHz = 9/572 MHz) from 15,750 lines per second, and the frame rate was reduced to 30/1.001 ≈ 29.970 frames per second (the horizontal line rate divided by 525 lines/frame) from 30 frames per second. These changes amounted to 0.1 percent and were readily tolerated by then-existing television receivers. The first publicly announced network television broadcast of a program using the NTSC 'compatible color' system was an episode of NBC's Kukla, Fran and Ollie on August 30, 1953, although it was viewable in color only at the network's headquarters. The first nationwide viewing of NTSC color came on the following January 1 with the coast-to-coast broadcast of the Tournament of Roses Parade, viewable on prototype color receivers at special presentations across the country. The first color NTSC television camera was the RCA TK-40, used for experimental broadcasts in 1953; an improved version, the TK-40A, introduced in March 1954, was the first commercially available color television camera. Later that year, the improved TK-41 became the standard camera used throughout much of the 1960s. The NTSC standard has been adopted by other countries, including most of the Americas and Japan. With the advent of digital television, analog broadcasts are being phased out. Most US NTSC broadcasters were required by the FCC to shut down their analog transmitters in 2009. Low-power stations, Class A stations and translators were required to shut down by 2015.