What is the difference between "NTSC" and "PAL"?
Camcorders come in all sorts of flavours, especially when we're referring to standard-def camcorders. One of the things you're going to see, or one of the things you may already know about, is that you probably have either an NTSC camcorder or a PAL, depending on where you live. NTSC is kind of the format that's used in the US, PAL is a more European format. NTSC is also a format used in the Asian countries as well. So really you need to buy the camera that fits your format, or fits the country that you're living in. It has to do with the standard that you're going to play it back on. An NTSC television standard plays NTSC tapes. A PAL standard, for the European standard, more or less, plays the PAL tapes. The important thing to note is that images that were shot in one country can't easily be transferred to another country. The PAL format is colour. It's one system: Phase Alternating Lines. The NTSC system was delivered here because we had such a base of televisions in the US that the world didn't have, but it was a black-and-white standard. So, when we moved to NTSC, the colour standard, we had to incorporate a black-and-white signal on to the colour signal, so that black-and-white TVs weren't obsoleted. In the European system, when they went to the colour standard, all the old TVs just went out the door. One day, they wouldn't work. They wouldn't let that happen here. So we had to come up with a system that was a compromise of both. PAL's always been a better system, but it would have obsoleted every set that was on the market at the time. Now the good news is, as we all move to high definition, this will become much more standardised, and we'll be able to pass information from country to country without having to deal with the difference in formats. That's one of the advantages of living in a digital world, and moving to high definition. However, in standard definition, we still have to deal with the controversy between NTSC and PAL.
