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In the age of digital television, 625-line video might be just right for some Americans.
Strictly speaking, PAL (phase alternation by line), is a composite-color encoding system. It's used in most of Europe, but it's also used in Brazil, where television has 525 scanning lines and 30 frames per second (fps).
Nevertheless, to many involved in American television, "PAL" is synonymous with 625-line 25-fps television, even if it's component-color and is not, was not, and never will be encoded as PAL. After all, NTSC (the National Television System Committee) represents both the composite-color encoding system used in the United States and the 525-line monochrome standard that preceded it.
The horizontal scanning frequency of NTSC color is about 15,734 Hz; that of 625line 25-fps video is 15,625 Hz, less than one percent different. That's not an accident. Television set manufacturers foresaw global markets and acted accordingly.
Although the similarity of horizontal scanning rates theoretically made it simpler for RCA to market to Europe and Philips to sell to the U.S., the differences of frame rates made it difficult to exchange video programming. In the late 1970s, when Barbados had 625-line television with NTSC color encoding, The Brady Bunch was a programming staple. That was not because the people of the Caribbean island were interested in blond, bland Americans but because no other country had 625line NTSC...