PAL Video System

PAL stands for Phase Alternation by Line, and was adopted in 1967 after Germans finally invented that. It consists of 625 horizontal lines making up the vertical resolution (after an addition of 100 lines in the existing NTSC standard that contained 525 lines). It displays 50 fields and interlaced per second, making for a 25 frame per second system.

An advantage of this system is a more stable and consistent hue (tint). Besides that it has greater number of scan lines thus providing a clear and sharp picture having more detail.
The placing of the color Sub-Carrier at 4.43MHz allows a larger bandwidth of monochrome information to be reproduced than with NTSC/525. Due to reversal of sub-carrier phase on alternate lines, any phase error will be corrected by an equal and opposite error on the next line, correcting the original error. An extension of PAL is PAL-M that is used only in Brazil. It has 525 lines, at 30 frames per second, which is bit closer to the old used system NTSC.

PAL is used in the following countries


Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina (PAL-N), Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brunei, Cameroon, Canary Islands, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Gibralter, Greece (also SECAM), Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, North Korea, Kuwait, Liberia, Luxembourg (also SECAM), Madeira, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay (PAL-N), Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (also SECAM), Siera Leone, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay (PAL-N), Yeman (the former Yeman Arab Republic was PAL, and the former People's Democratic Republic of Yeman was NTSC ), Yugoslavia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.