Nigel Goodwin writes: >and nice large! diagrams - including the alterations for NTSC operation >(for those unfortunates who have an inferior TV system :-), should provoke a reaction from the USA PICLIST members!). Mike Keers responds: >Not at all I agree, I mean we are just using a 40 - 50 year standard >enhanced for color. I don't think anybody in the Americas or the other places in the world where NTSC is used has any particular love for the system. It was a technical compromise based upon available technology in the years around 1950 or so. The F.C.C. had allowed private industry to research the best system and there were only two iron-clad rules. The new system had to be compatible with existing monochrome reception so as not to instantly reduce all the current televisions to land fill, and the color transmissions couldn't occupy any more spectrum space than did existing 525-line monochrome transmissions. Just as early European video was synced to a 50-HZ power standard, our monochrome video was synced to the 60-HZ power standard. When color came along, the original 60-HZ field rate had to drop a tiny bit to about 59.9xx HZ to let the color burst fall within the 6-MHZ channel allocation and not mess up the audio or interfere with the adjacent channels. That's why hum bars and static based upon power line arcing tends to slowly creep up the screen. It's truly amazing that we have been able to make the old system last as long as it has without just throwing it out which is what we are finally doing with the new digital standards. Don't forget that our system in North America is sometimes referred to as "Never Twice The Same Color." Martin McCormick