NTSC versus PAL

On Apr 3, 11:34 pm, "Phil Allison" <phi...@tpg.com.au> wrote:

stratu...@yahoo.com
 "Phil Allison"







** More fuckwit, OFF TOPIC CRAPOLOGY !!

See the words " broadcast signal " - fuckhead ???

Even know what it means ???

They still do some composite D-2 editing at CBS network. Or don't they
count as broadcast?

** Hey fuckwit.

In relation to television transmission - where does one find the "
broadcast signal " ???

Don't strain you tiny brain thinking too hard.

What the heck has the transmitter got to do with it?

**  I made no mention of  any  " transmitter"

 -  you   FUCKING   ILLITERATE   MORON   !!!

The fuckwit still no idea where a  " broadcast signal"  is to be found.

Cos obviously, this asinine cunthead has no clue why engineers were
motivated to develop PAL in the first place.

.....  Phil

Because people like you couldn't figure out how to use NTSC?

G˛

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <4bb7d8ca$0$32106$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>,
Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:

I understand that prior to the expiry of the Telefunken PAL patent, Sony
Trinitron sets for the PAL market actually threw away the chrominance
signal on alternate scan lines, thus landing themselves back in NTSC
territory. Those sets had a tint control, and I know from personal
experience that they produced a perfectly satisfactory result (I only
learnt the other day why they had a tint control).

Depends on what you mean by 'satisfacory'. Passable, maybe.

--
*Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects *

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[isw]

In article
<b463273f-75d6-4957-84a4-730fa3bec602@l36g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
stratus46@yahoo.com wrote:

On Apr 2, 9:40 pm, "Phil Allison" <phi...@tpg.com.au> wrote:
stratu...@yahoo.com

** More fuckwit, OFF TOPIC CRAPOLOGY !!

See the words " broadcast signal " - fuckhead ???

Even know what it means ???

They still do some composite D-2 editing at CBS network. Or don't they
count as broadcast?

** Hey fuckwit.

In relation to television transmission  -  where does one find the  "
broadcast signal "  ???

Don't strain you tiny brain thinking too hard.

.....   Phil

What the heck has the transmitter got to do with it? Anything that is
right or wrong with an NTSC signal is equally right or wrong BEFORE
the transmitter. The transmitter is just a way to get the signal to
lots of folks at once. Or does that confuse YOU?

You are evidently not aware that a poorly designed or operated
transmitter can introduce all sorts of distortions to the signal. Talk
to the engineers who designed or operated them sometime.

Isaac

 

[Phil Allison]

"isw"

stratus46@yahoo.com wrote:


What the heck has the transmitter got to do with it? Anything that is
right or wrong with an NTSC signal is equally right or wrong BEFORE
the transmitter. The transmitter is just a way to get the signal to
lots of folks at once. Or does that confuse YOU?

You are evidently not aware that a poorly designed or operated
transmitter can introduce all sorts of distortions to the signal. Talk
to the engineers who designed or operated them sometime.

** Maybe you can tell this utter imbecile what the phrase " broadcast signal
" refers to ??




...... Phil

 

[William Sommerwerck]

I understand that prior to the expiry of the Telefunken PAL patent,
Sony Trinitron sets for the PAL market actually threw away the
chrominance signal on alternate scan lines, thus landing themselves
back in NTSC territory. Those sets had a tint control, and I know from
personal experience that they produced a perfectly satisfactory result
(I only learnt the other day why they had a tint control).

Depends on what you mean by "satisfactory". Passable, maybe.

When you discuss something at length, you become aware of those things you
thought you understood, but didn't. (Well, I do, anyway.)

I'd always read that one could construct a PAL receiver in such a way that
eliminated the need for a manual hue control. I never questioned this, but
now it makes little sense.

There are two reasons for having a manual hue control:

The user can adjust the color rendition to their personal (and usually
incorrect) taste. *
The user can correct for incorrect burst phase.

That seems to be "it". As we've seen, these errors can be corrected by
adjusting the hue control, whereas the other error -- differential phase
shift -- cannot be so-corrected, because the timing errors are not linear.

Here's where I get confused. The line-to-line polarity reversal ** causes
the differential phase errors to be equal and opposite, and thus cancel out
when added (at the cost of desaturation -- but that's another issue).

However... If the burst phase is wrong, then there is no cancellation of
errors, because there are no "errors" /in the signal itself/. (Right? (???))
Therefore, I don't see how line averaging can be used to eliminate the need
for a manual hue control.

If anyone knows of a reference with a non-tautological explanation, I'd
appreciate a pointer to it. Thanks.

* Left to their own devices, the average user generally sets the color for
greenish skin tones. I wonder if Vulcan viewers tended towards a pinkish
error.

** It's actually line-to-line+2, because the image is interlaced.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <hpcmlq$ltf$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

I understand that prior to the expiry of the Telefunken PAL patent,
Sony Trinitron sets for the PAL market actually threw away the
chrominance signal on alternate scan lines, thus landing themselves
back in NTSC territory. Those sets had a tint control, and I know from
personal experience that they produced a perfectly satisfactory result
(I only learnt the other day why they had a tint control).

Depends on what you mean by "satisfactory". Passable, maybe.

When you discuss something at length, you become aware of those things
you thought you understood, but didn't. (Well, I do, anyway.)

I'd always read that one could construct a PAL receiver in such a way
that eliminated the need for a manual hue control. I never questioned
this, but now it makes little sense.

I've never seen a set designed for the PAL market with a hue control. Only
ones modified from a basically NTSC design.

There are two reasons for having a manual hue control:

The user can adjust the color rendition to their personal (and
usually incorrect) taste. *
The user can correct for incorrect burst phase.

That seems to be "it". As we've seen, these errors can be corrected by
adjusting the hue control, whereas the other error -- differential phase
shift -- cannot be so-corrected, because the timing errors are not
linear.

You simply don't get hue errors on PAL sets - unless the grey scale is set
incorrectly. Of course some sets also used the incorrect phosphors to
provide a brighter picture - but a hue control couldn't compensate for
that.

--
*I'm already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 5/04/2010 10:56 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:

I understand that prior to the expiry of the Telefunken PAL patent,
Sony Trinitron sets for the PAL market actually threw away the
chrominance signal on alternate scan lines, thus landing themselves
back in NTSC territory. Those sets had a tint control, and I know from
personal experience that they produced a perfectly satisfactory result
(I only learnt the other day why they had a tint control).

Depends on what you mean by "satisfactory". Passable, maybe.

When you discuss something at length, you become aware of those things you
thought you understood, but didn't. (Well, I do, anyway.)

I'd always read that one could construct a PAL receiver in such a way that
eliminated the need for a manual hue control. I never questioned this, but
now it makes little sense.

There are two reasons for having a manual hue control:

The user can adjust the color rendition to their personal (and usually
incorrect) taste. *
The user can correct for incorrect burst phase.

That seems to be "it". As we've seen, these errors can be corrected by
adjusting the hue control, whereas the other error -- differential phase
shift -- cannot be so-corrected, because the timing errors are not linear.

Here's where I get confused. The line-to-line polarity reversal ** causes
the differential phase errors to be equal and opposite, and thus cancel out
when added (at the cost of desaturation -- but that's another issue).

However... If the burst phase is wrong, then there is no cancellation of
errors, because there are no "errors" /in the signal itself/. (Right? (???))
Therefore, I don't see how line averaging can be used to eliminate the need
for a manual hue control.

Think of the chroma signal as a vector with its y coordinate equal the
red difference component, and the x coordinate equal to the blue
difference component. A phase error rotates that vector about the z
axis. Effectively, the blue difference component receives a bit of the
red difference component, and vice versa.

On alternate lines the phase of the red difference component *only* is
inverted. In our view, this has the effect of reflecting the vector in
the x axis - what was a positive y value becomes negative.

The same phase error causes this vector to rotate in the same direction
about the z axis, but because of the reflection, the mixing of the
components has the opposite sign.

If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

Sylvia.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

However... If the burst phase is wrong, then there is no cancellation of
errors, because there are no "errors" /in the signal itself/. (Right?
(???))
Therefore, I don't see how line averaging can be used to eliminate the
need
for a manual hue control.

Think of the chroma signal as a vector with its y coordinate equal the
red difference component, and the x coordinate equal to the blue
difference component. A phase error rotates that vector about the z
axis. Effectively, the blue difference component receives a bit of the
red difference component, and vice versa.

On alternate lines the phase of the red difference component *only* is
inverted. In our view, this has the effect of reflecting the vector in
the x axis - what was a positive y value becomes negative.

The same phase error causes this vector to rotate in the same direction
about the z axis, but because of the reflection, the mixing of the
components has the opposite sign.

If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

No argument. That's always been my understanding. But...

If the burst phase gets screwed up somewhere along the line, no amount of
line averaging will fix the problem, because there's nothing "wrong" with
the subcarrier to fix.

Granted, this problem hardly ever happens. But the argument that a fully
implemented PAL set is inherently immune to color errors is hard for me to
swallow.

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Sylvia Else wrote:

If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

Since PAL TV sets have a saturation (color level) control, isn't that
a "non-problem". If it matters, you just adjust it to compensate.

My experience is that people set the color saturation too high, if I hold
my hand up to the screen my skin looks pale in comparison to everyone
on it.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <slrnhrjv4t.l1t.gsm@cable.mendelson.com>,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@cable.mendelson.com> wrote:

My experience is that people set the color saturation too high, if I hold
my hand up to the screen my skin looks pale in comparison to everyone
on it.

Especially CSI. ;-)

--
*If I throw a stick, will you leave?

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article <slrnhrjv4t.l1t.gsm@cable.mendelson.com>,
Geoffrey S. Mendelson <gsm@cable.mendelson.com> wrote:
My experience is that people set the color saturation too high, if I hold
my hand up to the screen my skin looks pale in comparison to everyone
on it.

Especially CSI. ;-)

That's funny, I was thinking of last Thursday night's episode of CSI
when I wrote that.

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 6/04/2010 12:53 AM, William Sommerwerck wrote:

However... If the burst phase is wrong, then there is no cancellation of
errors, because there are no "errors" /in the signal itself/. (Right?
(???))
Therefore, I don't see how line averaging can be used to eliminate the
need
for a manual hue control.

Think of the chroma signal as a vector with its y coordinate equal the
red difference component, and the x coordinate equal to the blue
difference component. A phase error rotates that vector about the z
axis. Effectively, the blue difference component receives a bit of the
red difference component, and vice versa.

On alternate lines the phase of the red difference component *only* is
inverted. In our view, this has the effect of reflecting the vector in
the x axis - what was a positive y value becomes negative.

The same phase error causes this vector to rotate in the same direction
about the z axis, but because of the reflection, the mixing of the
components has the opposite sign.

If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

No argument. That's always been my understanding. But...

If the burst phase gets screwed up somewhere along the line, no amount of
line averaging will fix the problem, because there's nothing "wrong" with
the subcarrier to fix.

If the burst has a random phase relationship to the colour subcarrier on
each line, then my analysis falls apart because the vectors would have
random orientations. In such a situation a PAL receiver would do no
better than NTSC, and they'd both perform awfully.

If the burst just has a fixed phase offset from the true colour
subcarrier, then the averaging will work.

Indeed it will work if the colour subcarrier drifts in a consistent way
relative to the burst - or if the receiver's oscillator similarly
drifts. The effect of such a drift on an NSTC picture would be a
variation of tint from left to right. However, a tint control wouldn't
be able to address that problem - it would simply move the horizontal
position on the screen where the colours are accurate - suggesting that
it doesn't occur in practice except in equipment that is recognisably
broken.

Granted, this problem hardly ever happens. But the argument that a fully
implemented PAL set is inherently immune to color errors is hard for me to
swallow.

I don't think there's a claim that it is inherently immune to all colour
errors, only those caused by consistent differences between the phase of
the subcarrier and the burst.

Sylvia.

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 6/04/2010 1:09 AM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

Sylvia Else wrote:
If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

Since PAL TV sets have a saturation (color level) control, isn't that
a "non-problem". If it matters, you just adjust it to compensate.

If it's a fixed phase error, yes. If the phase error is changing slowly
over time the the picture will have a saturation that varies over time
which would be annoying if the effect were high enough.

However, I've never noticed such an effect.

Sylvia.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

If the burst just has a fixed phase offset from the true colour
subcarrier, then the averaging will work.

Right. I missed that.

is inherently immune to
all colour errors, only those caused by consistent differences
between the phase of the subcarrier and the burst.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:4bba994c$0$15459$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...

On 6/04/2010 12:53 AM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
However... If the burst phase is wrong, then there is no cancellation
of
errors, because there are no "errors" /in the signal itself/. (Right?
(???))
Therefore, I don't see how line averaging can be used to eliminate the
need
for a manual hue control.

Think of the chroma signal as a vector with its y coordinate equal the
red difference component, and the x coordinate equal to the blue
difference component. A phase error rotates that vector about the z
axis. Effectively, the blue difference component receives a bit of the
red difference component, and vice versa.

On alternate lines the phase of the red difference component *only* is
inverted. In our view, this has the effect of reflecting the vector in
the x axis - what was a positive y value becomes negative.

The same phase error causes this vector to rotate in the same direction
about the z axis, but because of the reflection, the mixing of the
components has the opposite sign.

If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

No argument. That's always been my understanding. But...

If the burst phase gets screwed up somewhere along the line, no amount of
line averaging will fix the problem, because there's nothing "wrong" with
the subcarrier to fix.

If the burst has a random phase relationship to the colour subcarrier on
each line, then my analysis falls apart because the vectors would have
random orientations. In such a situation a PAL receiver would do no better
than NTSC, and they'd both perform awfully.

If the burst just has a fixed phase offset from the true colour
subcarrier, then the averaging will work.

Indeed it will work if the colour subcarrier drifts in a consistent way
relative to the burst - or if the receiver's oscillator similarly drifts.
The effect of such a drift on an NSTC picture would be a variation of tint
from left to right. However, a tint control wouldn't be able to address
that problem - it would simply move the horizontal position on the screen
where the colours are accurate - suggesting that it doesn't occur in
practice except in equipment that is recognisably broken.

Many years back, Bush in the UK produced a colour decoder which was
'revolutionary' compared to other manufacturers' efforts, in that the
subcarrier was regenerated in the decoder directly from the burst, rather
than being a free-running oscillator just locked to the burst with a PLL.
They did this by deriving a phase-adjustable pulse from the H-flyback, and
using this to 'notch out' the burst from the back porch period. The 10
cycles of burst thus recovered, were then applied directly to the 4.43MHz
crystal, which caused it to ring at exactly the same frequency and in
exactly the same phase as the original subcarrier. Always seemed to work
pretty well, and they continued to use this system over a period of probably
10 years or more, covering three chassis designs / revisions.

Arfa

Granted, this problem hardly ever happens. But the argument that a fully
implemented PAL set is inherently immune to color errors is hard for me
to
swallow.



I don't think there's a claim that it is inherently immune to all colour
errors, only those caused by consistent differences between the phase of
the subcarrier and the burst.

Sylvia.

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:4bba9b0d$0$9296$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...

On 6/04/2010 1:09 AM, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Sylvia Else wrote:
If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

Since PAL TV sets have a saturation (color level) control, isn't that
a "non-problem". If it matters, you just adjust it to compensate.

If it's a fixed phase error, yes. If the phase error is changing slowly
over time the the picture will have a saturation that varies over time
which would be annoying if the effect were high enough.

However, I've never noticed such an effect.

Sylvia.

I would guess that you never would see such an effect, as all of the
decoders that I can remember working on, had ACC circuits which worked very
well ...

Arfa

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Many years back, Bush in the UK produced a colour decoder which was
'revolutionary' compared to other manufacturers' efforts, in that the
subcarrier was regenerated in the decoder directly from the burst, rather
than being a free-running oscillator just locked to the burst with a PLL.
They did this by deriving a phase-adjustable pulse from the H-flyback, and
using this to 'notch out' the burst from the back porch period. The 10
cycles of burst thus recovered, were then applied directly to the 4.43MHz
crystal, which caused it to ring at exactly the same frequency and in
exactly the same phase as the original subcarrier. Always seemed to work
pretty well, and they continued to use this system over a period of
probably 10 years or more, covering three chassis designs / revisions.

This was first done by GE, circa 1966, in the Portacolor set, mostly because
it was cheaper.

Another way of looking at this system is that the crystal was an extremely
narrow-band filter that removed the "Fourier sidebands" around the
subcarrier frequency created by transmitting the 10-cycle burst only once on
each scanning line.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Sylvia Else wrote:

On 3/04/2010 10:04 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

isw wrote:

Sylvia Else wrote:

If we were building an analogue colour TV transmission infrastructure
now, then maybe we'd go the NTSC route, since it eliminates the delay
line.


NTSC? No delay line? Moron. The luminance data had to be delayed to
allow time to process the Chroma data. An open delay line in a NTSC
video display caused a very dark image with moving blotches of color. I
found and replaced several, in NTSC TVs and Video Monitors.



In which case you'd know that a PAL TV contains two delay lines. One
provides a short delay and addresses the difference in delay between the
chroma path and the luminance path. The other provides a full scan line
delay to allow averaging of the chrominance signal.

It should be obvious from context that "the" delay line that I was
referring to was the latter.

But I suppose calling people morons is easier than doing your own thinking.

It is, for people who consider one as zero.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

http://www.flickr.com/photos/materrell/

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 7/04/2010 10:08 AM, Arfa Daily wrote:

"Sylvia Else"<sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:4bba994c$0$15459$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
On 6/04/2010 12:53 AM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
However... If the burst phase is wrong, then there is no cancellation
of
errors, because there are no "errors" /in the signal itself/. (Right?
(???))
Therefore, I don't see how line averaging can be used to eliminate the
need
for a manual hue control.

Think of the chroma signal as a vector with its y coordinate equal the
red difference component, and the x coordinate equal to the blue
difference component. A phase error rotates that vector about the z
axis. Effectively, the blue difference component receives a bit of the
red difference component, and vice versa.

On alternate lines the phase of the red difference component *only* is
inverted. In our view, this has the effect of reflecting the vector in
the x axis - what was a positive y value becomes negative.

The same phase error causes this vector to rotate in the same direction
about the z axis, but because of the reflection, the mixing of the
components has the opposite sign.

If you then negate the resulting red difference component of the second
line, and average with the red difference component of the first line,
the parts received from the blue difference component cancel out,
leaving a red different component that equals the original, multiplied
by the cosine of the phase error. The same applies to the blue
component. The result is that the hues are correct, but not as saturated
as they shoud have been.

No argument. That's always been my understanding. But...

If the burst phase gets screwed up somewhere along the line, no amount of
line averaging will fix the problem, because there's nothing "wrong" with
the subcarrier to fix.

If the burst has a random phase relationship to the colour subcarrier on
each line, then my analysis falls apart because the vectors would have
random orientations. In such a situation a PAL receiver would do no better
than NTSC, and they'd both perform awfully.

If the burst just has a fixed phase offset from the true colour
subcarrier, then the averaging will work.

Indeed it will work if the colour subcarrier drifts in a consistent way
relative to the burst - or if the receiver's oscillator similarly drifts.
The effect of such a drift on an NSTC picture would be a variation of tint
from left to right. However, a tint control wouldn't be able to address
that problem - it would simply move the horizontal position on the screen
where the colours are accurate - suggesting that it doesn't occur in
practice except in equipment that is recognisably broken.


Many years back, Bush in the UK produced a colour decoder which was
'revolutionary' compared to other manufacturers' efforts, in that the
subcarrier was regenerated in the decoder directly from the burst, rather
than being a free-running oscillator just locked to the burst with a PLL.
They did this by deriving a phase-adjustable pulse from the H-flyback, and
using this to 'notch out' the burst from the back porch period. The 10
cycles of burst thus recovered, were then applied directly to the 4.43MHz
crystal, which caused it to ring at exactly the same frequency and in
exactly the same phase as the original subcarrier. Always seemed to work
pretty well, and they continued to use this system over a period of probably
10 years or more, covering three chassis designs / revisions.

Arfa

I'm left wondering what exactly was the *real* problem that PAL was
intended to fix. It appears that the NTSC tint control could only
address a fixed phase offset between the colour burst and the
subcarrier, with both transmitters and TV sets able to maintain that
offset sufficiently closely that the hue wouldn't vary from left to
right of the picture.

Other issues, such as non-linear phase shift would have been a problem
for NTSC viewers, regardless of the tint control.

So were NTSC viewers tolerating colour pictures that couldn't be set
right even with the tint control? Or is there something else that I've
missed?

Sylvia.

 

[isw]

In article <4bbbee16$0$24357$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>,
Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:

--snippety-snip--

I'm left wondering what exactly was the *real* problem that PAL was
intended to fix.

Political. The Europeans didn't want US companies selling sets there.

Isaac