[opendtv] France bids farewell to SECAM

  • From: Olivier Houot <olho_avatar_i@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:55:08 +0100

Terrestrial SECAM broadcasts in its native land have ceased in the
evening of November 29th, 2011. This is also true for overseas french
territories.

It appears some channels on analog satellites (Tf1 and C+) will persist
until December 13th, though (and of course some other SECAM countries
have yet to complete ASO).

Of the three video systems, NTSC will be the last to remain in its
country of birth, since low power stations are still using it.

PAL was used in Germany from 1967 to 2008 (41 years)
SECAM was used in France from 1967 to 2011 (44 years)
Color NTSC was used in the US from 1954 to this day (57 years and
counting)

This link to the first official SECAM broadcast is available from
several websites:
http://www.ina.fr/media/television/video/CPF86633716/presentation-officielle-de-la-television-couleur.fr.html
I guess at the time, a SECAM recorder was used. I thought one of the
persons in the picture was Henri de France himself, but unfortunately it
is not the case according to INA.

SECAM was the first european standard and hence had good technical
justification (even though there were  also political ones), as there
was a need to improve on NTSC.

It does not appear to have been such a bad move for France, after all.

It is estimated it cost 100 millions francs in R&D, but brought in 500
millions in royalties. The funny thing is that part of that is due to
the success of PAL, as this standard relied on several important SECAM
patents (poor man's PAL may have done without, but as its name suggests,
its picture quality would not have allowed it to challenge SECAM).

It was also intended to protect french industry, but everyone did the
same for his own, as can be judged by the great variety of PAL based
standards (I, B/G,...) that were created in Europe and elsewhere.

It therefore seems a bit exagerated to consider an isolated "SECAM"
France on one side and an harmonious and unified "PAL" Europe on the
other.

In any case, France seems to have been more successful in this attempt.
French manufacturers still had some command of their own market at a
time when the japanese had eliminated german TV makers (as far as 1984,
i read). And at least one of them has morphed into a company still
around these days and active in the TV domain.

Despite choosing its own color standard, France agreed to use the
european 625 lines / 50 hz scan format. This helped a lot in reducing
incompatibilities, and paved the way for PAL/SECAM sets. The SCART plug
was also an  easy way to eliminate barriers between France and its
neighbours. So inconvenients to french users were minimized.

Also, it is considered that, in the presence of transmission
impairments:
NTSC makes hue errors
PAL makes saturation errors (though sophisticated decoding could avoid
this)
SECAM is correct on both saturation and hue
So you could argue that, to some extent, SECAM was the only one to
completely deliver the service logically expected from a color video
standard.

Of course, one big known drawback of SECAM is in video production, as it
is not possible to simply add two SECAM signals. However, this only
makes things more difficult, not impossible (some equipments simply
converted FM chroma to AM during processing, and back to FM at the end).

But with the advent of component or digital Video equipment, SECAM could
be used for the broadcast segment only, and those problems circumvented.
This document (in english) also suggests PAL edition needs more care in
some regards than with SECAM:
http://www.editorsbench.com/documents/cf2005.pdf

Unfortunately, few people were in a position to ever compare live SECAM
and PAL broadcasts in really fair conditions. You would have to receive
both signals with equal power, on a TV set designed to get the most of
the signal in both the SECAM and PAL paths (or two optimized TVs). And
of course, you need to have a technically oriented person in that sweet
spot to appreciate the difference. So opinions differ among those living
on borders, as far as i could see on forums.

Perhaps in the future we will see digital simulations of the former
analog standards in museums that will allow for simultaneous viewing of
the three formats, starting from a common source.




 
 
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