Mark Shubin wrote > In other words, why bother? You could use PAL equipment for > production > and then transcode for transmission. > As you know, this was done at some point , among other things, even in France. Equipments of both standards were used. Why bother? Well, in that specific case you are cumulating the defects of two standards. If, as Jeroen implies, processing equipment alone is enough to generate the phase problems even with no transmission, then theoretically you can have some PAL loss of saturation within a SECAM broadcast. Also, if you are serious about creating a standard (and i am sure the SECAM pioneers were) then you will logically build all the equipments that go with it and show to the world (and for your own satisfaction) that it can be used end to end. Plus, if some of the source field equipments are SECAM, you end up transcoding twice. Note that the problems i mention were not systematic (i am not sure about the loss of resolution, but it should not be so obvious in the context of a cross-fade). Apparently SECAM mixers were not just a short-lived attempt, as some were still in use in some regional stations in 1990. But of course, SECAM encoding as the last step is the best way, as you put it. Some people mentionned Canal+ had a specially nice picture, and it was because it used just one good SECAM encoder (Fougerolle i think) at the end, was among the first to use component video before the encoder, and had all their equipment synchronized with a master clock. It was operating on VHF. I am also thinking in the case of work with the YUV format, since color is sequential in SECAM, you could have used just one wire for both U and V, simplifying wiring, and making sure both color components would go through the same path, hence with the same transmission characteristics. Don't know to which extent this possibility was used, if ever, though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.