[opendtv] Re: France bids farewell to SECAM

  • From: Mark Schubin <tvmark@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:12:40 -0500

Not the ONLY problem, I'm afraid.

Has anyone ever used a SECAM recorder?

TTFN,
Mark


On 12/2/2011 9:58 AM, Mike Tsinberg wrote:
There is only one problem with SECAM - we never tested it in Mark Schubin
apartment....

Best Regards,

Mike Tsinberg
http://www.keydigital.com       

-----Original Message-----
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Olivier Houot
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 4:55 PM
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] France bids farewell to SECAM

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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