[opendtv] Re: France bids farewell to SECAM

  • From: Olivier Houot <olho_avatar_i@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:14:13 +0100

Mark shubin wrote:
>Not the ONLY problem, I'm afraid.
>Has anyone ever used a SECAM recorder?

Hi Mark,

I've used some sparingly, i never owned one personally, but my parents
do (i personnaly only started to record video after the advent of the
digital area).

There were hot discussions on some french forums regarding the way SECAM
was (mis) treated in the VHS format (with a simple division by 4 of the
FM chroma frequency). As an alternative recording format, MESECAM can be
used.

I never set my expectations very high for VHS, so with that
preconception, i would say it does the job even in SECAM, especially
when starting from a good source (analog satellite SECAM broadcasts),
and viewed on a relatively small screen (55 cm). My parents never rented
films so i cannot judge how SECAM fared in the area of recorded movies.
I must admit i never had a critical look on this as i was not very
interested in this format.


I once (1986) recorded a film (from a terrestrial TV broadcast) onto a
V2000 VCR (i remember it was Polanski's "Dance of the vampires") and was
pleasantly surprised by the result, even though V2000 is supposed to
have a smaller bandwidth than VHS. But then again, it was not on a very
big screen.


It is not clear VHS problems can really be tied to the video standard in
itself. I am also thinking that, in formats like SVHS, it would have
been possible to do better with SECAM: S video separates luma and
chroma, but still transmits two chroma components simutaneously, which
means you need to modulate them somehow on a carrier. With SECAM, you
only need to transmit one component at any given moment, so you could do
away with some modulation/demodulation steps and gain in quality . I
doubt this was ever done, though. Also, there should be ways to take
advantage of the fact that SECAM chroma is already in FM format, which
is better suited to tape.

This is unlikely to happen now, anyway :-)



 
 
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