

Since older game consoles used analog video output, we had to pair them with a TV or display from the same region for it to work properly. NTSC and PAL in the gaming worldĭespite the fact that they are no longer used for television transmission (which does not have much to do with this website but it was necessary to tell you about it for what comes next), the NTSC and PAL standards are still relevant in some spheres today, and one of them is video games, especially those known as “retro”. Also, in most regions where PAL is implemented, the power grid runs at 50 Hz, so PAL displays run at 25 FPS due to interlacing. PAL runs at a higher resolution than NTSC includes 625 interlaced lines of which 576 are visible. So, due to interlacing, NTSC actually has an effective frame rate of 30 FPS… or almost.

Meanwhile, the NTSC refresh rate was initially 60 Hz, as that is what electrical current runs at in the US, as choosing a refresh rate that was not synchronized with the power grid would have produced interference.
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The committee chose to use 525 scan lines (480 of them visible) divided into two interlaced fields of 262.5 lines each.

Importantly, NTSC continued to support black and white displays since then as color data was easy to filter on older grayscale displays. The NTSC standard came into effect in 1941, but it wasn’t until 1953 that it was revised for color broadcasting. In the United States, the FCC established the National Television System Committee in 2940 to standardize TV broadcasting, as manufacturers at the time were not consistent about it. We have explained frame rates and refresh rates before on this website, so we recommend that you review those articles if you are not familiar with it. Now that you are familiar with the interlacing process, let’s take a look at how the NTSC and PAL standards handle this process differently.
