NTSC (National Television System Committee) is the analog television system used in the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and some other countries (see map). NTSC is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that adopted it.National Television System Committee (1951-1953), [Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12-19, with Some supplementary references cited in the Reports, and the Petition for adoption of transmission standards for color television before the Federal Communications Commission, n.p., 1953], 17 v. illus., diagrs., tables. 28 cm. LC Control No.:54021386 Library of Congress Online Catalog The first black-and-white NTSC standard for broadcast was developed in 1941 and had no provision for color transmissions. The standard called for 525 lines of picture information in each frame, and 30 interlaced frames per second; the frame rate was later slightly adjusted for the color standard. Civilian development of commercial television was halted with the entry of the United States into the war. In 1953 a second standard was issued, which allowed color broadcasting to be compatible with the existing stock of black-and-white receivers, while maintaining the broadcast channel bandwidth already in use. This was an important commercial advantage over incompatible color systems that had also been proposed. NTSC was the first widely adopted broadcast color system. After over a half-century of use, the vast majority of over-the-air NTSC transmissions will be replaced with ATSC by February 17, 2009 in the United States, and August 31, 2011 in Canada. Various digital television systems have replaced the vacuum-tube era standard.

History

The National Television System Committee was established in 1940 by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to resolve the conflicts that arose between companies over the introduction of a nationwide analog television system in the United States. In March 1941, the committee issued a technical standard for black-and-white television that built upon a 1936 recommendation made by the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA). Technical advancements of the vestigial sideband technique allowed for the opportunity to increase the image resolution broadcast to consumer televisions. The NTSC compromised between RCA's desire to keep a 441–scan line standard (which was already being used by RCA's NBC TV network) and Philco's desire to increase the number of scan lines to between 605 and 800: A 525-line transmission standard was selected. Other technical standards in the final recommendation were a frame rate (image rate) of 30 frames per second consisting of two interlaced fields per frame (2:1 interlacing) at 262.5 lines per field or 60 fields per second, along with an aspect ratio of 4:3, and frequency modulation (FM) for the sound signal (which was quite new at the time).