Consumer Electronics

THE NTSC SYSTEM

The world's first commercial colour television system was NTSC (National Television System Committee) introduced in the USA in 1953, and later adopted by Canada, Mexico and Japan. In the NTSC system the two colour difference signals, created by the subtraction of red and blue from the total signal, are not transmitted together, but with one a quarter of a cycle behind the other (in quadrature). The signals are then added together to form a single chrominance signal. When it reaches the receiver, the decoding circuits inside the TV break down the chrominance signal and separate it from its carrier wave. The two signals are then fed into a matrix which then combines them with the luminance signal to recreate the three original colour ...