PAL (Phase Alternating Line) TV standard

PAL (Phase Alternating Line) TV standard was introduced in the early 1960's in Europe. It has better resolution than in NTSC, having 625 lines/frame, but the framerate is slightly lower, being 25 frames/sec.

PAL is used in most of the western European countries (except France, where SECAM is used instead), Australia, some countries of Africa, some countries of South America and in some Asian countries.

There are various versions of PAL, most commonly used method is called PAL B/G, but others include PAL I (used in the UK and in Ireland) and PAL M (weird hybrid standard, which has the same resolution as NTSC has, but uses PAL transmission and color coding technology anyway). All of these standards normally work nicely together, but audio frequencies might vary and therefor you should check that your appliances work in the country you're planning to use them (older PAL B/G TVs can't decode UK's PAL I audio transmissions even that the picture works nicely).

The PAL tv system has got a 720x576 pixel resolution and the visible part is smaller than 720x576 ~660x516 pixels. The all PAL resolution is 864x625 - but the TV screen using 720x576, because it needs to temp the teletext, and assistant frequency, and need some time to picture drawing electron ray to return to left top corner on the TV...