How many scanning lines are on a standard NTSC television set?

Answer 1

NTSC is the color encoding system used in North America for standard definition television. NTSC does not dictate the number of lines in the image but almost universally, if NTSC color encoding is used, the number of lines making the complete signal is 525. There are a number of lines that do not contribute to the image. In the early days of television, the electron beam that created the image took some time to return to the top of the tube, so blank lines were used to allow the time needed. Although modern technology has eliminated the need for this blank time, there are still several blank lines in each frame. The number of lines used for the picture is 480 with most of the remaining lines carrying other data such as closed captioning and various test lines.

The other major color system is PAL, used in UK, Europe and other parts of the world. PAL is generally used with 625 lines of which 576 are used to create the image. Although this suggests a better resolution than the 480 lines used in America, the slower field rate of 50Hz can sometimes lead to flicker compared to the 58.94Hz used within NTSC color environments.


In contrast, HD television uses either 720 or 1080 lines - a huge improvement over standard definition systems,