Re: 87.7 FM in Portland,ME & WCSH NEWS

[Sven Weil <sven@lily.org>]

The country that you are thinking of is Brazil.  They are significant in
that they are the only country with a 60 hertz current supply that uses
PAL.  Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia's NTSC systems (in
fact all of the Carribiean and Central American) are the same as the
USA/Canada. (Also, all these countries, again with the exception of Brazil
- which varies from 110 to 220 depending on the city - are also on a  
110 volt AC/60Hz power supply just like the USA, with the same type of
twin parallel blade plug we have.  
   
Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay use the PAL system.  Theirs - I
believe is similar to the German PAL system.  These countries also have
220
volt AC supplies but at 50Hz.  

If you want a really concise explanation of the different types of TV
standards out there you can refer to this web site: 

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Contrib/WorldTV/

Also, the reason why the USA and Japan's NTSC systems are incompatible is
because our FM band is between 88-108Mhz.  If you look at a Japanese radio
(a real one, not an export model), you will see the dial start at 76Mhz
(near our channel 5) and go up till 90 or 95Mhz.  After that, above the
numbers from 90 (or 95) until 108 you will see TV audio channels 1, 2 and
3 printed above these frequencies. But I digress..... :-)

--
Sven F. Weil
e-mail: sven@lily.org
World Wide Web: http://www.lily.org/~sven


On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> However, not all countries which use System M use NTSC
> color (one of the South American countries uses PAL color); not all
> countries which use NTSC color use System M (another of the South
> American countries uses 625-line luminance with NTSC color); and not
> all countries use the same channelization plan (e.g., Japan: the
> Japanese FM band is below channel 5).