Countries That Use The NTSC TV Standard

NTSC is the oldest television standard in the world.  Prior to the introduction of color to the video signal, all areas of the world adopted the 30 frame-per-second standard; however, with the advent of color, many countries did not like the National Television Standards Committee ( which is what NTSC stands for) in the US "shoe-horned" color into the already established 30 frame-per-second universe.  Unfortunately, it wasn't until the mid- to late-1960's when PAL and SECAM were developed, and offered better color transmission and storage controls that most of the world jumped on the Color TV bandwagon.  Due to the way the color was transmitted and stored in the NTSC standard, some professionals came up with the joke "Never The Same Color Twice" (NTSC) as an alternate meaning for NTSC.  Now then, countries such as Canada and Mexico went with NTSC due to be in close proximity to the US; this allowed the populations of Canada and Mexico who lived very close to the borders to watch TV from both sides without having to have two different TV's.   

NTSC recorded video at a frame rate of 30 frames, 60 fields, per second.  NTSC recordings will only play back on NTSC equipment.

Here is a list of countries which use the NTSC television system.  For VHS, S-VHS, Betamax, Super Betamax, Betacam, Betacam SP, Video8, Hi8, Digital8, U-Matic, Mini DV and Micro Mv, these can be transferred to a NTSC DVD by Trevor Thurlow Productions.  Note that Regular/Super NTSC Betamax recordings come in three speeds (Beta I, II, III), and my equipment can handle all of these.  If you are heading over seas to a country that uses PAL/SECAM Trevor Thurlow Productions can convert your NTSC videos to PAL DVD.  Please see our PAL and SECAM pages for countries that use these formats (note: SECAM DVD does not exist, DVD players sold in SECAM countries play PAL DVD's).

If your recording was made on equipment intended for one of these countries, then it will likely be a NTSC recording on the tape.  Just bringing a PAL Micro MV camcorder from the U.K. to Canada does not mean that you are shooting in NTSC; the camcorder will be recording in PAL.