PAL, SECAM & NTSC

There are three main television/video standards in use throughout the world. 

• The system used in the US, Canada, Japan and some other countries is called NTSC. 
• Most of Western Europe, Australasia and Southern Africa use a system called PAL.
• Eastern Europe (and France) uses SECAM.

The three standards are not compatible with each other. This means that you can't watch a TV signal (or play a video) produced for one system on machinery that's been designed for another.

(There is also a variant of SECAM called MESECAM, which Saudi Arabia uses- but almost nowhere else. Many PAL video recorders happen to support MESECAM, but this does not mean they will deliver flawless playback of tapes recorded in France under the SECAM system - colours generally appear in black and white, and sound can be somewhat dubious.)

So how do you get to watch what you want?

Multi-Standard Equipment

For maximum flexibility, use multi-standard TV and Video equipment, that can handle SECAM (for local TV and tapes) along with the signal that will be produced by:

• Any imported tapes.
• Your PAL (or NTSC) camcorder.
• Your PAL (or NTSC) DVD player.
• Your PAL (or NTSC) games console.

And so on. A multi-standard Video recorder will also allow you to record tapes that you can send overseas in a format that will be readable by VHS machines in other countries.

Thanks to the proliferation of camcorders, DVD and games consoles (few of which are ever made available to the French market in a SECAM version), nearly all  modern French TV and Video equipment is dual standard, supporting the (broadly similar) PAL and SECAM standards. However, beware of older equipment - pre-1993, say - that will almost certainly be SECAM-only. 

• Many modern VHS machines bought in France also support NTSC playback, but only a few high-end models can record NTSC-compatible information.
• Many high-end, US-sourced VHS machines and televisions can work with both NTSC and PAL signals, but very few bother to add SECAM-compatibility.

PAL's importance increases in France

While France has historically used the SECAM standard, its importance is waning as digital TV (whether terrestrial, satellite or cable) takes over from the traditional analogue broadcasting methods. All French satellite decoders, cable set-top boxes and DVB decoders for terrestrial digital TV (known as TNT in France) produce a PAL signal, as do all DVD players. SECAM is still used for French analogue terrestrial television and for French VHS cassettes, but the importance of these is on the wane as more and more people choose the view even the traditional French TV channels via a digital medium, and DVD replaces VHS.