William Sommerwerck wrote:
SECAM was actually adopted because the French were idiots. They wanted a
system that was relatively easy to record on videotape. Unfortunately, it
made the receiver more-complex and expensive. A classic example of lousy
engineering.


The over the air signals were also spaced differently than PAL and instead
of FM audio like everyone else in the world, they used AM. So even if
you could maniptulate your TV tuner into picking up the video signal, and did
not mind watching it in black and white, there was no sound.

The rest of the world that did adopt SECAM used the PAL over the air
channel spacing and audio carriers, so that a PAL VCR could record/play the
signals with very little modification if any at all and a PAL TV could play
them in black and white, with audio.

The system was called MESECAM (Middle East Secam because many arab countries
adopted it). I think the Warsaw Pact countries, Soviet Union and China (PRC)
also did, but the Soviet VCRs ran at a different speed than the regular ones.

There was also NTSC 4.43, which was a 60Hz NTSC signal with the color subcarrier
at 4.43 mHz. It was developed as a cheap way of adding NTSC capability to
multisystem VCRs and TV sets, but was never broadcast over the air.

That's why I said that the OP must of either spent the last 30 years under
a rock or in the US. In the US no one cared, everything was NTSC or converted
to it for sale, while elsewhere in the world, everyone was trying to get
multisystem TV sets and VCRs.

You could buy them the US too, but only in stores that catered to foreigners,
visitors and sailors on leave.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misquote it.