South African TV

[Mike Watterson]

My expert says:

quite simply they wanted to be different* to encourage manufacture in SA. Completely misguided. The 42 to 68MHZ is  or was a military band at the time.

So System I was because of politics.

(* Because if you look at PAL I, EXCLUDING South Africa, hardly anyone used it compared to other PAL versions.)

I am inclined towards circumspection when it comes to accepting as “completely misguided” the South African decision to adopt System I.

No, he wasn't saying the adoption was misguided. He's a Telecom guru, he has no opinion on that aspect. He meant that their idea of picking a "less popular" PAL would lead to SA local TV makers supplying most of TVs was misguided. It didn't happen!

Many later analogue sets had actually 5.5MHz and 6.0MHz ceramic filters so that the same set could be supplied to mainland Europe or Ireland (the UK models often were "cost reduced" and had UHF only tuners. By early 1990s most sets in Ireland did I and B/G via Aerial and NTSC via baseband. I'm not sure if the SECAM was supported via RF, but certainly French SECAM for TX sites via satellite worked via composite.

Like SCART/Peritel, the idea of  picking System I for indigenous manufacturing protection was a failure. The Government was was going to do a deal at Digital (with Brazil?) for a least used Digital Standard for same reason, but unlike System I (which had no particular technical downside), the Digital solution was crazy compared to DVB-T, so SABC, the Tech Industry, TV sellers etc all rebelled and the Government did a U turn on that stupidity.