What's the difference? I know NTSC is the common format in the US, but i'm not sure why there are two different formats. I remember hearing something about playback, but that's all i remember. Why doesn't the industry have a common standard? Maybe that question can't be answered by us and i just have to accept that there are and probably will always be two formats, but if you have any thoughts, i'd like to be informed. Thanks!

-Gino

America has only one standard and that's NTSC. Europe is mostly
PAL and then there is SECAM as well. All the standards came to
be due to analog limitations when the TV system was introduced.
Here in europe our power cycle is 50 hz instead of 60 hz and
you can see how this resembles the field rate of NTSC and PAL.

For more information see Ram Nagarajan post in this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21130) for
more information on how the standards came to be. A quick
comparison between the standards can be found on this page (http://www.high-techproductions.com/pal,ntsc.htm)
(see the map at the end of the page on which system is used
where in the world)

thanks, Rob! That website really helped. Does Canon make a model of the XL1s that records in SECAM? I've only heard of NTSC and PAL. And do you know what software SECAM users use to edit? I know Premiere can handle both NTSC and PAL, but i've never even heard about SECAM until now.

-Gino

As you can see from the technical details PAL and SECAM are 99%
identical. Thus everyone is using PAL equipment overthere as far
as I know.