Are Europe and America using the same broadcast standards for HDTV?

The history of television has been plagued by differing standards across the globe. The move to HDTV had provided an opportunity to rationalize some of the variations but still there are differences between North America and Europe.

Both North America and Europe are using the same resolutions of 1080i, 1080p and 720p. All are considered to be HD resolutions. However, in Europe a 50Hz field rate is used whereas North America use 59.94 Hz (Commonly referred to as 60Hz). The difference in frame rates is based on the mains frequencies of Europe and North America, from a time when lining up television frequencies with mains frequencies was beneficial. The need to have TV frequencies the same as mains has long since passed but the wealth of archived material, the production and broadcast infra-structure and existing television receivers made it impossible for any country to ditch their existing frame rates.

The result - instead of reducing the number of standards across the world, HD has merely added an extra twenty five or so new ones. The good news is that modern televisions are normally able to handle the different standards with ease.

It is therefore a great disappointment that content producers have chosen to add region coding to DVDs, Bluray discs and many games to prevent content bought in one country being used in another. This restriction has nothing to do with television standards and is a purely commercial one.