Color television standard identification circuit

Claim 1

A color television standard identification circuit for distinguishing at least a PAL and an NTSC color television signal, said identification circuit comprising a first demodulation circuit for demodulating a reference component (R) of a color synchronizing signal occurring in both PAL and NTSC, a second demodulation circuit for demodulating a color identification component of the color synchronizing signal occurring only in PAL, and a decoding circuit having an input coupled to respective outputs of said first and second demodulation circuits for determining whether the color synchronizing signal is a PAL or an NTSC color synchronizing signal, wherein said identification circuit further comprises a sign determination circuit coupled between the outputs of said first and second demodulation circuits and the input of said decoding circuit, said sign determination circuit comprising a comparison circuit having a comparison level, at which the level of an output signal of said comparison circuit changes, which is substantially equal to a reference level of said first and second demodulation circuits, and a sampling circuit having a input coupled to an output of said comparison circuit, an input of said sign determination circuit being coupled to an input of said comparison circuit and an output of said sign determination circuit being coupled to an output of said sampling circuit, wherein said second demodulation circuit is arranged to demodulate the color synchronizing signal at an axis slightly differing from the axis of the color identification component, whereby said sign determination circuit may accurately determine the correct sign of the output signal from said second demodulation circuit during demodulation of an NTSC color synchronizing signal by said second demodulation circuit.