Why does US TV look so bad in UK?

[risc]

All non-digital non-HD TV just looks like crap, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

PAL and NTSC are both so 10 years ago.

/me hugs DVB-T HD

 

[Bougart]

Film vs video

Think you're mixing a couple of things up, though I could be wrong as well.

The usual "p" vs. "i" for video cameras is progressive vs. interlaced, i.e is the whole frame updated at once (like film) or only half at a time (like standard NTSC/PAL).

See the discussion here where he tries to propose renaming 480i (standard NTSC) to 240i to clarify what it really means.
http://alvyray.com/DigitalTV/Naming_Proposal.htm

EDIT: As long you compare apples to apples 30 fps should look more like real life than 24 fps, but 24 fps is usually good enough. The problems come in when you try to compare 30 fps interlaced vs 24 fps progressive.

B

Interlaced; Vertical lines in one scan, horisontal in the next- interlacing every other scan into a full image.

Progrssive; Vertical and horisontal frames presented in one scan.

25 for Pal and 30 for ntsc is due to the fact that the electricity Hz rate is 60 in america and 50 in europe. Interlaced will scan vertical lines on the top of the Hz curve and horizontal at the bottom (or vice versa) hence half the frame rate

Accually 24p with its motion blur is preffered. It's more realistic as the image blends together. Regardless of the achieved frame rate, 24p will always imitate life more realistically than any other format.
However, this does not aply to video games.

 

[takao]

was it perhaps digital ?

many channels are broadcasting only 640*480 through digital since they can fit in full 4 channels into one "channel" they have to buy etc. while with full pal resolution it would be not a round number ( something around 3.1 or 2.8 etc. or something like this) for saving money

and thus picture quality can be worse than analog (most channels prefer to save money after all)

and the HD standards are different.. 720p50 vs 720p60
it's one of the reason why many hdtv have problems with PAL signals around here since many TV companies simply put models on the market with a 60hz panels and scalers who first scale down PAL to NTSC and then back up

 

[balamw]

Interlaced; Vertical lines in one scan, horisontal in the next- interlacing every other scan into a full image.

Uh, no.

Interlacing as meant for NTSC (or GIF) is meant as half of the horizontal scan lines (even or odd, top or bottom) are updated at once. (The CRT beam can only scan horizontally, at discrete vertical positions.)

Wiki also disagrees with you on the inherent realism of 24p. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p

In duplicating the look of film, 24p also inherits some of film's disadvantages. By definition, 24p video is incapable of high motion, and is therefore not well suited for sports, home movies, or programing requiring spontaneous action or handheld camerawork. 24p can also hurt the credibility of newscasts by making news footage look too much like staged movie clips.

B