Federal government agency that established the analog color television standard used in the United States. The NTSC standard was established in 1953 and is currently being supplanted by the new digital television standard advocated by the FCC. NTSC video is transmitted in an analog format using a 4-by-3 nearly square aspect ratio and providing 525 horizontal lines of maximum resolution (although only DVD comes close to using all the lines). TSC video is an interlaced format that creates two separate fields, one every sixtieth of a second, and combines them to form one complete video frame thirty times per second. The horizontal scan rate of NTSC video is 15,750 Hz (it draws 15,750 horizontal lines each second). Each field (one half of a frame) consists of all the odd lines or all the even lines in an image. The even and odd lines essentially blend together to form complete images. he other video formats commonly used throughout the world are PAL and SECAM.