CCIR System B

System B has variously been used with both the PAL or SECAM colour systems. It could have been used with a 625-line variant of the NTSC color system, but apart from possible technical tests in the 1950s, this has never been done officially.

When used with PAL, the colour subcarrier is 4.43361875 MHz and the sidebands of the PAL signal have to be truncated on the high-frequency side at +570 kHz (matching the rolloff of the luminance signal at +5.0 MHz). On the low-frequency side, the full 1.3 MHz sideband is radiated. (This behaviour would cause massive U/V crosstalk in the NTSC system, but delay-line PAL hides such artefacts.)

When used with SECAM, the 'R' lines' carrier is at 4.40625 MHz deviating from +350±18 kHz to -506±25 kHz. The 'B' lines' carrier is at 4.250 MHz deviating +506±25 kHz to -350±18 kHz.

Neither colour encoding system has any effect on the bandwidth of system B as a whole.

Enhancements have been made to the specification of System B's audio capabilities over the years. The introduction of Zweiton in the 1970s allowed for stereo sound or twin monophonic audio tracks (possibly in different languages for instance). This was implemented by adding a second FM audio subcarrier at +5.74 MHz. Alternatively, starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s it became possible to replace the second audio FM subcarrier with a digital signal carrying NICAM sound. Either of these extensions to audio capability have eaten into the guard band between channels. Zweiton uses an extra 150 kHz. The alternative NICAM system uses an extra 500 kHz, and needs to be spaced further from the primary audio subcarrier, thus System B with NICAM has only 150 kHz guard zones between channels.

† Channel 1 was allocated, but never used.
§ Not used in the former East Germany

Transmitters were operational on the above channels in 1959. During the 1960s, channels 1 to 3 were deleted and channels E3 to E12 adopted, bringing East Germany into line with the channel allocations used in the West.

Italian channel-spacings were erratic. System B is no longer in use in Italy, the switchover to DVB-T having been completed 4 July 2012.

Note: Band I is no longer used for television in Italy.

Note: Unusually for Europe, Band III is used for DVB-T in Italy. At digital switchover time, Italy took the opportunity to discontinue their erratic System B frequencies, and the digital channels (known as Ch5 through Ch12) are regularly-spaced every 7.0 MHz from 177.5 MHz (and identical to Germany's Band III DVB-T bandplan).

Australia were unique in the world by their use of Band II for television broadcasting.

‡ Channels 3, 4 and 5 were scheduled to be cleared during 1993–96 to make way for FM radio stations in Band II. This clearance action took much longer than was anticipated, and as a result, many stations on channel 3 still remain, along with a few on 4 and 5.

♦ New channel allocations from 1993.
‡ Channels 10 and 11 were shifted up in frequency by 1 MHz to make room for channel 9A. The frequencies of existing stations did not change; only new ones used the new allocations. Digital multiplexes on channels 10 and 11 are using the new channel boundaries.

Australia are nearly unique in the world for their use of 7 MHz channel-spacing (and therefore System B) on UHF.

† Added in the 1980s
‡ Added in the 1990s
Note: the Band III frequencies are the same as Australia's.