PAL was developed by Walter Bruch at Telefunken in Hanover, West Germany, with important input from . The format was patented by Telefunken in December 1962, citing Bruch as inventor, and unveiled to members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) on 3 January 1963. When asked why the system was named "PAL" and not "Bruch" the inventor answered that a "Bruch system" would probably not have sold very well ("Bruch" is the German word for "breakage"). The first broadcasts began in the United Kingdom in July 1967, followed by West Germany at the Berlin IFA on August 25th. The BBC channel initially using the broadcast standard was BBC2, which had been the first UK TV service to introduce "625-lines" during 1964. The Netherlands and Switzerland started PAL broadcasts by 1968, with Austria following the next year. Telefunken PALcolour 708T was the first PAL commercial TV set. It was followed by Loewe-Farbfernseher S 920 and F 900. Telefunken was later bought by the French electronics manufacturer Thomson. Thomson also bought the Compagnie Générale de Télévision where Henri de France developed SECAM, the first European Standard for colour television. Thomson, now called Technicolour SA, also owns the RCA brand and licences it to other companies; Radio Corporation of America, the originator of that brand, created the NTSC colour TV standard before Thomson became involved. The soviets developed two further systems, mixing concepts from PAL and SECAM, known as TRIPAL and NIIR, that never went beyond tests. In 1993, an evolution of PAL aimed to improve and enhance format by allowing 16:9 aspect ratio broadcasts, while remaining compatible with existing television receivers, was introduced. Named PALplus, it was defined by ITU recommendation BT.1197-1. It was developed at the University of Dortmund in Germany, in cooperation with German terrestrial broadcasters and European and Japanese manufacturers. Adoption was limited to European countries. With the introduction of digital broadcasts and signal sources (ex: DVDs, game consoles), the term PAL was used imprecisely to refer to the 625-line/50 Hz television system in general, to differentiate from the 525-line/60 Hz system generally used with NTSC. For example, DVDs were labelled as PAL or NTSC (referring to the line count and frame rate) even though technically the discs carry neither PAL nor NTSC encoded signal. These devices would still have analog outputs (ex; composite video output), and would convert the digital signals (576i or 480i) to the analog standards