NTSC-J is the informal designation for the analogue television standard used in Japan. The system is based on the US NTSC (NTSC-M) standard with minor differences. While NTSC-M is an official CCIR and FCC standard, NTSC-J is a colloquial indicator. The system was introduced by NHK and NTV, with regular color broadcasts starting on September 10, 1960. NTSC-J was replaced by digital broadcasts in 44 of the country's 47 prefectures on 24 July 2011. Analogue broadcasting ended on 31 March 2012 in the three prefectures devastated by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima) and the subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The term NTSC-J is also used to distinguish regions in console video games, which use televisions (see Marketing definition below). Technical definition Japan implemented the NTSC standard with slight differences. The black and blanking levels of the NTSC-J signal are identical to each other (both at 0 IRE, similar to the PAL video standard), while in American NTSC the black level is slightly higher (7.5 IRE) than blanking level - because of the way this appears in the waveform, the higher black level is also called pedestal. This small difference doesn't cause any incompatibility problems, but needs to be compensated by a slight change of the TV brightness setting in order to achieve proper images. YIQ color encoding in NTSC-J uses slightly different equations and ranges from regular NTSC. has a range of 0 to +-334 (+-309 on NTSC-M), and has a range of 0 to +-293 (+-271 on NTSC-M). YCbCr equations for NTSC-J are , while on NTSC-M we have . NTSC-J also uses a white reference (color temperature) of 9300K instead of the usual NTSC standard of 6500K. The over-the-air RF frequencies used in Japan do not match those of the US NTSC standard. On VHF the frequency spacing for each channel is 6 MHz as in North America, South America, Caribbean, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma (Myanmar) the Philippines, except between channels 7 and 8 (which overlap). Channels 1 through 3 are reallocated for the expansion of the Japanese FM band. On UHF frequency spacing for each channel in Japan is the same, but the channel numbers are 1 lower than on the other areas mentioned - for example, channel 13 in Japan is on the same frequency as channel 14. For more information see Television channel frequencies. Channels 13-62 are used for analog and