the early 2000s, many Eastern European countries decided to switch to the West German-developed PAL system. Yet SECAM remained in use in Russia, Belarus and the French-speaking African countries. In the late 2000s, SECAM started a process of being phased out and replaced by DVB. Unlike some other manufacturers, the company where SECAM was invented, Technicolor (known as Thomson until 2010), still sells television sets worldwide under different brands; this may be due in part to the legacy of SECAM. Thomson bought the company that developed PAL, Telefunken, and today even co-owns the RCA brand – RCA being the creator of NTSC. Thomson also co-authored the ATSC standards which are used for American high-definition television. Technical details Just as with the other color standards adopted for broadcast usage over the world, SECAM is a standard that permits existing monochrome television receivers predating its introduction to continue to be operated as monochrome televisions. Because of this compatibility requirement, color standards added a second signal to the basic monochrome signal, which carries the color information. The color information is called chrominance or for short, while the black-and-white information is called the luminance or for short. Monochrome television receivers only display luminance, while color receivers process both signals. The YDbDr color space is used to encode the mentioned (luminance) and (red and blue color difference signals that make up chrominance) components. Additionally, for compatibility, it is required to use no more bandwidth than the monochrome signal alone; the color signal has to be somehow inserted into the monochrome signal, without disturbing it. This insertion is possible because the bandwidth of the monochrome TV signal is generally not fully utilized; the high-frequency portions of the signal, corresponding to fine details in the image, were often not recorded by contemporary video equipment, or not visible on consumer televisions anyway, especially after transmission. This section of the spectrum was thus used to carry color information, at the cost of reducing the possible resolution. European monochrome standards were not compatible when SECAM was first being considered. France had introduced an 819-line system that used 14 MHz of bandwidth, much more than the 5 MHz standard used in the UK or the 6 MHz in the US. The closest thing to a standard in Europe at the time was the 8 MHz 625-line system, which had originated Germany and the Soviet Union and quickly became one of the