EBU colour bars
Test card
The EBU colour bars are a television test card used to check if a video signal has been altered by recording or transmission, and what adjustments must be made to bring it back to specification. It is also used for setting a television monitor or receiver to reproduce chrominance and luminance information correctly. The EBU bars are most commonly shown arranged side-by-side in a vertical manner (as in the images in this article), though some broadcasters – such as TVP in Poland, and Gabon Télévision in Gabon – were known to have aired a horizontal version of the EBU bars.
It is similar to the SMPTE color bars, although that pattern is typically associated with the NTSC analogue colour TV system. Many test cards, such as Philips PM5544 or Telefunken FuBK, feature elements equivalent to the EBU colour bars.
75% Colour Bars
The 75% Colour Bars or EBU/IBA 100/0/75/0 Colour Bars pattern is very similar to the SMPTE colour bars pattern, although it only features seven colour bars, and the white bar is at 100% intensity.
There is a variant where the white bar is also at 75% intensity (EBU 75/0/75/0). This pattern is generated by certain types of test equipment – including the Philips PM5519.
The signal values of these bars for the PAL analogue system are:
Displayed colours are converted from the original PAL BT.601 colour space to sRGB – the colour space used on web pages. They are only approximate, giving a notion of how the bars would look on a calibrated PAL display.
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