In television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, picture line-up generation equipment (PLUGE or pluge) is equipment used to generate greyscale test pattern

Test Pattern

Test Pattern may refer to:* Test Pattern , a Canadian game show* Test Pattern , an album by Sonia Dada* Test pattern or test card, a television test signal...

s in order to adjust the black level

Black level

Video black level is defined as the level of brightness at the darkest part of a visual image or the level of brightness at which no light is emitted from a screen, resulting in a pure black screen....

 and contrast

Contrast (vision)

Contrast is the difference in visual properties that makes an object distinguishable from other objects and the background. In visual perception of the real world, contrast is determined by the difference in the color and brightness of the object and other objects within the same field of view...

 of a picture monitor. Various PLUGE patterns can be generated, the most common consisting of three vertical bars of super-black, normal black, and near-black and two rectangles of mid-gray and white. These three PLUGE pulses are included in the SMPTE color bars (at the bottom and near the right) used for NTSC

NTSC

NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...

, PAL

PAL

PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...

, and SÉCAM

SECAM

SECAM, also written SÉCAM , is an analog color television system first used in France....

.