Some information on Hong Kong:
http://www.info.gov.hk/hkfacts/supplies.pdf When I was a kid, we used to have 200V; but since all the imported appliances were rated 220V (or switchable 110/120/220/240 but not to 200V), it made more sense to boost up to 220V/380V. No, we have not converted to 230V (as can be seen in the government publication).
OIRT ==> Organisation Internationale de Radio et Télévision, with 28 members consisting mainly of Eastern European countries. It became part of the EBU in 1993.
I thought only SECAM was inferior in vertical colour resolution, compared to PAL and NTSC. PAL has full chrominance information on every line, only to be inverted every other line to create the "phase alternation". SECAM stores only R-Y on one line and B-Y on the other, therefore only offering half the colour information than PAL or NTSC.
SECAM studio equipment is expensive, and is hard to manage for production work (the FM chrominance signal makes it impossible to mix two images together). In analog days, most studio used PAL for shooting and editing, only to convert to SECAM at the transmission stage (modern digital equipment only distinguishes between 525/625 lines, since the signal is component, not composite like PAL, NTSC or SECAM).
