Philips PM5540

The Philips PM5540 is a monochrome test pattern generator[3] that could be considered a black & white predecessor of the widely used Philips PM5544 test pattern. It has been used in Australia, Abu Dhabi, Denmark,[4] Israel,[5] Qatar, Haiti and the Netherlands.[6][7][8][9]

Recreation of PM 5540 Philips test pattern

Recreation of the PM5540 variant used by Sjónvarpið[1]

Off-air photo of PM5540 variant used by SDR, SWF, SFB[1] and RÚV[2].

Heavily modified versions of the PM5540 test card were used by Sjónvarpið and RÚV[2] of Iceland from 1966 until 1982, and by some regional broadcasters of the German public broadcasting corporation ARD (such as Süddeutscher Rundfunk and Sender Freies Berlin) as well as by the national German public broadcaster ZDF.[10]

Some features of the main test card:[11][3]

• Background - grid of 14 x 10 squares, each square with a white border 2 raster scan lines thick;
• Black and white squares - around the borders, with the four corners being white
• Circle - has a diameter of 440 scan lines;
• Definition lines - gratings corresponding to 0.8, 1.8, 2.8, 3.8 and 4.8 MHz, allowing measurement of image bandwidth and associated horizontal resolution
• Staircase - grayscale linear gradation in 5 steps
• Background - uniform 50% lightness gray background
• Needle pulse - white pulse on black background

Besides the main "Complete Pattern", the hardware was capable of generating other patterns named as "Crossed Lines", "Black/White Steps", "Definition Lines", "Sawtooth", "Vertical Bars" and "Blank Pattern".[3][12][11]