To mod or not to mod?

[Greg2600]

Should this have an effect on non-320 and/or Atari 2600 games?

[RevEng]

48 minutes ago, Greg2600 said:

Should this have an effect on non-320 and/or Atari 2600 games?

It should only very weakly affect 160 mode games, 7800 or 2600. The starting or trailing edge of a 160 pixel will sometimes get a little bit of color artifact... if you've seen tinting effects on the edges of some 2600 game objects or playfields, it's the same underlying artifacting at work. In theory a 160 mode alternating pixel pattern should also get a subtle blush of hue, but in practise I don't really see it.

 

I should also point out that artifacting only happens over composite/rf, and even then the strength of the colors depends on the quality (or lack) of comb filter in your TV. The TV I use for testing is a late-model generic cheapo CRT, so artifacting tends to be strong with it.

[Geoff Oltmans]

9 hours ago, Trebor said:

Indeed.  And while Eutrophication is actually a thing, placing green water in the realm of possibilities, naturally or otherwise, unless the game is borrowing an idea from Ghostbusters II*, it can be considered fortunate some consoles are not experiencing pink water.

 

As we have also witnessed when comparing artifact color console differences, in some instance(s), an end result of cyan, while another was pink:

 

 

*Disclaimer...I am not denying a possible link between Vigo and Misery the Inconvenient.

I guess this isn't too surprising given that the hues on normal colors will drift after just a minute or two of warming the console up.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

28 minutes ago, Geoff Oltmans said:

I guess this isn't too surprising given that the hues on normal colors will drift after just a minute or two of warming the console up.

More importantly it means that even between 7800s that might appear to be set the same way from the factory, that the colors won't necessarily be uniform from one system to the other.

 

BTW the bottom row of colors in that pic is what I mostly see with 7800s on my LCD in composite.

 

[Greg2600]

6 hours ago, RevEng said:

It should only very weakly affect 160 mode games, 7800 or 2600. The starting or trailing edge of a 160 pixel will sometimes get a little bit of color artifact... if you've seen tinting effects on the edges of some 2600 game objects or playfields, it's the same underlying artifacting at work. In theory a 160 mode alternating pixel pattern should also get a subtle blush of hue, but in practise I don't really see it.

 

I should also point out that artifacting only happens over composite/rf, and even then the strength of the colors depends on the quality (or lack) of comb filter in your TV. The TV I use for testing is a late-model generic cheapo CRT, so artifacting tends to be strong with it.

My tinting is off on solid objects primarily.  It's a reason I'm considering a S-Video mod on this one.

[RevEng]

2 hours ago, Greg2600 said:

My tinting is off on solid objects primarily.  It's a reason I'm considering a S-Video mod on this one.

S-Video will splt chroma out from the video signal, so it will remove artifacting. But since you're talking about solid colors being off, pretty much by definition that's not luma->chroma artifacting.

 

If the problem is the usual one, where modern TVs don't show the "correct" colors for a game, there's nothing to be done that I'm aware of. Since the 7800 release, there have been several different broadcast color standards adopted, including ad-hoc changes by the TV manufacturers, and then the transition to LCDs happened, with their wider color gamut.

[Greg2600]

On 10/1/2020 at 9:16 PM, RevEng said:

S-Video will splt chroma out from the video signal, so it will remove artifacting. But since you're talking about solid colors being off, pretty much by definition that's not luma->chroma artifacting.

 

If the problem is the usual one, where modern TVs don't show the "correct" colors for a game, there's nothing to be done that I'm aware of. Since the 7800 release, there have been several different broadcast color standards adopted, including ad-hoc changes by the TV manufacturers, and then the transition to LCDs happened, with their wider color gamut.

well it's doing it on the same console that has off colors due to artifacting.  also has the old LHE composite mod, so idk if that's the cause?  my unmodded 7800 thru RF displays all colors fine.

[RevEng]

On 10/2/2020 at 9:21 PM, Greg2600 said:

well it's doing it on the same console that has off colors due to artifacting.  also has the old LHE composite mod, so idk if that's the cause?  my unmodded 7800 thru RF displays all colors fine.

It may well be the mod is doing both - throwing off your luma timing (artifacting colors) and messing up your normal chroma signal. It's just the two problems have a different underlying cause. If the mod also happened to mess up your audio, it wouldn't be related to the artifacting colors either.