which palette? Stella´s or Wikipedia´s?

[Aloan]

LEFT Wikipedia - RIGHT Stella emulator
Which of the 2 is the closest and or the original to the actual Atari 2600? thanks
The wikipedia one has ECECEC for the "white" color while the Stella one has EAEAE9 and so on (colors are a bit different)
Btw, I just saw that I had asked this question 3 years ago, but got no answer  - maybe it´s a little mystery...

Edited April 25 by Aloan

[rbairos]

When I tested against a real world CRT around 2018 I remember thinking Random Terrain's looked closest.

https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-tia-color-charts.html

[Aloan]

7 minutes ago, rbairos said:

When I tested against a real world CRT around 2018 I remember thinking Random Terrain's looked closest.

https://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-tia-color-charts.html

will check, thanks!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

There is no "right" palette for the 2600. Each console is slightly different (and can be adjusted) and each TV displays the same signal slightly different (and can be adjusted too). So every palette can only be an approximation. 

 

Therefore you can select between different palettes in Stella and create your own, custom one.

Edited April 26 by Thomas Jentzsch

[+SpiceWare]

7 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Each console is slightly different (and can be adjusted) and each TV displays the same signal slightly different (and can be adjusted too).

 

This is why NTSC is sometimes called Never The Same Color.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:

This is why NTSC is sometimes called Never The Same Color.

Actually that referred to individual CRTs back then. IIRC the colors shifted depending on temperature. The PAL system fixed the problem.

[youxia]

It's not really that much different now. In theory you could probably calibrate two different  displays to have the same values, but in practice peoples' settings vary wildly, and there are several settings layers involved.

 

So I guess it's "whichever looks best for you" (unless green is blue or some such). And OP's examples look identical to me anyway

[+SpiceWare]

17 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Actually that referred to individual CRTs back then. IIRC the colors shifted depending on temperature. The PAL system fixed the problem.

 

Vacuum tubes would drift as they warmed up. In the early days stations didn't always transmit the signal correctly, requiring you to adjust the tint after changing the channel. Became less of an issue over time as electronics improved and stations learned, but by then Never The Same Color had stuck.

 

Still have transmission issues to this day, with ATSC I've run across channels that are configured incorrectly, such as being configured for 4:3 while sending a 16:9 image. You can often override the configuration with your TV to watch the channel, then remove the override when changing to another channel.

 

Quest TV Logo:

 

Squished logo in 2018 due to misconfiguration:

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

Vacuum tubes would drift as they warmed up. In the early days stations didn't always transmit the signal correctly, requiring you to adjust the tint after changing the channel. Became less of an issue over time as electronics improved and stations learned, but by then Never The Same Color had stuck.

They added line 19 (black, grey and white skin color) which is (was?) used to calibrate the tint by more modern TVs.

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

Squished logo in 2018 due to misconfiguration:

Actually the orange tint and saturation looks wrong too.  

Edited April 26 by Thomas Jentzsch