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On NTSC Video, Blue Blurring, Chroma Subsampling

Posted by simoniker on from the nothing-a-knock-on-the-head-won't-fix dept.

NEOGEOman writes "Something I've been fascinated with for a long time is video signals. On my website I've spent over six years collecting video and other hacks for game consoles. I've recently put together the fourth revision of my video signal primer and it's expanded to six pages now, including strange subjects like chroma subsampling, horizontal colour resolution and rather interesting revelation: your eyes suck at blue."

3 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. False positive by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    You may want to read a report on misbehaving censorware. Blocking the the article as "pornography" is misbehavior. If your company's business has anything remotely to do with video production or video games, ask your IT department to review gamesx.com (the site on which the article is hosted) and consider whitelisting it.

  2. Obvious Physics by rbruels · · Score: 5, Informative
    If NEOGEOman had bothered with a freshman-level physics or astronomy course, the conclusion that "your eyes suck at blue" would have been obvious some time ago.

    It's well known; as our eyes drift to the blue and red end of the spectrum, we lose our sensitivity, off by many orders of magnitude from say, yellow. This is why you see blue, and more commonly, red, lights as "night" light sources.

    The general reasoning: our eyes evolved with a single primary light source: the Sun. Which has quite the yellow tinge to it. Our eyes adapted to this, and as such, gave yellow the highest sensitivity and drifted off in a rough bell curve from there.

    It was an interesting article, and certainly put the RGB sensitivity into perspective, but ... it's not entirely new or surprising, either. Nor does the human eye really respond at RGB -- its response curves (beta, gamma, and rho) more closely correspond to blue, green/yellow, and yellow/orange.

    That all being said, thanks for letting us meet Traci. ;)

    --

    "All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
  3. SCART != RGB by JazFresh · · Score: 4, Informative
    I always see people saying things like "I connect via a SCART socket, so it's RGB."

    Not necessarily.

    SCART connectors are huge chunky things that can handle a number of video formats, including RGB, S-Video and Composite (maybe others too). But that's not the same as saying that a given SCART cable or socket will support all those formats. Many cheaper cables only support Composite (fewer wires means cheaper cost). And on some high-end TVs with multiple SCART inputs, only some of those will support RGB.

    So if you're playing your PS2 or whatever through a SCART cable, the TV might be using the SVideo or Composite signal rather than RGB.

    The lesson is, be sure to check your TV inputs, and always buy good quality cables!