FWIW the ST also excelled in WYSIWYG desktop publishing as well, with vector-based fonts and drawing apps that are still unequalled (in my budget-driven experience at least) on the PC. Calamus, Avant Vektor, Didot, DA's Vector, Retouche Pro... Some seriously stellar software, especially when coupled with the Atari laserprinters, or connected to a Linotronic...
As a long time ST user I can say without question this machine is WAY more powerful. The custom graphics chips in the X68000 kicked the ST's ass, and though the Amiga was unquestionably the ST's superior the X68k 0wnz them both.
Also, if you read the whole page, it had a DOS-clone OS in addition to a GUI OS/shell (not clear on which it was). It was wholely different from any other GUI, and I think it must be said it kinda sucked, though I've never seen SX Windows 3.0. I've seen screenshots of some apps for it, so I know it COULD display more than 4 colours, but the stock GUI used only that many. Really horrible, primitive icons, in addition to a strange race-care motif.
Basically, as we all know, the specs are nice but they don't mean squat. It's all about the games, and the X68000 games were amazing. Try one, you'll like it.
The first two pics are from the arcade and X68, the last one (of the same image, more or less) is the Genesis version. No offense, but it doesn't take a fanboy to tell them apart - it takes only EYES. =)
I wrote about something similar in Japan, a cashless prepaid card connected with Sony's online payment system, Sega's arcades, AM/PM stores, and DoCoMo cellular phones.
Perhaps in my quest to present a primer (note: a primer is not comprehensive, but is an introduction) I glossed over the minutae a little, but here's how I see the chroma encoding process working:
RGB -> Y/Y-R/Y-B -> Y/C -> composite
On the way to generating Y/C you have component video, and Y/C is B+W + Chroma. I Don't see that I said anything to contradict this, so I'm gonna fall back on my old defense: you're connecting dots I didn't connect and arguing with me on the result. Or perhaps I didn't explain it clearly enough, but if you know all this already why are you reading primers? You're just there for Traci, admit it.;)
I'm of the opinion that making this explanation more clear is pointless to the layman. Is it more correct? Absolutely, no question, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. But when the math is done and the image is presented the two low-res chroma channels are, in effect, low res datastreams responsible for the generation of red and blue video.
"He really hasn't done the math to realize the advantages of Y'CbCr are more about bandwidth reduction, interoperability with existing color video technology, and easier signal processing."
I DO realize the benefits, obviously a lossless RGB media wouldn't have half the runtime on a DVD-sized platter. This is just a primer, a bit of "hey, neato!" to the slobbering masses (And make no mistake there's a few on here) who don't realize what is missing with the DVD format.
It's not a comprehensive article, I can't cover all the bases in six pages, so I didn't try. The statements I make are incomplete, sure, that's life. But wrong? Aside from some people connecting strange dots so far I haven't seen a lot of "this is wrong" replies, though I welcome any vitriol-free contributions to this end.
Can't be all things to all people, so I shoot for a 4/5 positive rate.;)
Well the reason I took umbrage with his post is that it essentially argues with me over a point I didn't make. I never claimed eyes had a specific problem with blue, I just said "Hey, looky here! Ain't this neato?"
I'm not entirely sure how anyone can argue that. "It's not because of sensitivity, fool!"
And actually, I'd arge that low resolution impacts sensitivity. It certainly impacts perception. How loosely can we apply these definitions?;)
Sounds like your Tivo works like my capture card, which only captures at 30fps. This makes it very difficult to get clean results for anything but normal live-action video, because every second frame is blurred together with the first. What you describe could be the next frame blurring into the previous one, ahd perhaps a de-interlacing controller is eliminating sharper details and leaving only the blended colour?
That's a pretty good layman's comparison. PAL kind of gets a more stable, vibrant and sharper picture in exchange for a little flicker. 50Hz video flickers just enough to annoy me, but I'm sure I could get used to it.
As for the question "why is it that a lot of (even really cheap stuff) PAL-gear can also play NTSC, but not the other way around?" the answer is simple:
With few exeptions we already have all the good content and you PAL losers users are constantly importing content, far more than an NTSC user imports PAL content. Also, I think it should be said that by and large North American consumers are stupid and wouldn't know quality if they choked on it, so why give them more than they're lining up to buy?
You're connecting dots that I didn't connect. I can't be blamed when you misread what I wrote. In regards to DVD, in the paragraph about Component Video I wrote "especially when the signal comes from a DVD source where the red + blue signals are typically 75% lower resolution than the green." The next paragraph goes into detail on RGB and states that few DVD players output RGB. It's obvious to me DVD players don't store data in RGB colourspace, but perhaps you need another diagram so you don't think I'm confused?;)
Remember that this whole series is from a gaming point of view, not a DVD viewing one - most of these points are made in regards to cabling and maximum achievable image quality, and attempt to touch on exactly how difficult a real solid answer can be on account of the variables. Because of this my intended audience (gamers) would, I hope, NOT make the conclusion "DVDs are stored as RGB data". I dunno why you did, perhaps I was unclear.
Alright, I'll tell you exactly that. I used a digital camera, and reduced the image to 25% using an interpolated scaling to create an image much closer to 'balanced' than a raw digital image would be. By scaling it this way the image was resampled to the new size by combining and averaging the pixels, negating any effect the camera's CCD had.
According to the histogram the colours are very nearly the same but for some variation in the highs.
What you say is irrelevant for the discussion, really, because a digital camera also uses JPG compression which, as we've discussed, creates a high-res green and low-res red + blue image. That's the other reason I resampled it, it negates the JPG effects and creates a (very lovely) new image without effects from the CCD or JPG compression.
The author knows he knows nothing, but knows more than the hundreds of info-starved fanboys on forums the world over, and knows enough to put together a primer (And I'm repeating myself here) that is an introduction to a subject, not a comprehensive guide.
Also, as far as I know no one pumps "NTSC DV" through an svideo cable, unlress they're way off spec. Svideo is analogue, not digital. Or are you using a non-spec definition of "DV"?;)
I actually chose this image because it was more or less neutral, with a primarily white/grey image. All the other images I have of Traci have far, far more flesh colours in them....
Wavelets have been around for years already. New technology being great doesn't mean it'll be big - PNG is great, but thanks to Microsoft's broken implementation (You have to use a special MIE-only filter to use PNGs properly) it never caught on. If MS doesn't get behind JPG2k (And why would they, they don't own it) it will be another obscure format like the last wavelet compression scheme.
OK, so you're saying our eyes don't suck at blue, or that they suck for different reasons? The end result as I see it is exactly the same - we still perceive very low resolution in blues, and we can reduce the detail in an image's blue channel without a noticable drop in image quality. This is proven through the pictures I provided. Is there more to the story? There sure as hell is! Am I the world's leading comprehensive source for Eyes+Blue information? Nope, nor do I claim to be.
What you say is fascinating, but beyond the scope of my tiny little primer which aimed to prove one point (And I think succeeded). As for the chart I linked to, you might be best to take up your crusade with them.;)
I've never used Photoshop, I believe in purchasing the software I use and Photoshop is priced beyond the grasp of mortals. PSP uses the same filters and costs $100 ($50 upgrade) and gets vastly better with each revision. I recommend it - the chroma subsampling control is just one feature I use a lot.
I'm not colourblind at all, and I consider my vision to be pretty good. The difference on the red-reduced image is less noticable than the blue. It varies though depending on the source image and reduction method, where green is always noticable and blue almost always invisible.
I use the splashpage as an emergency notice page. Sometimes something important comes up and I put it there. It's a simple, unconfusing page with a bright white image on a black background. FWIW blind people don't tend to read my page - most of them don't solder or care about RGB vs composite, so I don't cater to them.
So far I've received no blind complaints, and as for certification... I'm far, far too lazy to care. I test it on the Big Three browsers (Those being Opera, MIE and FlavourOfTheWeek) and if it works, I'm done.;)
The old link was a little off since I jpg'd the images. I didn't realize at the time that JPG blurred the colour channels so you lose the stair-stepping. Leaving them as PNGs this time preserves the artifacts more noticably.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW the ST also excelled in WYSIWYG desktop publishing as well, with vector-based fonts and drawing apps that are still unequalled (in my budget-driven experience at least) on the PC. Calamus, Avant Vektor, Didot, DA's Vector, Retouche Pro... Some seriously stellar software, especially when coupled with the Atari laserprinters, or connected to a Linotronic...
As a long time ST user I can say without question this machine is WAY more powerful. The custom graphics chips in the X68000 kicked the ST's ass, and though the Amiga was unquestionably the ST's superior the X68k 0wnz them both.
Also, if you read the whole page, it had a DOS-clone OS in addition to a GUI OS/shell (not clear on which it was). It was wholely different from any other GUI, and I think it must be said it kinda sucked, though I've never seen SX Windows 3.0. I've seen screenshots of some apps for it, so I know it COULD display more than 4 colours, but the stock GUI used only that many. Really horrible, primitive icons, in addition to a strange race-care motif.
Basically, as we all know, the specs are nice but they don't mean squat. It's all about the games, and the X68000 games were amazing. Try one, you'll like it.
The first two pics are from the arcade and X68, the last one (of the same image, more or less) is the Genesis version. No offense, but it doesn't take a fanboy to tell them apart - it takes only EYES. =)
I wrote about something similar in Japan, a cashless prepaid card connected with Sony's online payment system, Sega's arcades, AM/PM stores, and DoCoMo cellular phones.
nfg.2y.net games archive
An astonishing network to be sure!
Perhaps in my quest to present a primer (note: a primer is not comprehensive, but is an introduction) I glossed over the minutae a little, but here's how I see the chroma encoding process working:
;)
RGB -> Y/Y-R/Y-B -> Y/C -> composite
On the way to generating Y/C you have component video, and Y/C is B+W + Chroma. I Don't see that I said anything to contradict this, so I'm gonna fall back on my old defense: you're connecting dots I didn't connect and arguing with me on the result. Or perhaps I didn't explain it clearly enough, but if you know all this already why are you reading primers? You're just there for Traci, admit it.
I'm of the opinion that making this explanation more clear is pointless to the layman. Is it more correct? Absolutely, no question, and I'm not suggesting otherwise. But when the math is done and the image is presented the two low-res chroma channels are, in effect, low res datastreams responsible for the generation of red and blue video.
We all know DVDs use YUV for storage, who are you arguing with?
"He really hasn't done the math to realize the advantages of Y'CbCr are more about bandwidth reduction, interoperability with existing color video technology, and easier signal processing."
;)
I DO realize the benefits, obviously a lossless RGB media wouldn't have half the runtime on a DVD-sized platter. This is just a primer, a bit of "hey, neato!" to the slobbering masses (And make no mistake there's a few on here) who don't realize what is missing with the DVD format.
It's not a comprehensive article, I can't cover all the bases in six pages, so I didn't try. The statements I make are incomplete, sure, that's life. But wrong? Aside from some people connecting strange dots so far I haven't seen a lot of "this is wrong" replies, though I welcome any vitriol-free contributions to this end.
Can't be all things to all people, so I shoot for a 4/5 positive rate.
Well the reason I took umbrage with his post is that it essentially argues with me over a point I didn't make. I never claimed eyes had a specific problem with blue, I just said "Hey, looky here! Ain't this neato?"
;)
I'm not entirely sure how anyone can argue that. "It's not because of sensitivity, fool!"
And actually, I'd arge that low resolution impacts sensitivity. It certainly impacts perception. How loosely can we apply these definitions?
Sounds like your Tivo works like my capture card, which only captures at 30fps. This makes it very difficult to get clean results for anything but normal live-action video, because every second frame is blurred together with the first. What you describe could be the next frame blurring into the previous one, ahd perhaps a de-interlacing controller is eliminating sharper details and leaving only the blended colour?
That's a pretty good layman's comparison. PAL kind of gets a more stable, vibrant and sharper picture in exchange for a little flicker. 50Hz video flickers just enough to annoy me, but I'm sure I could get used to it.
As for the question "why is it that a lot of (even really cheap stuff) PAL-gear can also play NTSC, but not the other way around?" the answer is simple:
With few exeptions we already have all the good content and you PAL losers users are constantly importing content, far more than an NTSC user imports PAL content. Also, I think it should be said that by and large North American consumers are stupid and wouldn't know quality if they choked on it, so why give them more than they're lining up to buy?
You're connecting dots that I didn't connect. I can't be blamed when you misread what I wrote. In regards to DVD, in the paragraph about Component Video I wrote "especially when the signal comes from a DVD source where the red + blue signals are typically 75% lower resolution than the green." The next paragraph goes into detail on RGB and states that few DVD players output RGB. It's obvious to me DVD players don't store data in RGB colourspace, but perhaps you need another diagram so you don't think I'm confused? ;)
Remember that this whole series is from a gaming point of view, not a DVD viewing one - most of these points are made in regards to cabling and maximum achievable image quality, and attempt to touch on exactly how difficult a real solid answer can be on account of the variables. Because of this my intended audience (gamers) would, I hope, NOT make the conclusion "DVDs are stored as RGB data". I dunno why you did, perhaps I was unclear.
Alright, I'll tell you exactly that. I used a digital camera, and reduced the image to 25% using an interpolated scaling to create an image much closer to 'balanced' than a raw digital image would be. By scaling it this way the image was resampled to the new size by combining and averaging the pixels, negating any effect the camera's CCD had.
According to the histogram the colours are very nearly the same but for some variation in the highs.
What you say is irrelevant for the discussion, really, because a digital camera also uses JPG compression which, as we've discussed, creates a high-res green and low-res red + blue image. That's the other reason I resampled it, it negates the JPG effects and creates a (very lovely) new image without effects from the CCD or JPG compression.
Does that satisfy you?
The author knows he knows nothing, but knows more than the hundreds of info-starved fanboys on forums the world over, and knows enough to put together a primer (And I'm repeating myself here) that is an introduction to a subject, not a comprehensive guide.
;)
Also, as far as I know no one pumps "NTSC DV" through an svideo cable, unlress they're way off spec. Svideo is analogue, not digital. Or are you using a non-spec definition of "DV"?
I actually chose this image because it was more or less neutral, with a primarily white/grey image. All the other images I have of Traci have far, far more flesh colours in them. ...
I've said too much.
Wavelets have been around for years already. New technology being great doesn't mean it'll be big - PNG is great, but thanks to Microsoft's broken implementation (You have to use a special MIE-only filter to use PNGs properly) it never caught on. If MS doesn't get behind JPG2k (And why would they, they don't own it) it will be another obscure format like the last wavelet compression scheme.
OK, so you're saying our eyes don't suck at blue, or that they suck for different reasons? The end result as I see it is exactly the same - we still perceive very low resolution in blues, and we can reduce the detail in an image's blue channel without a noticable drop in image quality. This is proven through the pictures I provided. Is there more to the story? There sure as hell is! Am I the world's leading comprehensive source for Eyes+Blue information? Nope, nor do I claim to be.
;)
What you say is fascinating, but beyond the scope of my tiny little primer which aimed to prove one point (And I think succeeded). As for the chart I linked to, you might be best to take up your crusade with them.
That is indeed an interesting read, which is why I included it in 'recommended reading' at the bottom of every page. ;)
I've never used Photoshop, I believe in purchasing the software I use and Photoshop is priced beyond the grasp of mortals. PSP uses the same filters and costs $100 ($50 upgrade) and gets vastly better with each revision. I recommend it - the chroma subsampling control is just one feature I use a lot.
http://www.jasc.com - get PSP here. =)
--
I am not a corporate shill!
Yeah, that's me. I did own a gamestore, Traci's on the hood of her car in front of the store in fact. ...
Who's your sister? =)
I'm not colourblind at all, and I consider my vision to be pretty good. The difference on the red-reduced image is less noticable than the blue. It varies though depending on the source image and reduction method, where green is always noticable and blue almost always invisible.
There are some boobs on the mainpage (nfg.2y.net). They're the only ones on the whole site, but apparently it makes it unworksafe for a lot of people.
You can alternatively try http://nfgman.ath.cx - it's the same server, different name.
I use the splashpage as an emergency notice page. Sometimes something important comes up and I put it there. It's a simple, unconfusing page with a bright white image on a black background. FWIW blind people don't tend to read my page - most of them don't solder or care about RGB vs composite, so I don't cater to them.
;)
So far I've received no blind complaints, and as for certification... I'm far, far too lazy to care. I test it on the Big Three browsers (Those being Opera, MIE and FlavourOfTheWeek) and if it works, I'm done.
The old link was a little off since I jpg'd the images. I didn't realize at the time that JPG blurred the colour channels so you lose the stair-stepping. Leaving them as PNGs this time preserves the artifacts more noticably.
I'll look into those new pages, thanks for the heads-up.