Nes rgb with composite colors?

atheistgod1999 · Post by **atheistgod1999** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 4:43 pm

I got an RGB cable for my Genesis and it looks amazing. I want to mod my NES for RGB but from pictures I've seen it makes the colors too bright, like making reds pink and stuff like that. Is there an RGB option that makes the RGB colors the same as they are in composite? Also sorry I'm typing this on my phone and I'm having lunch at school right now. I'll have to go back to class in a few mins. I'll probably be able to look at your replies next class because it's study hall.

Guspaz · Post by **Guspaz** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 5:34 pm

The NESRGB has various palette options. This video will show you the different palettes side-by-side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UU1V ... jHSPq33fX4

The "natural" palette is closest to composite. It can either be set permanently, or you can install a switch to change.

My understanding is that the "natural" palette is the same as what the NES is trying to send out over composite before it gets mangled.

atheistgod1999 · Post by **atheistgod1999** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 6:25 pm

Natural is still much more vibrant than composite. Not as bad, but still.

Guspaz · Post by **Guspaz** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 7:22 pm

If you are going to try to make the RGB signal look as much like composite as possible, then what's the point of using RGB in the first place? The point of RGB is to remove all the artifacts caused by composite, and the messed up colours of composite video are part of that.

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 7:38 pm

atheistgod, are you plugged in a CRT or an HDTV?

atheistgod1999 · Post by **atheistgod1999** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:08 pm

FinalBaton wrote:atheistgod, are you plugged in a CRT or an HDTV?

CRT. BVM-20F1U.

atheistgod1999 · Post by **atheistgod1999** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:12 pm

Guspaz wrote:If you are going to try to make the RGB signal look as much like composite as possible, then what's the point of using RGB in the first place? The point of RGB is to remove all the artifacts caused by composite, and the messed up colours of composite video are part of that.

Still sharper and without artifacts (rainbow artifacts, for example) The NES games LOOK better with the composite colors; that's how they were meant to look and they actually look better than the RGB colors IMO. For example, look at the skin colors in Contra. They look more realistic in composite. Also, look at the robot master selection screen in Mega Man 2: in RGB, some of them have their main metal color as pink, when in composite they are darkish red. I'm pretty sure, especially given its target audience, it's supposed to be dark red. On the Genesis, it's obvious that the games were meant to be seen in RGB; I know about the waterfall trick in Sonic 1 (and I also noticed that they did a similar thing with the shield in it; I paused it on a frame the shield was visible, and the shield was split up into a sort of hex grid. I was using composite video as sync, so I moved the sync/composite cable over to a composite port and switched it to that input on the TV, and I couldn't see the hex grid and the shield looked transparent), but the colors actually look like they were meant to be viewed in RGB colors instead of composite on the Genesis because the colors LOOK like improved versions of the composite colors, while NES RGB colors look almost completely different and unrelated to their composite counterparts. It's kinda hard for me to explain why I think this, but I'm trying my hardest.

Guspaz · Post by **Guspaz** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 8:32 pm

Your logic falls apart when you consider that these games were designed for the Famicom, not the NES, and the Famicom doesn't even support composite video. Some of these games came out before the NES even existed. Furthermore, some of these games, like Contra, were originally designed as arcade games using RGB, not the NES or Famicom ports that used composite or RF.

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Fri Nov 20, 2015 10:02 pm

"Natural" palette on the NESRGB looks great to me *shrugs*

Well my take on it is this : growing up we got used to the faded colors of composite, so having bright and rich colors seems "wrong".
But it's in fact not wrong. It's the way it is supposed to be. It's just different than what we "think" it should look like.

So again : to me the NESRGB's "natural" palette looks great. The only thing I will say about the NESRGB's signal is that it's brighter(colors more saturated) than other consoles.
So whenever I go from another console to the NES, I always need to make a slight ajustment : on my PVM I need to turn the contrast down, and adjust the brightness a bit. And on my XRGB-3 I need to dial the ADC down. These simple ajustments do the trick and give a flawless RGB image.

FBX · Post by **FBX** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 2:42 am

FinalBaton wrote:"Natural" palette on the NESRGB looks great to me *shrugs*

Well my take on it is this : growing up we got used to the faded colors of composite, so having bright and rich colors seems "wrong".
But it's in fact not wrong. It's the way it is supposed to be. It's just different than what we "think" it should look like.

So again : to me the NESRGB's "natural" palette looks great. The only thing I will say about the NESRGB's signal is that it's brighter(colors more saturated) than other consoles.
So whenever I go from another console to the NES, I always need to make a slight ajustment : on my PVM I need to turn the contrast down, and adjust the brightness a bit. And on my XRGB-3 I need to dial the ADC down. These simple ajustments do the trick and give a flawless RGB image.

I also noticed the 'natural' palette is completely wrong on the greenish-blue entries at the end of the NES palette code spectrum. It goes with a default 50-50 blue versus green value, but the real NTSC console is slanted much more towards blue. In both my 'eyeballed' and direct-capture tests, the real console definitely favors blue over green in those entries:

The direct-capture method isn't entirely accurate either (card wasn't the greatest), but it seemed to confirm my 'eyeballed' palette for those entries. I've played with several palettes from various emulators, and I still prefer my eyeballed set over everything else.

Anyway, the best place to see those greenish blue entries is in level 1 of the first Zelda game. The "natural" palette is the same as Nestopia's "YUV" palette if you want to compare and contrast with my eyeballed set.

austin532 · Post by **austin532** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 3:04 am

None of the palettes are correct but Natural is basically Composite without the flaws and looks best overall. Some games look good with Improved but most will look too colorful. The only game that looks good in Garish is so far is Yoshi's Cookie.

FinalBaton · Post by **FinalBaton** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 3:20 am

austin532 wrote:Natural is basically Composite without the flaws and looks best overall.

This

leonk · Post by **leonk** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 4:52 am

atheistgod1999 have you actually seen an NESRGB system in real life? You can't judge colors by watching youtube; there's just too many things that change the colors. Also, colors isn't everything. Picture quality, sharpness, no noise, no ghosting or jailbars (yes, all NES systems have jailbars!) all adds up to the enjoyment of getting an NESRGB or NES HDMI.

I've sold dozens of NESRGB installs to customers (most play on XRGB mini to HDTV). Many of them moved to this setup from Retron5 and say that the image quality is much better.

Personally, I'm a CRT perfectionist such as yourself. I play my top loader NESRGB on a 20" Sony PVM. You gotta experience in person and then judge it. The NES looks SO MUCH better on NESRGB vs composite.

bobrocks95 · Post by **bobrocks95** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 5:18 am

There's a reason NTSC is jokingly referred to (among other things) as "Never the Same Color (Twice)". Composite video just does not accurately represent colors and differs a lot between sets based on the comb filtering and a billion other statistics.

Take these two screenshots from Fudoh's site as an example (sorry to hotlink Fudoh...). The left is straight into a Sony TV and the right is through just an external comb filter (which the TV is also processing it through). The colors obviously aren't quite the same, which one is correct? Should the sky be more blue or more purple? How red are the bricks supposed to be?

It's also strung through an XRGB, so maybe that's altering the colors and Fudoh can chime in, but I doubt it- feel free to correct me someone if that explains the discrepancy.

My assumption was that the natural palette output what color values the PPU actually generates internally, but I could be making that up. Either way, matching the exact composite color likely isn't possible.

nissling · Post by **nissling** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:20 am

atheistgod1999 wrote:The NES games LOOK better with the composite colors; that's how they were meant to look and they actually look better than the RGB colors IMO.

This is all wrong. The reference isn't what an unmodded Nes is capable of outputting through composite, the reference is what the programmer saw on his monitor during development. When doing color grading and programming games in general, RGB is ALWAYS used and if you claim to work with graphics with anything less at your primary setup you should get a new occupation. With the Nes the programmers were of course aware of the limitations with composite, but due to the differences in NTSC and PAL encoders there was just no way to have more than one single reference which makes it utterly pointless to program the game with anything else in mind than RGB. There are of course games that utilizes the cons of composite through dither, but that's only one single parameter and you cannot focus completely on it.

FBX · Post by **FBX** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 12:26 pm

austin532 wrote:Natural is basically Composite without the flaws...

For the most part it does come pretty close to my own tests of the real console, except as I said on those blue-green values at the end of the spectrum. I've got 4 different front-loaders, and they all favor blue over green in every TV I've tried (with properly set hue). Even the direct capture revealed this. If I could change just those value at the very least, I could live with the 'natural' palette as is.

BONKERS · Post by **BONKERS** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 3:42 pm

Guspaz wrote:If you are going to try to make the RGB signal look as much like composite as possible, then what's the point of using RGB in the first place? The point of RGB is to remove all the artifacts caused by composite, and the messed up colours of composite video are part of that.

He just wants the palette/color. Big difference.

The_Atomik_Punk! · Post by **The_Atomik_Punk!** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 12:45 am

I'll just chime in and state that I agree with the OP's premise, that some games look better with their original composite colours than compared to the NES RGB "Natural" palette. I feel this way, because in my opinion, some colours are just wrong with the NESRGB for certain games.

A great example for me is if you boot up Mega Man 2 and input a level code to go straight to Dr. Wily's Castle:

Original Composite hardware: https://youtu.be/KvkHhpz2FrY?t=1361

Emulator colours identical to NESRGB Natural Palette: https://youtu.be/BlJFpsV0bhM?t=1581

This to me demonstrates clearly how some colour selections by the NESRGB look inferior to how they originally appeared. In real composite, the NES paints a moody blue night sky which fits perfectly, whereas the NESRGB selects a putrid grey/green colour for the same sky- not that "natural" at all IMO. It is NOT always a question of brightness or vibrancy, but of accuracy. I implore anyone with the hardware setup able to compare stock composite to the NESRGB's "Natural" palette to check out that Mega Man 2 stage (first Dr. Wily stage) to see what I mean; it's even more extreme in person.

For this reason, I prefer to play some of my favourite games on a Stock NES toaster that I reserve for this purpose (particularly Double Dragon II, Mega Man 2, and Bionic Commando) as opposed to my RGB modded AV Famicom, because for me in certain instances i prefer the colour accuracy of original hardware to Tim's kit.

FBX · Post by **FBX** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 1:49 am

The_Atomik_Punk! wrote:
This to me demonstrates clearly how some colour selections by the NESRGB look inferior to how they originally appeared. In real composite, the NES paints a moody blue night sky which fits perfectly, whereas the NESRGB selects a putrid grey/green colour for the same sky- not that "natural" at all IMO. It is NOT always a question of brightness or vibrancy, but of accuracy. I implore anyone with the hardware setup able to compare stock composite to the NESRGB's "Natural" palette to check out that Mega Man 2 stage (first Dr. Wily stage) to see what I mean; it's even more extreme in person.

That's part of the same color entries I was complaining about. As you saw, the real hardware leans towards blue, whereas that 'natural' palette has them 50-50 split between blue and green.

Here's my eyeballed palette in action versus the 'natural' palette:

The_Atomik_Punk! · Post by **The_Atomik_Punk!** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 4:44 pm

FBX, you're talking about exactly what I'm getting at; those side by side pics are conclusive in my opinion in dispelling anyone's belief that all discrepancies between stock composite and NESRGB colours are just down to "vibrancy". Your eyeballed palette looks way better than the NESRGB "Natural" palette in terms of accuracy to stock colours; Is there any way to adjust the NESRGB's "Natural Palette" output to update these colour corrections via firmware or some other method?

yxkalle · Post by **yxkalle** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 5:36 pm

Should be trivial for tim to make an optional firmware that replaces Garish f.e.

PS. I made a small youtube video because bored. Colours didn't show up that great though because of overexposure.

https://youtu.be/FQPx4NyUPZg

Josh128 · Post by **Josh128** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:40 pm

Garish is useless, a novelty IMO. I have my NESRGB setup for Natural, Improved, or OFF. I personally play on improved-- I still have my original old NES packaging, and the "fake" images of SMB on the back of the box look a hell of a lot like the "improved" setting!

I find improved has more punch and looks more "RGB'ish" IMO.

A good test would be to fire up some playchoice 10 MAME games and do some screen grabs on how theyre supposed to look in true RGB.

BazookaBen · Post by **BazookaBen** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 10:05 pm

Thanks for making those shots FBX. This is a tough choice for someone who is weighing authenticity vs fidelity.

Arasoi · Post by **Arasoi** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 10:24 pm

FBX · Post by **FBX** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 10:51 pm

The_Atomik_Punk! wrote:FBX, you're talking about exactly what I'm getting at; those side by side pics are conclusive in my opinion in dispelling anyone's belief that all discrepancies between stock composite and NESRGB colours is just down to "vibrancy". Your eyeballed palette looks way better than the NESRGB "Natural" palette in terms of accuracy to stock colours; Is there any way to adjust the NESRGB's "Natural Palette" output to update these colour corrections via firmware or some other method?

I spoke to Tim about this, and he was at least willing to make me a custom board where my palette is put in place. Not sure if he'd be willing to make it an official swap of one of the other palettes though.

atheistgod1999 · Post by **atheistgod1999** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:10 pm

FBX wrote:
The_Atomik_Punk! wrote:FBX, you're talking about exactly what I'm getting at; those side by side pics are conclusive in my opinion in dispelling anyone's belief that all discrepancies between stock composite and NESRGB colours is just down to "vibrancy". Your eyeballed palette looks way better than the NESRGB "Natural" palette in terms of accuracy to stock colours; Is there any way to adjust the NESRGB's "Natural Palette" output to update these colour corrections via firmware or some other method?

I spoke to Tim about this, and he was at least willing to make me a custom board where my palette is put in place. Not sure if he'd be willing to make it an official swap of one of the other palettes though.

OK I guess I will ask him myself. Sucks that it has to ship from freaking Australia. Why do all the people that make the exclusive retro gaming stuff have to live in the countries where the shipping is the longest and most expensive? Krikzz, for example, lives in Ukraine.

CkRtech · Post by **CkRtech** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:56 am

FBX wrote:I spoke to Tim about this, and he was at least willing to make me a custom board where my palette is put in place.

I assumed that the palette data was stored with the NESRGB firmware and could be simply changed via a flash. Did he mention if that was or was not the case?

FBX · Post by **FBX** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:59 am

atheistgod1999 wrote:
FBX wrote:
The_Atomik_Punk! wrote:FBX, you're talking about exactly what I'm getting at; those side by side pics are conclusive in my opinion in dispelling anyone's belief that all discrepancies between stock composite and NESRGB colours is just down to "vibrancy". Your eyeballed palette looks way better than the NESRGB "Natural" palette in terms of accuracy to stock colours; Is there any way to adjust the NESRGB's "Natural Palette" output to update these colour corrections via firmware or some other method?

I spoke to Tim about this, and he was at least willing to make me a custom board where my palette is put in place. Not sure if he'd be willing to make it an official swap of one of the other palettes though.
OK I guess I will ask him myself. Sucks that it has to ship from freaking Australia. Why do all the people that make the exclusive retro gaming stuff have to live in the countries where the shipping is the longest and most expensive? Krikzz, for example, lives in Ukraine.

I got all EverDrives from Krikzz. Shipping took about 2 weeks, so it wasn't that bad.

Anyway, I'm going to be working more on my customized palette in order to correct some of the darkest hues. I'll write back here with a link to the finalized palette when it's finished.

The_Atomik_Punk! · Post by **The_Atomik_Punk!** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 1:30 am

FBX wrote:
I spoke to Tim about this, and he was at least willing to make me a custom board where my palette is put in place. Not sure if he'd be willing to make it an official swap of one of the other palettes though.

....Anyway, I'm going to be working more on my customized palette in order to correct some of the darkest hues. I'll write back here with a link to the finalized palette when it's finished.

Sounds great dude; I think that the NESRGB's "Natural" palette can also be improved when it comes to pinks, purples, and red/oranges. I can list some specific examples from Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon II, and Bionic Commando if that will assist you at all.

FBX · Post by **FBX** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:34 am

Spent a couple hours getting everything to my liking. Here's new 'accuracy' palette:

http://www.firebrandx.com/downloads/fbx ... alette.zip

It's an amalgam of some of my eyeball tweaks combined with my direct-capture hues, as well as the top-end values from the 'natural' palette (which are actually quite good on that end). I tested all the Mega Man games, Castlevanias, Zeldas, SMBs, etc., and everything looked kosher.

shmups.system11.org

Nes rgb with composite colors?

Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?

Re: Nes rgb with composite colors?