The UAV Rev. D Video Upgrade Thread

[+DrVenkman]

My CRT displays GREEN, thank you.

 

FH

So even though the author says it’s red, and even though many of us see it red on modded and unmodded systems on CRT’s, you’re still sure it’s supposed to be green.

 

Okay, sure. All that state of the art processing you’re doing to the signals MUST be correct. Lol.

[iesposta]

Apologies to Bryan for inadvertently starting the argument of what is the Ballblazer start color!

 

I only intended to praise how good his video mod my 800XL looked on my wall across the room at 80 inches projection taken with my cell phone camera. I wasn't screen capturing every gradient or worried about the true color on a warmed up machine!

 

Nobody agreed or thanked or said they were impressed with the clarity of this gigantic upscaled projection, which says to me how fantastic this Video Mod Board is.

 

I can upscale the RF output if anyone wants a comparison.

 

Hello!

 

P. S. This is the XE Cart, 800XL, UAV rD S-Video out, Framemeister upscale to 720P w/scanlines on, DLP w/RGB LED light source at 80 inches diagonal.

[Faicuai]

So even though the author says it’s red, and even though many of us see it red on modded and unmodded systems on CRT’s, you’re still sure it’s supposed to be green.

Okay, sure. All that state of the art processing you’re doing to the signals MUST be correct. Lol.

Correct.

 

If at every juncture / device it shows up decoded as green, I can only report what I see. (what the authors saw 30 years ago is dependent on the equipment they used back then).

 

And I am 100% confident on the NTSC-decoding accuracy of the equipment being used, on myside.

 

Again, this is not an issue of who "likes it or not". There are folks here that have reported the same green intro (NTSC).

 

And, yes, there were changes on NTSC decoding along the way that were NOT adopted in Japan, for instance, but were in force in the US.

 

And, ultimately, your abstract inference suggests Altirra decoding is WRONG, which I suggest you to elevate to Phaeron, if you have the guts / balls to do it. Show me the way!

 

8-)

[Mclaneinc]

I'd doubt Avery has it wrong, apart from Altirra he did produce VirtualDub which is a free and incredibly used bit of video editing software so the likelihood of him screwing a video based item has to be pretty small.

[Brentarian]

Just a thought, is everyone using the same binary file when comparing red screen / green screen? I've seen both at different times in past years and always attributed it to a slightly different binary I was running at the time.

Edited August 28, 2017 by Brentarian

[Faicuai]

Just a thought, is everyone using the same binary file when comparing red screen / green screen? I've seen both at different times in past years and always attributed it to a slightly different binary I was running at the time.

 

FINALLY some out-of-the-box thinking, here!

 

Did not look at it, either (e.g. actual ENCODING differences, which could be at play).

 

Attached are the files that I am using. Don't have any other sets. Let's see what other folks get from different HW / Display sets.

 

Koronis_Rift.zip

Ballblazer.zip

 

Cheers!

[Faicuai]

I'd doubt Avery has it wrong, apart from Altirra he did produce VirtualDub which is a free and incredibly used bit of video editing software so the likelihood of him screwing a video based item has to be pretty small.

 

Dead on!

[+DrVenkman]

If at every juncture / device it shows up decoded as green, I can only report what I see. (what the authors saw 30 years ago is dependent on the equipment they used back then).

 

 

You didn't read Trebor's posts that I linked the other day, did you? The answer is right there.

[+DrVenkman]

Apologies to Bryan for inadvertently starting the argument of what is the Ballblazer start color!

 

I only intended to praise how good his video mod my 800XL looked on my wall across the room at 80 inches projection taken with my cell phone camera. I wasn't screen capturing every gradient or worried about the true color on a warmed up machine!

 

Nobody agreed or thanked or said they were impressed with the clarity of this gigantic upscaled projection, which says to me how fantastic this Video Mod Board is.

 

I can upscale the RF output if anyone wants a comparison.

 

Hello!

IMG_0580.JPG

 

P. S. This is the XE Cart, 800XL, UAV rD S-Video out, Framemeister upscale to 720P w/scanlines on, DLP w/RGB LED light source at 80 inches diagonal.

 

Yep, that's what I see too albeit on a smaller screen directly on my multiple CRTs.

[Faicuai]

 

You didn't read Trebor's posts that I linked the other day, did you? The answer is right there.

 

Of course I read it!.... and, unfortunately, the answer is not there.

 

What you do find in there, is the specific area of the color palette that has trouble being displayed on "modern LCDs" when compared to "CRTs"... but it turns that the assumption that ALL CRTs color-decode NTSC signal in the same way is actually false (which explains why my Sony Wega 32" CRT displays the same GREEN back-ground as my Vizio LCD, Sony Bravia LCD and Viewsonic LCD monitor + DVDO Processor).

 

Instead, the answer seems to be shaping up like this (assuming STOCK / unmodified HW and no encoding differences right from our Ataris, and REGARDLESS of whether you use LCD or CRTs):

1. NTSC color decode CHANGED along the way, especially in the U.S., and there are at least two variants. One is superseded by the latter (most recent). SMPTE-c, I believe. Please, NOTE that Japan DID NOT update to latest NTSC color-decode.
2. If you are seeing a RED background on BallBlazer, Koronis Rift, etc., it is very likely you are decoding NTSC color under the obsolete / replaced decode standard in the U.S.
3. If you are seeing a GREEN background on BallBlazer, Koronis Rift, etc., it is very likely you are decoding NTSC color under the most CURRENT NTSC decode standard.
4. Again, it will not matter whether you are on LCD or CRT.

No one on this earth is going to deny that most early 1980's development took place under defunct NTSC color-decode specs, which explains the observed differences of Browns / Yellows / Golds renditions between different displays.

 

The above possible explanation also serves explaining why Altirra tracks my real HW so beautifully close to my real HW, which is marvelous to see (left Altirra, right off-screen shot from Atari 800 on its own s-Video through DVDO Video Processor):

 

 

Actual HW calibration had nothing to do with Altirra in any form or shape. It is beautifully close along the entire color palette...

 

​From the above colorimetry, this is how Star Raiders shields actually look (off and then on). If you are not getting this color, it is extremely likely that most of your color palette is off-track:

 

 

 

Cheers!

[+DrVenkman]

 

Of course I read it!.... (SNIPPED)

 

2. If you are seeing a RED background on BallBlazer, Koronis Rift, etc., it is very likely you are decoding NTSC color under the obsolete / replaced decode standard in the U.S.

 

 

Winner, winner chicken dinner!

 

You're doing an awful lot of typing to try to talk around something that many people have been trying to intimate to you from the beginning, so let me lay this out for you again.

​1. These are 30-plus year old machines designed to display images on consumer-grade analog NTSC color televisions.

2. When operated in this stated, desgined fashion, the title screen backgrounds of the Lucasarts games in question is red.

3. There is no point 3 but you do seem so fond of your lists so ... there you go.

 

Talk around it all you like, but that's it.

[Faicuai]

 

Winner, winner chicken dinner!

 

You're doing an awful lot of typing to try to talk around something that many people have been trying to intimate to you from the beginning, so let me lay this out for you again.

​1. These are 30-plus year old machines designed to display images on consumer-grade analog NTSC color televisions.

2. When operated in this stated, desgined fashion, the title screen backgrounds of the Lucasarts games in question is red.

3. There is no point 3 but you do seem so fond of your lists so ... there you go.

 

Talk around it all you like, but that's it.

 

THANK YOU for confirming the accuracy and precision of my end's renderings. Dear to my heart, indeed. 8-)

 

Cheers!

[+DrVenkman]

 

THANK YOU for confirming the accuracy and precision of my end's renderings. Dear to my heart, indeed. 8-)

 

Cheers!

 

Read what I wrote please, not what you want to see.

 

I can confirm what I see: on these games is a red background, produced from my Atari computer hardware (modded systems and bone-stock systems both), displayed on both '80s CRT monitors and an early 00's CRT consumer television.

​I can also confirm that the same systems display green backgrounds for Lucasarts titles when connected to a consumer circa-2013 LCD television set in my bedroom.

​Exactly as Trebor says in the thread I linked some time ago.

 

I cannot speak to what you see or don't see, nor how you're processing the signals to get your results.

[gozar]

I always saw the background as brown...

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[phaeron]

Altirra's current default NTSC color profile is tuned toward a mix of modern display reproduction and pragmatism. It is not intended to accurately show what displays showed "back in the day" -- mainly because there is no good way to determine what that is, assuming it is even possible to come up with a single "classic" standard. If you try coming up with a single color calibration for NTSC, you will quickly discover that it is impossible to match all documentation and recollections of how screens should look, because some of them conflict. People will swear up and down that a particular screen in a particular game MUST be a particular color, and once you realize that you have at least three reference points not in a line and only two degrees of freedom in terms of a tint control and a color pot, you are screwed. That's why the emulator has a Commodore 1702 preset tuned to my actual NTSC 800XL and 1702 monitor and it is not the default.

 

Of all of the arguments for a particular color scheme, I find author's recollection to be the least compelling. No offense to the people who made these excellent games, but this was over thirty years ago and "red" and "green" are not precise reference points.

 

In this particular case, the background color is affected by a hue shift from clipping at the low end, and thus it is sensitive to brightness and black level settings in addition to the usual color settings. This is the colorburst hue, so you'd have to use the tint control on the TV or projector to get this color where you want it. The UAV is simply trying to produce a cleaner signal in the same spirit of GTIA, so if the UAV isn't producing the "correct" colors -- it isn't necessarily the job of the UAV to correct for that.

[Faicuai]

 

Read what I wrote please, not what you want to see.

 

I can confirm what I see: on these games is a red background, produced from my Atari computer hardware (modded systems and bone-stock systems both), displayed on both '80s CRT monitors and an early 00's CRT consumer television.

​I can also confirm that the same systems display green backgrounds for Lucasarts titles when connected to a consumer circa-2013 LCD television set in my bedroom.

​Exactly as Trebor says in the thread I linked some time ago.

 

I cannot speak to what you see or don't see, nor how you're processing the signals to get your results.

 

Don't worry, it was meant to be an irony (not that you really contributed with solid, concrete argument or thoughtful evidence to explain the colorimetric divergences, though).

 

Nevertheless, your dear Trebor is wrong ​(what I really meant when I read your link):

 

 

That's one of my twins 800XL (RevC Hong-Kong with sVideo enabled and chroma-feed switch for optimal sVideo output), driving a ~2003-2005 Sony Wega 32" CRT TV... and tadaaa!!! is GREEN... Yes, GREEN !!! 8-)

 

​What I mean by Trebor being wrong is to indirectly assume that CRTs are the ones who will display stuff "correctly" like in the old good days and LCDs not... That ain't happening, Sir. Contemporary NTSC color-decode changes ALSO made their way to CRTs (maybe not to cheapo / crappo ones, though).

 

And so you can see how close CRT and LCD / Video Processor output actually look, here's Scram (which really a pain to render correctly with modern, contemporary NTSC color-decode), CRT (left) and LCD (right) driven by A800XL and A800 respectively:

 

 

In this particular case, the edge goes to [LCD // DVDO iScan HD] combo as it seems to extract Atari's juice in a way that my CRT just can't exactly match.

 

Cheers!

[+mytek]

I think all this back and forth discussion about what color is seen on a CRT vs LCD, although interesting in it's own right, is not really pertinent to the UAV topic. Unless someone can show otherwise, my UAV experience has been that Bryan's board isn't about changing the colors produced from the Atari systems, but more to the point, making the video look cleaner which it hands down excels at (it produces the best analog output I've ever seen for these 30 year old systems).

 

So just a friendly suggestion, if people want to keep debating the CRT/LCD issue, maybe it would be better to do so in a different topic, since this one really is about the UAV.

 

- Michael

[Faicuai]

I think all this back and forth discussion about what color is seen on a CRT vs LCD, although interesting in it's own right, is not really pertinent to the UAV topic. (...)

 

 

If the end-user experience (cross-platform) is actually considered (e.g. what should you expect to see and how, under X or Y configuration), this entire discussion is VERY relevant. Now, you take that variable out, and that is a different story (but it would make absolutely no sense to do it).

 

The bottom-line at this point is:

 

1. It is now a fact that our end user experience will be naturally different (e.g. all of us will NOT see the same thing across the entire NTSC spectrum, we will see different colors, even if the systems are rendering correctly the NTSC color-decode on hand).
2. This discussion provides some reference of the differences you may expect to see, above.
3. It seems clear that this particular video upgrade does not play a role in such variance / changes (it seems neutral, which is OK. to begin with), even though such involvement was never implied. Personally, I think it is a very nice upgrade, though.

 

Cheers!

[+mytek]

 

It seems clear that this particular video upgrade does not play a role in such variance / changes (it seems neutral, which is OK. to begin with), even though such involvement was never implied. Personally, I think it is a very nice upgrade, though.

 

Yep that was exactly my point. The UAV can be considered to have neutral or negligible affect on color accuracy, while on the other hand having considerable influence over video 'quality'. I too think it's a a very nice upgrade, so much so, that I integrated it into the 1088XEL project as the entire analog video output stage.

 

And I will concede that these discussions about color variations in reference to different NTSC decoding standards, might prove useful to the UAV in a future updated version if said version were to incorporate a means of compensating for these different NTSC standards and/or variances in CRT vs LCD displays. But for now it seems like this has been discussed pretty thoroughly, with opposing views expressed to the point where I think all parties should just agree to disagree and let it go. Some people see green, some red, and some brown. And I'm sure in every case that is correct. Remember what NTSC famously stands for: Never The Same Color. So who's to say which color model is more accurate especially if we factor in when these systems were first manufactured, and when those games were developed, and last but not least what monitors were being used at the time.

 

Now I'm boring myself, so I'll shut up, enough said

 

- Michael

[Atari Nut]

I also reached out to Gary Winnick of the Lucasfilm Games team. For those who may be interested, he explained the design of the logo screen...

 

"I actually do remember creating that logo screen, at the time it was somewhat unique as I had recently learned how to create the metallic/metal effect using the Atari GTIA mode which allowed for 16 shaded variations of an individual color and if you put that gradient next to an inverted version of the same it created a unique (for the time) carved metallic look. Additionally, since the logo was supposed to look like it was carved out of gold - that the brownish, reddish, yellow version would be the most correct to our original intent."

[juansolo]

 

 

These 2 vcs use different pins on the 4050, theres 6 buffers in it, we were not using the right pins for luma lines and sync. The pins are marked on the board, just needed to go through every one until we found somewhere to jumper them to the appropriate pin on the 4050 socket.

 

 

After a bit of testing we were still having bother. Bright white interference which was altered just by proximity to it. Turned out to be because LUM3 is floating. So grounded that and finally we've got one of the Juniors working flawlessly. Sadly the other junior is dead... Not sure why. Gonna revert that one tomorrow. Of course that's the one with the soldered in board...

 

I'm almost tempted to load up ballblazer just because I feeling left out of the 'is it green' discussion...

Edited August 30, 2017 by juansolo

[Bryan]

Hey, sorry. Been sidelined with other pressing matters. I'm off to go take care of my messages (and make up the last UAV's I have).

[+DrVenkman]

Hey, sorry. Been sidelined with other pressing matters. I'm off to go take care of my messages (and make up the last UAV's I have).

 

Just out of curiosity - do you think you'll make more in the coming months? I've got a 7800 that still needs one eventually, and another A8 computer heading my way that will as well once I have time and (and stop buying systems!).

[Bryan]

 

Just out of curiosity - do you think you'll make more in the coming months? I've got a 7800 that still needs one eventually, and another A8 computer heading my way that will as well once I have time and (and stop buying systems!).

Yes, my plan is to take orders until I have enough for another run as before because the initial cost to order everything is high.

[+orpheuswaking]

Hopefully when the 1088XEL goes live at the end of September there will be a large influx of UAV orders (The XEL requires the UAV to work)