Gamma weirdness with the NES palette

Discuss emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom.

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strangenesfreak
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Post by strangenesfreak »

What if the default settings of monitors aren't the proper settings? My LCD PC monitor's default settings puts contrast at 50 (out of 100) and brightness at 100. If I put contrast at 100 and brightness at 0, it fixes the gamma problem somewhat, but it actually becomes extremely sensitive to viewing angle, so some pairs of colors (such as $0c and $02) still flip in luminance depending on if you're looking at the top or bottom of the screen. My LCD HDTV's default settings sets brightness at around 33 out of 100 (there's no number) and contrast at around 67 out of 100, but there's no gamma problem.
NewRisingSun
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Post by NewRisingSun »

As it says, PCs encode the input gamma as 0.45, while for TVs, there is usually no encoding needed; this is how I'm interpreting "does not usually require further gamma correction". So I guess that means that on most PCs, some stuff meant for TVs, including video game graphics such as those for the NES, have over-corrected gamma. Is this understanding correct?
No. Ceteris paribus, PC's sRGB and TV's NTSC specifications have very, very similar display characteristics, both gamma- and chromaticity-wise.

Unless you get a good (i.e. expensive LCD or CRT) television and have it properly calibrated, any theorizing about what PCs do or don't do is a waste of time, because you never know if your monitor's decoding or your PC's encoding is crap. In 99.999% of cases with LCD monitors, it's the monitor that is crap, mostly because of ridiculous default settings. LCD PC monitors are a cancer on the world.

"Properly calibrated" means using a colorimeter. OSD presets are next to completely useless; in fact, even on expensive monitors, the "native" setting is often closer to sRGB than the "sRGB" preset setting in the OSD.
tepples
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Post by tepples »

NewRisingSun wrote:LCD PC monitors are a cancer on the world.
What would you rather have on a laptop PC?
"Properly calibrated" means using a colorimeter.
Do the various "gamma test" images found online, such as those in this Wikipedia article, help any?
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