MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Sony CXA2025AS US

What evidence do you have that it is 'technical correct and sound'? The only information I could find is that this is one IC which happens to have a different matrix from the standard (which is nothing special) and that it so happens that applying the default parameters of it gives the 'blue sky' you seem to prefer for Super Mario Bros.

But the IC itself is configurable, so we can assume that the TV manufacturers would all have their own settings for their particular TVs. So there needs to be some kind of evidence that the 'blue sky' phenomenon is one due to some quirk with certain highly popular TVs, which produces a blue sky regardless of how it's adjusted. I don't think this TV actually exists. I rather like to think that people are either (a) misremembering the sky's color (b) basing it off of unreliable sources like photographs, box shots, &c. (c) did not bother to set their TV tint correctly, which is rather common esp. since the tint could change dramatically just from changing the channel!

There is a difference between something like this, where there is no real data, and perhaps some arcade system that was shipped with a certain type of monitor that had incorrect stretching or cropping or something (this is all hypothetical) that would either be hugely obvious or clearly documented. The truth is, we can't even rely on televisions from the era, because TVs age, and the TV will look rather different now than it did when it was bought, simply due to age. MAME provides a palette based on a standard that was followed close enough so as to be reliable, and it's one that can be pointed to and say 'That's the NTSC standard! That's what NTSC decoders are based on!' and MAME provides all the parameters we need to adjust the colors for individual users' preferences. That's perfect, because we are essentially allowing each user to tune the color to whatever they want, without any bias towards one particular model of TV or another. Because if we are going to throw in this IC's matrix, then what is to stop us from throwing in dozens of others'?

This all comes from a frustration with shitty palettes in FCEUX, a 'yellow boost' feature added to Nestopia which was completely unfounded, and the fact that MAME and Nestopia still have slightly different palettes.