The nice effect of chroma in composite colors vs. RGB
I've been playing the PC Engine library on real hardware,
and I was surprised at how good the composite output looked on one of my PVMs!
Older games have more vibrant colors and anime-style games look more like something on TV.
At first I assumed it was just the composite palette... but I was wrong.
Comparing MiSTer RGB output on the same PVM with the correct palette still had striking differences.
That led me into a rabbit hole to try to understand why.
Luckily I have two two PVMs (one is a higher end model than the other) so played with a few settings.
This is what I've found:
-
Use the D56 color temperature setting (5600K) as it is much warmer
-
Increase the chroma (to 33 on a 142NE, more on a 14M2MDJ)
-
Increase contrast depending on game
This works nicely with the PC Engine; for the NES it depends on the game (some become too garish)
Sadly there is no similar setting in MiSTer's upscaled modes in HDMI.
Closest I could was to use pure Gamma (115 on the PCE, 200 on Apple II core) but that doesn't really capture the same vibrant colors.
If anybody has a MiSTer composite adapter,
would you mind trying these settings and let me know if you get similar results?