Wow! Wayne, those guys knew how to make color 😊 No ICC profiling of any kind but they control over every element of the food chain. / Roger -----Original Message----- From: colorsync-users <colorsync-users-bounces+graxx=videotron.ca@lists.apple.com> On Behalf Of Wayne Bretl via colorsync-users Sent: December 2, 2019 9:20 PM To: 'Wire ~' <wire@lexiphanicism.com>; colorsync-users@lists.apple.com Subject: RE: NEC PA271Q "Native" chromaticities A bit of technical discussion about NTSC and television: SMPTE had no influence as far as I know on the selection of NTSC primaries. The choices were made mainly by RCA as part of the second NTSC (National Television Systems Committee; the first NTSC established monochrome standards in 1941). The standards, adopted by the FCC, simply stated that the signal should be "suitable" for the specified primaries, with no details. Because the early image orthicon cameras were noisy and used drift-prone tube circuits, it was impractical to use matrixing of the R,G,B signals to match the primaries, and as a result the camera optical filters were carefully chosen to match the NTSC phosphors. They also used the old trick of film and print reproduction in using narrow band color separation filters to enhance the saturation of ordinary object spectra. The noise limitations also meant that it was unreasonable to actually match the desired gamma correction of 1/2.2 (cameras were actually designed to about 1/1.75), so that acceptable tone rendition was obtained by careful exposure plus playing with the black level. The resulting signal gave a high-contrast reproduction that was in a way similar to Technicolor, and partially compensated for the low contrast ratio of early CRTs due to their high screen reflectivity. However, the lowlight contrast was lost in the process, and gradually improved as the display contrast ratios got better, and rather dramatically when the image orthicons were replaced by the much less noisy Plumbicon pickup tubes, plus gamma correction actually 1/2.2 and proper color matrixing. Even with these changes, there is typically a discrepancy between the saturation capability of highlights and lowlights in subtractive vs. additive systems, with subtractive systems (printing) excelling in lowlights, and emissive displays excelling in highlights. The net result is that a display with NTSC primaries, with correct black level and viewed under dim ambient, can equal or exceed the gamut of most surface colors, whereas, an sRGB display is lacking in at least the cyan and "true green" regions. The compromise to Rec 709 is strictly because those were the primaries that were available that made bright CRTs with nearly equal gun currents. The unequal gun currents in early "NTSC" CRTs were a terrible headache in terms of maintaining equal spot size and gray scale tracking between the guns. One should also note that the psychophysical sensation of "colorfulness" is affected greatly by display brightness, and the TV companies and their customers recognized this, although they may not have had the research to support it at the time. In any case, customers much preferred brighter pictures, a difference they could see immediately and continually, while they could not detect gamut limitations without seeing the TV side by side with the program stage itself.