Quote:
Originally Posted by robinsonb5
I'm now wondering if any computers were actually designed and built that dealt with colour in this way? (In the 80s / very early 90s, at least -I'm not counting YUV video overlays on modern PC graphics cards)
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Many 80's home computers produced YUV internally, because that was easier to convert to NTSC/PAL. Of course due to limited graphics memory and bandwidth they mapped a small number of colors into the YUV space. Then the TV had to convert the YUV to RGB to drive the tube!
The MC6847 (used in the Acorn Atom, Tandy Color Computer. Lazer 200/VZ200...) and TI9928/9 (Ti-99/4a, Sega SC3000, Spectravideo, MSX...) were two popular graphics chips that had YUV outputs. Also the original ZX Spectrum ULA produced a form of YUV.
For those of us who wanted sharp displays this was a pain because the analog circuitry required to convert YUV to RGB was quite complex and tricky to set up. RGB was much preferred due to its simplicity and ease of obtaining a sharp picture, but you needed an RGB monitor to get the best out of it (a standard TV
could be modified to take RGB in, but the video amplifiers had low bandwaidth and the tube had a coarse shadow mask so the result was usually unsatisfactory).
Having sharp RGB outputs and a matching monitor made the Amiga much more desirable than other home computers which only had crappy composite/rf outputs! That it nearly didn't get it is another example of how lucky we are.