On my 1702, reducing the color knob all the way doesn't remove all the color, it still has a little so I can't tell.

On my 20" CRT television. It appears to be 9 levels, which is what Pepto found. http://www.pepto.de/projects/colorvic/

1) white
2) yellow, light green
3) light gray, cyan
4) pink, green
5) light blue, medium gray
6) purple, orange
7) red, dark grey
8) blue, brown
9) black
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I certainly wasn't trying to start any argument, I was just matching my LCD to my 1702. My CRT television is *slightly* different in the purple color mostly.

Maybe my LCD is just way off from everyone else's. It's an Acer 22" connected via DVI to a GeForce 8600 GTS.
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It's been a couple of years since I saw an NTSC C64 live, but r.cade's palette seems to be a pretty close match. It would be awesome if VICE got proper NTSC emulation, and measured NTSC colors.
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make a proper diagram from those measurements (like the one from pepto) and i will add it (however, according to bob yannes there is little to no difference between pal and ntsc in that regard - infact the implementation in vice IS based on how it works in ntsc, not pal =P)
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If Adrian's measurements are accurate, the NTSC colors should be along the lines of:

yellow: 0-ish
(light) blue: 180
brown: 30
orange: 45
cyan: 240
(light) red: 60
(light) green: 285
purple: 120

Those numbers seem weird though, since there's a mix of 30/60 degree colors, and 45 degree colors. Maybe I can get Adrian to measure them again with his new scope.
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Yeah, do it! dW, that would be cool. Would like to see an NTSC RGB palette.
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yes please. it should be rather trivial to put it into vice then
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well ntsc means "never the same color twice"


depending on brightness and contrast all colors shift slightly
then throw in color and tint controls and all hell breaks loose

maybe you pc monitor is slightly maladjusted colors shift between the brightness settings and what is you kelvin heat setting is it white or warm

maybe i found an explaination ... appearently there exist (atleast) two different color decoder matrices in ntsc world.

default decoder matrix:


SONY CXA2025 decoder matrix:


these have been generated using proper ntsc color generation (according to peptos article, but using YIQ color space and NTSC gamma), the only difference between the two is the decoder matrix (or in other words: different monitor/tv)
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That looks exactly like the difference I see in my equipment, which is why I did the new palette!
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The Sony one looks a lot better/brighter and is what I am used to.

Interesting discussion!

I'd like to emphasize that the actual (LCD/CRT) monitor (and graphics card) used on the emulating PC also affects things a bit, I've done some colour calibration in the last couple years, and I can tell you without a reference chart or hardware device to help out it can be hard (impossible) to tell if a display gives you good colors, just from the point of view of Red/Green/Blue balance and White point / Black point.
Or if it gives a similar picture as another set, you kinda have to have them side by side.

Several of these parameters can be interdependant too, and I suspect that's very true for TV's also (I reckon the last priority on a cheap TV is correct colour reproduction).

Now all the lovely mangling that say the C64s RF modulator does (my reference as I have neither a composite or S-Video cable), and the NTSC/PAL encoding/decoding is indeed going to give a signal that's been through a few things before it reaches the display panel...
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The Vice palette is very close to what I can remember the C64 was on our (PAL) television back in the 80s. I remember using the css64 emulator before the Vice one and felt it just looked wrong compared to what I remember it to be. So I guess it all depends on how the colours were rendered on your specific television/monitor.

More interesting though would be to know what palette the pixel artists prefer when working with the c64? I always felt the muted Vice one was easier to work with when creating graphics as fully saturated colours tend to make the graphics "garish" imo. But I guess thats up to personal preference also.
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Here's the palette I've been using. I don't have a real C64 hooked up at the moment, so I can't compare them, but on my system, this is pretty much how I remember the C64 looking when attached to my TV. I used some other palette as the starting point, although I can't remember now, which one it was.

Code:

# # VICE Palette file # 00 00 00 0 FF FF FF 0 D0 25 12 0 7B D7 E2 0 AF 61 E0 0 70 B4 45 0 62 55 DC 0 EC EC 57 0 C8 5A 12 0 80 5F 07 0 F6 9B 8F 0 55 55 55 0 80 80 80 0 B9 F2 96 0 B1 B3 FF 0 AB AB AB 0

I tried the CRT emulation and, no offense intended, I thought it looked terrible. I wouldn't mind the scanlines, but the color bleeding and blurriness of it started to give me a headache. Not to mention that it's WAY too bright/washed out unless you drastically change the Gamma setting under Colors. At least it was for me.