Are you in one of the green countries on this map? Apparently the NTSC system used there was jokingly referred to as "never the same colour", but since I'm in a PAL country I don't have any firsthand experience and can't say how much of an issue it was in practice.

In other words, this post tells you nothing :)

I'd always understood it as the official releases were shifted to pink/magenta because of natural colour fade in the print/negative, and that this became more apparent when the low fade technicolor print pictures (and video clips) from the Senator screening came to light to be able to compare. The PAL 1982 VHS is really pink compared to the NTSC releases from around the same time. I think this was a case of the limitations of the format and the average consumer not looking out for that stuff/expecting as much maybe.

Papercut said:

Do DVDs and LED/Plasm/LCDs still have this red limitation?

No - The red limitation was, AFAIK, a CRT issue only. I'm trying to find a scientific or other article to verify this, but I haven't found one.  

Well, all hidef material is REC709, so a wider gamut than that is wasted anyway if watching commercial releases.

CRT was capable of very rich reds, the NSTC system did have a knobbled colour system compared to PAL though. Some CRT projectors had trouble with Red, especially Sony projectors, NEC projectors gave gorgeous reds and very nice skintones. An NEC XG CRT projector is still my preferred way to watch a big screen movie.

A well calibrated CRT TV hit the primaries pretty well, so red should look pretty red.

PAL releases sometimes weren't calibrated properly, NTSC Red is a pinky-purple on PAL, any Atari owners in PAL territory probably wondered why games set on Mars were always pink!

A calibrated PAL release tends to have better colour than an NTSC release, but sometimes the releases were sloppy or were conversions and the colours were way off.

If you want a good read about it, then plow through this:

http://www.ece.rochester.edu/~gsharma/papers/lcdvscrtprocieee.pdf

<p>Thank you for the intersting input! The teaching in question was from the USA so NTSC for sure. <br /><br />I'll watch thru the Harmy Discs and point out the off red when I see it (even though this is not on CRT). </p>

The idea is that items that were filmed as fire engine cherry red (to show danger for example) were not reproduced as true red in the home (red in the theatre), more like an orange red. But, we perceived it as red in the context of the film, once one sees it though, it is hard to unsee.

You can easily check the primaries with a colourimeter, and see if your fire engine reds are indeed red.

Wow, that explains alot! So movies that shoot a true red have trouble on NTSC sets. Very interesting.

One place that jumps out at me is the trash compactor scene in ANH. The red light when the walls start closing reminds me of the NTSC off red. I need to look at it a bit more closely though to confirm.

If something was originally shot as a true high chroma intense red on film, when it is transferred to NTSC format, the red (and yellows) it seems get compressed down to another color. Or that is what seems to be what my professor was talking about.

If something was originally shot as a true high chroma intense red on film, when it is transferred to NTSC format, the red (and yellows) it seems get compressed down to another color. Or that is what seems to be what my professor was talking about.