Don't yell at me, but basically if I'm playing on a TV I should set the console to limited and the TV to low because games are mastered to limited?
So you've got no choice but to bite the bullet and lose black and white gradient values from 0-16 and 235-255. Am I understanding it right?
No, that's the actual misinformation here.
If your console outputs full-range and your TV has a setting for full-range, you'll get more colour precision by setting them both to full-range. You should only be telling the console to output limited if your TV doesn't support anything else.
Console games are made to be viewed on a TV.
Console has nothing to do with it. They're VESA-compliant devices, just like PC GPUs.
Console games are made to be viewed on a TV. Limited is the only value that every TV is supporting. Why? Because that's a standard for televisions. Full range support is an optional feature and not a standard for TVs.
And what does that have to do with anything? Just because a feature is optional doesn't mean it isn't supported. Show me some receipts if you want to make claims like that.
This has nothing to do with real-time rendering or pre-encoded videos. Like i already said before, if something is made to be viewed on a TV --> limited is the correct setting.
"Made to be viewed on a TV" is a fiction in the context of videogames, simple as that.
Graphics APIs such as OpenGL and DirectX operate on a 0-255 value range when rendering SDR, and that's what games are developed against. The console (or PC) OS runs a linear remap algorithm on that output to convert it into a TV-compatible signal at render time if running in limited-range mode- the games literally do not know or care about what device they're outputting to.
Videos, on the other hand, are baked down to a set range at encode time. That is the 'mastering' process you refer to, and it has nothing to do with real-time 3D content like videogames.
And if a TV supports full range mode then limited is absolutely not the correct setting, because you're wasting the extra precision and causing colour crush by sending an incompatible signal. You match your input and output types, with no exception.
If you still can't understand it, sorry but i don't know how to explain it more easier.
If you can't explain your reasoning and provide accurate information, then you're in no position to be calling out misinformation in the first place.