[zerocrates]

YCbCr (often called YUV for... reasons) and 4:2:0 chroma subsampling (half the vertical resolution for each plane of color information as for the brightness) are still the dominant color encoding used for digital video, HDTV, Blu-ray, etc.

The "CRY" model used by the Jaguar is fairly different than (though as you say, related conceptually in its separation of brightness/darkness information, of course). I think it basically just arose from a combination of big focus on smooth shading while keeping the color values workably small and fast to calculate on.