PS3 upscaling on 1080i/480p sets

arecknor

I remember reading back in November of 2007 that the PS3 will downscale 720p signals to 480p on older HDTV sets that don't support a 720p signal. Did they ever fix this? I have been out of the ps3 loop for awhile and was waiting for them to fix this.

Daedalus

Nope.

The 360 has a built-in scaling chip and will scale the image in the framebuffer to whatever resolution you need that it supports.

The PS3 has no scaling chip and so each resolution must be specifically coded for. 720p is supported in every game because Sony requires it. 1080i is not, although I believe some games support it.

Bamelin

Most newer games now have 1080i support coded in, partly because people have been bitching about it every since the console released.

It's mostly pre 2005 HD CRT's that have this problem ... my old Samsung only displayed in 1080i.

CZroe

It's not really that it is downscaling (even if it is internally rendered at 720p), it's just outputting to the only supported resolution supported by both the game and your display. It's not a "problem" and there is no need to "fix" it. It has nothing to do with older HDTVs: older HDTVs support both 720p and 1080i just fine because both signals are expected in HDTV broadcasts and you can't call it an HDTV if it doesn't support them. The problem is with cheaper sets that can only be referred to as "HDTV monitors." Many of these are missing the internal scalers needed for the TV to support HD resolutions other than their native one. It still scales 480i/480p, of course, so it's clearly the TV's missing feature/specification... not the PS3's. Even 480p and 800x600 projectors often accept 720p/1080i signals and list it in their specifications, so it has always been a display feature and one that should be expected of the display (not the console).

If you have one of the "faulty" sets, the XBOX 360 has the advantage as it includes an internal scaler. This is normally a bad thing because scalers add latency and you don't need the image to be processed twice (most TVs can't disable their internal scaler or bypass it or minimize the processing in a "game mode").

arecknor

Thanks for the replies, my old samsung is one of them as well.

CZroe

arecknor wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, my old samsung is one of them as well.

They sell surround-sound receivers with video upscaling. If you're looking to add one, it may be one way around getting a new TV. Unfortunately, most are considered "high-end" receivers that are worth more than the TV and would be a mis-match.

Daedalus

CZroe wrote: »

It's not a "problem" and there is no need to "fix" it.

You say this every time this comes up, and it's never been true.

Up to about 2005, CRT HDTVs that don't have a built in ATSC tuner have usually only worked with 480p and 1080i resolutions. These sets were only occasionally referred to as "HDTV Monitors", the usual terminology was "HDTV Ready" (as opposed to "HDTV Tuner Inside"). Even CRTs that technically supported 720p do so by scaling it down to 480p, making that option obviously unattractive to PS3 owners. It's the way a CRT works: you only need to scan 540 lines to make 1080i work.

Microsoft knew about this issue (the HDTV market being divided because the various TV makers couldn't decide between 1080i and 720p being the standard) and deliberately built a scaling chip into the 360's graphics pipeline. It's built right onto the GPU, it's very high-quality, and it doesn't introduce lag; it's part of the DAC, which the PS3 also has, after all.

Greg USN

No it hasn't been fixed and has been a major reason why I haven't bought many PS3 games. For instance, Folklore and Heavenly sword look like ass on my TV. Other games look great (Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted come to mind) as long as the devs take time to code for the lack of a scaler chip.