My PS3 Looks Awful in 720p

Cowbomb

So yesterday I got a PS3, which I have hooked up to my 1080p TV via HDMI and a copy of Uncharted - which is fan-fucking-tastic, by the way.

The problem is that Uncharted runs in 720p and looks a bit... rubbish on my TV. I've downloaded a couple of demos which run at 1080p (Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Sonic Unleashed), and they look beautiful.

The massive difference between the two makes me think that something must be up, especially since all reports I've read say that on my small 19-inch TV, the difference should barely be noticable. If I knock my 360 (connected via VGA) down from 1080p to 720p, I can't really see any change, yet 720p games look rough on my PS3.

So... is there anyway I can fix this? Do I stupidly have something turned on/off in my settings, or is it a problem with some part of my set up?

Alternatively, has my 360 upscaling everything just spoilt me over the past few years?

Renzo

Does your TV support 720p? Do your PS3 settings have 720p checked as a supported video mode?

edit: nevermind the first question, you already said your 360 supports 720p.

Mr_Grinch

It shouldn't look rubbish. 720p looks great on my tv so there's definitely something going wrong. Your 360 doesn't do anything different really when outputting games.

Tre

What Renzo said is the only thing I can think of. Go to the display setting or whatever it's called and go through the setup for a HDMI hookup. It will ask you what video modes your TV supports. Ensure that 720p is checked. I actually went through this same situation a week ago when I purchased Folklore. The only supported video mode that was checked on my PS3 was 1080p and I started up the game and it looked like ass. I went back to the settings and checked 720p and everything was good to go.

slash000

I remember when the PS3 launched, there was a huuuuuuuge hooplah because if the PS3 was hooked to a set that didn't have some native 720p resolution, it would downscale the games to 480p.

I'm pretty sure they fixed that with firmware updates and later model PS3s, though, right?

Cowbomb

The strange thing is that my TV reckons that it's outputting at 720p, though to be honest it doesn't look that much better then when the PS3's doing 480p.

I'm starting to think it might be an issue with my TV, I just hooked my PS3 up to the bigger TV in the living room and was blown away by how much better Uncharted looks on it. Maybe my Telly struggles with 720p over HDMI or something? Is that even possible if it does 1080p without a hitch?

elliotw2

Cowbomb wrote: »

The strange thing is that my TV reckons that it's outputting at 720p, though to be honest it doesn't look that much better then when the PS3's doing 480p.

I'm starting to think it might be an issue with my TV, I just hooked my PS3 up to the bigger TV in the living room and was blown away by how much better Uncharted looks on it. Maybe my Telly struggles with 720p over HDMI or something? Is that even possible if it does 1080p without a hitch?

It could be like a lot of cheap monitors and not display things well that aren't a native resolution, though this means that you have a really crappy TV

SparserLogic

Do you have component cables?

I use component for anything under 1080p, I find my TV struggles less converting content with them for some reason.

Mr_Grinch

I'm shocked a 19" tv supports 1080p to be honest. It sounds like there's something weird going on. On a 19" set you'd barely notice the difference

greeble

The upscaler in his TV probably isn't that good. (TVs have to upscale or downscale everything to their native resolution) Though I'm not sure why the Xbox would look so much better.

BlackDragon480

slash000 wrote: »

I remember when the PS3 launched, there was a huuuuuuuge hooplah because if the PS3 was hooked to a set that didn't have some native 720p resolution, it would downscale the games to 480p.

I'm pretty sure they fixed that with firmware updates and later model PS3s, though, right?

Nope, I've got an old school 1080i/480p set (2003 Mitsubishi WS-55513) and anything that doesn't render at 1080p get's downscaled to 480 when output.

This is a huge reason why I don't play many games on my PS3. It makes a damn fine Blu-Ray player though.

Taranis

I had the same problem as the OP. I think it had something to do with the fact that my TV's native resolution wasn't 1920x1080, but some weird lower resolution.

solsovly

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/746/746282p1.html is the same issue BLackDragon480 (is that for 480p!?) has noted. That's pretty garbage.

Shady3011

Is there anyway to force games to display in 1080p? Every time I play inFamous it down scales to 720p.

Edit: To clarify, my HDTV's native resolution is 1080p.

TheGerbil

Some games don't support 1080p. I believe InFamous only goes to 720p.

NailbunnyPD

The 360 over VGA outputs at various resolutions and will upscale the game to accomodate the selected resolution. In my case, the 360 seems to scale better than the monitor, so that is optimal.

I may be wrong, but the PS3 does not appear to scale. That is left to your monitor, which may not handle scaling well.

In other words, when playing 360 over VGA, the 360 is doing the scaling to native res. When playing PS3, the monitor is doing the scaling to native res.

BakerIsBored

Brand/model of display?

SAW776

That's odd. PS3 can upscale DVDs but not games? Weird.

evilbob

NailbunnyPD wrote: »

The 360 over VGA outputs at various resolutions and will upscale the game to accomodate the selected resolution

Thank god they finally added in 1680x1050 as a res option. Having to go with 720p on my monitor was terrible and mucked up the aspect ratio.

Unco-ordinated

NailbunnyPD wrote: »

The 360 over VGA outputs at various resolutions and will upscale the game to accomodate the selected resolution. In my case, the 360 seems to scale better than the monitor, so that is optimal.

I may be wrong, but the PS3 does not appear to scale. That is left to your monitor, which may not handle scaling well.

In other words, when playing 360 over VGA, the 360 is doing the scaling to native res. When playing PS3, the monitor is doing the scaling to native res.

Sony pretty much left it to the developers to add scaling support to their games. There is a horizontal scaler in the PS3, but the games have to specifically use it to upscale stuff, rather than do it automatically.

SAW776: Well that's fairly obvious. DVD's don't even use a tenth of the PS3's processing power, so upscaling them is incredibly easy. So much so that I remember one of Sony's engineers talking about how they did a lot of random stuff with their Blu-Ray support just because they were barely using much processing power. Games however, need as much processing power and memory as they can get their hands on (even the ones that run and look like shit).

Cowbomb

BakerIsBored wrote: »

Brand/model of display?

I have an LG 19LS4D, which has served me pretty well for the past couple of years considering it's size (I have a pretty small bedroom) - it reckons that it supports both 720p and 1080p. I have my 360 set to display 1920x1080 over VGA, which works nicely.

NailbunnyPD wrote:

The 360 over VGA outputs at various resolutions and will upscale the game to accomodate the selected resolution. In my case, the 360 seems to scale better than the monitor, so that is optimal.

I may be wrong, but the PS3 does not appear to scale. That is left to your monitor, which may not handle scaling well.

In other words, when playing 360 over VGA, the 360 is doing the scaling to native res. When playing PS3, the monitor is doing the scaling to native res.

That sounds like it could be the problem... though the fact that the PS3 looks fine running in 1080p is a bit weird.

Thanks for the help guys, appreciate it

NailbunnyPD

Cowbomb wrote: »

That sounds like it could be the problem... though the fact that the PS3 looks fine running in 1080p is a bit weird.

Set your PS3 to 720p max, and then 480p max, just to see the results. It might verify the assumption.

Mind you, the significant difference here is the VGA vs HDMI. MS did a nice job supporting the VGA cables. For all I know, the 360 over HDMI behaves the same as the PS3 over HDMI.

Unco-ordinated wrote: »

SAW776: Well that's fairly obvious. DVD's don't even use a tenth of the PS3's processing power, so upscaling them is incredibly easy. So much so that I remember one of Sony's engineers talking about how they did a lot of random stuff with their Blu-Ray support just because they were barely using much processing power. Games however, need as much processing power and memory as they can get their hands on (even the ones that run and look like shit).

The PS3 only upscales DVDs if you are using HDMI, same as the 360.

The Reverend Dr Galactus

If your LG is unfortunately cursed with an inaffinity for native 720p, you could always consider an HDFury to take the 720p HDMI stream and mash it into a VGA signal. A friend of mine uses one of these on his desktop monitor.

Now his setup unfortunately looks super weird because he's pumping that 16:9 picture into a wacky 5:4 panel, but as long as your monitor is close to 16:9 or you can adjust it to box the image slightly, you should be fine.

Cowbomb

Problem solved!

Turns out, when selecting HDMI on my TV, I could toggle it between 'DTV' and 'PC' - DTV was essentially super-crappy mode, whilst PC made everything look awesome. Annoyingly, this option isn't mentioned anywhere in the manual - I only found it because I dropped my remote...

Anyway, at least it's solved! Thanks again for all the suggestions