1080i and PS3 problems?

That stuff is easy to get confused about. The point is that the game isn't rendering to the full resoultion. They are rendering a lower resolution and it is being upsampled to the 720p output resolution so that a TV will be able to display the game properly. This was also the case with PGR3 if I remember correctly, and people made a big stink about it last year too, but they seem to have conveniently forgot about that in order to make a big stink about it again right before the PS3 release.

I understand what they are talking about my point was in response to a specific post from Poly about MS's strict standards that every game be rendered at 720p. Obviously this isn't the case.

It is 'the case' Microsoft sends out a 200 page bible to 360 developers outlining the requirements each game must meet. As I said some of the things just aren't measurable. A tester would flag a game running 640x480 but wouldn't likely notice a 30% resolution reduction running with 4x full screen anti-aliasing.'

Activision was obviously cheating and only 'zee germans' noticed.

ColdForged wrote:
Certis wrote:

I have a 1080i-only set, even if I set the Xbox 360 to 720p on the dashboard it still displays fine, because the console is smart enough to change the signal to the highest-quality available setting regardless of what I tell it.

Now you lost me. Care to rephrase or retract so as to not blow my mind? Why would the 360 ignore what you put in the dashboard? If I tell mine, for instance, to choose 1280x1024 to hook to my Dell, it ain't going to contradict me and put out a 1980x1020 picture because it's better. On the contrary, the 360 will, without exception during gameplay, output whatever resolution you tell it your monitor supports. In other words, in your case if you set the 360 to output 720p, that's what it's doing. You blow my mind.

Stric9 wrote:

Not according to this... (less-than-720p linkage)

Different thing. They've pulled this trick before and I wasn't happy then and I'm still not. But regardless what internal framebuffer size they render to, the 360 will still scale to whatever output resolution you want. PS3 won't (at this point, if ever). That's the difference.

I'm likely making things up based on the assumption that my TV doesn't support 720p (I KNOW it's only 1080i, but I don't know if it can handle a 720p signal) so I'm assuming the 360 is taking care of things. I could be wrong, I wish Toshiba had the specs laid out somewhere, the manual doesn't even say.

But this is the problem, isn't it? All technical explanations aside, how the hell is Joe-user going to figure this out before he plunks down $600 on his new console, expecting the sexy bomb and getting ... I don't know, Coldforged instead?

Try looking your TV up on http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/ Certis. They've got more stats than you can shake a stick at.

Certis wrote:

I'm likely making things up based on the assumption that my TV doesn't support 720p (I KNOW it's only 1080i, but I don't know if it can handle a 720p signal) so I'm assuming the 360 is taking care of things. I could be wrong, I wish Toshiba had the specs laid out somewhere, the manual doesn't even say.

What Toshiba do you have? My parents have an older one, HX series I believe, and I have a newer HS series. Mine will take any signal and scale it to the native 1080i (or 540p if I have it in that mode). I'm fairly certain that my parents' set does as well.

polypusher wrote:

Try looking your TV up on http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/ Certis. They've got more stats than you can shake a stick at.

No joy, it's a Toshiba TheaterWide HD (model: 27a41c) and I'm pretty sure it's the unicorn of rear-projection sets. I can't find anything on it.

how the hell is Joe-user going to figure this out before he plunks down $600 on his new console

He won't. If Joe User is a moron he will either a) never know the difference until someone smarter comes over (how many restaurants have you been to with 40" flatpanels on the walls with out of aspect-ratio standard def programming on them?) or b) Female Doggo because "it don't look too good."

I like how you ended the quote before I (with love) called you ugly.

Certis wrote:

I like how you ended the quote before I (with love) called you ugly.

Shows how slow I am, I didn't even realize there was a dig in there. It's okay, all your manly attractiveness left you in bed with Elysium. On film. I'll stay ugly, cuddles.

Mr.Green wrote:
I guess i'm having a hard time believing that the Xbox or PS3 for that matter know what resolutions your tv accepts.

It doesn't. I'm not sure what Certis said means what he thinks it means.

Inconceivable!

Stric9 wrote:
Now, when you tell your PS3 that you have a 1080i only set (this is configured within the PS3 configuration) and you put in a game that supports only 720p and below, the PS3 can't upscale it to 1080i but can (and does) downscale to 480p. The 360 has a built-in scaler that can and does upscale 720p to 1080i and therefore sends the signal to the TV in 1080i avoiding this problem on these older sets.

I guess this is the only explanation that makes sense, well that or the IGN testers don't know what they are doing.

My problem with this explanation is that if you take that as fact then you are saying that the PS3 assumes that if you select 1080i as your resolution you can't display 720p and therefore it automatically renders any game that is 720p to 480p. The problem here is that many displays can accept both so even on displays that could accept 720p they would then be rendering the game at 480p.

My understanding (in the little coverage I've seen of the configuration options) is that you select all of the resolutions that your TV can support individually. So if you have a modern HDTV, you'd enable 480i,480p,720p,1080i & 1080p as individual options. If you have an older HDTV, like our early-adopting CEO, then you would select 480i, 480p & 1080i only as individual options. When you put in that 720p game, the PS3 would see the three choices and opt for the 480p since (apparently) it doesn't have a built in scaler.

Though I agree with you that it simply doesn't make sense that Sony, one of the leaders in HDTVs and a company that should have scaler chips lying around, wouldn't include one in their flagship game product.

Certis wrote:

I'm likely making things up based on the assumption that my TV doesn't support 720p (I KNOW it's only 1080i, but I don't know if it can handle a 720p signal) so I'm assuming the 360 is taking care of things. I could be wrong, I wish Toshiba had the specs laid out somewhere, the manual doesn't even say.

My Panasonic CRT is known to not accept 720p signals. If I set my Xbox 360 to 720p, I get a distorted and staticy screen.

If you set your 360 to 720p and still get something viewable (on a TV that does not display 720p), your TV is accepting the input and doing the upscaling itself.

I think it's unacceptable for the $600 console to not have scaling built into the box.

The 360 not only scales native games, it scales back compat games too.

With no scaling in the PS3, not only do we have these 720p games getting knocked down on non-720p TVs, but all back compat games that don't support HD resolutions (most of them) will be displayed in 480p/480i, which looks terrible on some HDTVs.

So let's see - the console that's supposedly not "true HD" is the only console in which EVERY game it supports, from new to BC to downloadable, is displayed in HD resolutions on EVERY HD set.

Doesn't the PS3 just keep feeling like a slapped-together box (with what sounds to be slapped-together online support)?

I'm not a huge fan of upscaled non-HD content in general. Does the backwards compatibility in the 360 simply upscale the output or does it alter how games are rendered. I.E. Does the 360 upscale a 480p image, or does it (through some technical wizardry) cause the game to render in a higher resolution?

Chum wrote:

Does the 360 upscale a 480p image, or does it (through some technical wizardry) cause the game to render in a higher resolution?

Almost everything is simply upscaled. There's scuttlebutt -- I realize I'm shilling myself a ton lately, but honestly, I rock -- over whether Halo and Halo 2 actually got some special sauce to change the internal render buffer. I don't know that it's ever been "solved".

*Legion* wrote:
Certis wrote:

I'm likely making things up based on the assumption that my TV doesn't support 720p (I KNOW it's only 1080i, but I don't know if it can handle a 720p signal) so I'm assuming the 360 is taking care of things. I could be wrong, I wish Toshiba had the specs laid out somewhere, the manual doesn't even say.

My Panasonic CRT is known to not accept 720p signals. If I set my Xbox 360 to 720p, I get a distorted and staticy screen.

If you set your 360 to 720p and still get something viewable (on a TV that does not display 720p), your TV is accepting the input and doing the upscaling itself.

Oh, well then. Who gives a sh*t about those pleabs who don't have good TV sets?! Screw those guys.

Well for those hoping that this problem could be taken care of with a software fix, I saw this tidbit at HardOCP;

In the NeoGAF thread, a developer from Insomniac Games, which produced the 720p-only Resistance: Fall of Man, stated that the problem is "not a software issue," implying that it is the hardware that lacks an upscaler.
Badferret wrote:

Well for those hoping that this problem could be taken care of with a software fix, I saw this tidbit at HardOCP;

In the NeoGAF thread, a developer from Insomniac Games, which produced the 720p-only Resistance: Fall of Man, stated that the problem is "not a software issue," implying that it is the hardware that lacks an upscaler.

I'd like to reiterate my multiple "HAHA"s from another post. You can't make sh*t up this good.

To the best of my knowledge, most upscaling is simply pixel interpolation. Nothing fancy.

Like Certis, my HDTV doesn't do 780 anything. Are there games which only support 780 and not 1080? I figured they would probably have an option menu to select that as standard?

Are there games which only support 780 and not 1080?

It's 720, actually. And yes, that's the issue.

silly, silly early adopters...

Good news: patch in the works (though exactly what the patch does is not revealed)

But a little crap to go with it:

This is an issue on the side of the individual television sets, which do not accept 720p input, so when a game outputs an HD signal only at 720p, these select TVs have to display the game at 480p instead."

No Sony, it's an issue with poorly thought-out hardware (or software). Your failure to support a large number of HD sets is not the fault of the TVs. What with all your upscaling kung-fu ("aging" SD video up to HD), upscaling 720p to 1080i ought not be difficult.

*Legion* wrote:

Good news: patch in the works (though exactly what the patch does is not revealed)

But a little crap to go with it:

This is an issue on the side of the individual television sets, which do not accept 720p input, so when a game outputs an HD signal only at 720p, these select TVs have to display the game at 480p instead."

No Sony, it's an issue with poorly thought-out hardware (or software). Your failure to support a large number of HD sets is not the fault of the TVs. What with all your upscaling kung-fu ("aging" SD video up to HD), upscaling 720p to 1080i ought not be difficult.

Exactly. They are trying to get people to buy their f*cking expensive tv's just like they've tried to get people to buy their f*cking expensive memory sticks and f*cking expensive betamax, all the while telling the average consumer that the stuff they currently own is a big pile of sh*t.

Even with all this crap they are slinging, all it would take is one really awesome game for me to overlook it and consider a PS3, but at this point, I doubt even Final Fantasy is worth it anymore with the amount of exclusives they are losing left and right.

I seriously hope they die, and a new Sony emerges, with their sights set directly on the core gaming audience. One that will look good even if you don't have a Sony TV.