shack news: XBOne S will upscale all games to 4K

[iroboto]

http://www.shacknews.com/article/95672/xbox-one-s-will-upscale-all-games-to-4k-microsoft-confirms

This confuses me, can someone provide an explanation ? This seems a bigger deal to the author than what I thought it meant.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[djskribbles]

4K displays will do this anyway. The XB1 may or may not just do a better job of it (depending on the TV's scaler vs the XB1 S' scaler).

There's a reason why MS didn't make a big deal about it at the conference... It's no killer feature, simply a nice minor addition. That is assuming that it does a decent/good job of it (not too much artificial sharpening/artifacts again MS).

 

[Scott_Arm]

Might save a frame of display lag or something.

 

[Rikimaru]

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/396066138875912192
Substitute 1080p with 4k.

 

[orangpelupa]

Yeah the author is sensationalism

 

[sebbbi]

All 4k displays already upscale Xbox One's 1080p output to 4K.

This is actually good news for 900p games. Most Xbox One games are not native 1080p. Currently the console upscales 900p to 1080p and then the 4K display upscales that 1080p output to 4K. Two upscaling operations blur the image slightly more.

Similarly the Xbox 360 got an HDMI model (soon after launch) and it added 1080p output (launch model was only 720p/1080i). If you had 1080p display, it was better to let Xbox 360 scale directly to 1080p. It resulted in a single frame less lag (on my TV). Most games were not native 720p (1280x672, 1152x720, etc). Upscaling them first to 720p (by console) and then to 1080p (by TV) resulted in more blurry image. 720p native games of course didn't get upscaled twice (similarly to 1080p native games on Xbox One @ 4K display).

4K output for PS4 upgrade would be much less important, since most PS4 games are already 1080p native, matching the HDMI output -> one scaling operation only.

 

[Cyan]

All 4k displays already upscale Xbox One's 1080p output to 4K.

This is actually good news for 900p games. Most Xbox One games are not native 1080p. Currently the console upscales 900p to 1080p and then the 4K display upscales that 1080p output to 4K. Two upscaling operations blur the image slightly more.

Similarly the Xbox 360 got an HDMI model (soon after launch) and it added 1080p output (launch model was only 720p/1080i). If you had 1080p display, it was better to let Xbox 360 scale directly to 1080p. It resulted in a single frame less lag (on my TV). Most games were not native 720p (1280x672, 1152x720, etc). Upscaling them first to 720p (by console) and then to 1080p (by TV) resulted in more blurry image. 720p native games of course didn't get upscaled twice (similarly to 1080p native games on Xbox One @ 4K display).

4K output for PS4 upgrade would be much less important, since most PS4 games are already 1080p native, matching the HDMI output -> one scaling operation only.

I've seen 4K TVs for 450€ already, so this is a move in the right direction nowadays. HDR doesn't entirely convince me though, games wise what's the point when games can choose to use HDR themselves..

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I've seen 4K TVs for 450€ already, so this is a move in the right direction nowadays. HDR doesn't entirely convince me though, games wise what's the point when games can choose to use HDR themselves..

If you're buying a cheap TV, don't expect expensive TV performance. There is a vast range in scaling from basic linear stretching to fancy analysis and adding in details done by tech like Sony's X-Reality Pro hardware which has natural AA. You can turn it on and off on my set (or tweak it to your liking) and the difference is startling on 1080p PS4 games.

 

[sebbbi]

I've seen 4K TVs for 450€ already, so this is a move in the right direction nowadays. HDR doesn't entirely convince me though, games wise what's the point when games can choose to use HDR themselves..

Games nowadays output 8 bit per channel LDR image. Color channels range between 0 and 1. This is good for presenting a printed photo or a newspaper image (1.0 = white paper - no possibility to present as bright white as the sun). It would be great to output floating point HDR values directly to display. Highlights on a water surface reflecting the sun can for example be 10000x brighter than a shadowed area in the same image. Of course everybody should agree to output the image using the same units (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(unit)). Otherwise the consumer would have to change the TV settings based on content.

Tightly packed HDR formats such as R11G11B11f do not need any more bandwidth than 32 bit ARGB. Dynamic range is also good enough (same as 16f, but less precision). It wouldn't be a big change to directly output the HDR buffer instead of tonemapping it to LDR before sending it to display. Color correction (LDR lookup) and UI would of course need some adjustments to work properly. I haven't yet had a chance to test a HDR display, so I don't know how big the dynamic range is and what kind of issues to expect.

 

[ShyGuy]

Will 1080p native games look better on a native 1080p display or look better 1080p upscaled to a 4k display ?. I only ask as I've heard people talk up new upscaling tech particularly in Sony 4k HDTV's.

Not to take the thread off topic too much but if upscaling is so good from 1080p then you would think MS would have went for maybe 1440p native, upscaled to 4k for Scorpio games.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Will 1080p native games look better on a native 1080p display or look better 1080p upscaled to a 4k display ?. I only ask as I've heard people talk up new upscaling tech particularly in Sony 4k HDTV's.

I suspect this will be user preference. I have a Sony 4K TV with X-Reality Pro and it does a bunch of clever stuff as part of the upscale from any sub-4K resolution to 4K. I've not thrown anything at less than 720p (some YouTube), PS4 output is always 1080p (regardless of native res) and the PC is outputting either 1440p or 4K. Mostly 1440p as I've realised I can see zero difference between 1440p and 4K at the distanceI sit at from the TV - but that could be a side effect of the 1440p upscale to 4K.

Hmmm..

 

[ShyGuy]

I suspect this will be user preference. I have a Sony 4K TV with X-Reality Pro and it does a bunch of clever stuff as part of the upscale from any sub-4K resolution to 4K. I've not thrown anything at less than 720p (some YouTube), PS4 output is always 1080p (regardless of native res) and the PC is outputting either 1440p or 4K. Mostly 1440p as I've realised I can see zero difference between 1440p and 4K at the distanceI sit at from the TV - but that could be a side effect of the 1440p upscale to 4K.

Hmmm..

Sounds really promising, cheers for the info.

 

[Allandor]

If you're buying a cheap TV, don't expect expensive TV performance. There is a vast range in scaling from basic linear stretching to fancy analysis and adding in details done by tech like Sony's X-Reality Pro hardware which has natural AA. You can turn it on and off on my set (or tweak it to your liking) and the difference is startling on 1080p PS4 games.

But why would you use those algorythms from your TV. They all increase the lag.
There is no big deal of upscaling 1080p to 4k, but please let your console do it and not your TV. I really don't know why some websites make a hype of this thing. Even MS doesn't hype this, they try to hype HDR, but not 4k upscaling.
1080p -> 4k upscaling is one of the easiest tasks. There are no deformation or something that must be compensated (like 720p -> 1080p). From 1080p to 4k every pixel just consists of 4 pixels. No more upscaling artifacts or something like that.

 

[Arnold Beckenbauer]

http://www.shacknews.com/article/95672/xbox-one-s-will-upscale-all-games-to-4k-microsoft-confirms

This confuses me, can someone provide an explanation ? This seems a bigger deal to the author than what I thought it meant.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's not a big deal.

If you want to watch a 4K movie with your Xbox One S on your 4K TV, the Xbox outputs it @4K. Now you want to play a game, which runs @1080, so Xbox One S can switch its HDMI output to 1080 or it upscales to 4K

 

[AlNom]

This is actually good news for 900p games. Most Xbox One games are not native 1080p. Currently the console upscales 900p to 1080p and then the 4K display upscales that 1080p output to 4K. Two upscaling operations blur the image slightly more.

With games that do a custom upscale/reconstruction, will they bother optimizing for different outputs? For example, Quantum Break reconstructs to 1080p, but for 4K output should they be doing 1440p reconstruction then upscale to 4K? edit: since their native resolution is 720p and they're using 4 frame & MSAA (don't recall their implementation details or if they mess around with the sample pattern).

or... ?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But why would you use those algorythms from your TV. They all increase the lag.

There is no increase in latency with Reality Pro on (compared to off) in Game Mode. Scaling is divorced from the types of image enhancement processing which is known to add lag.

There is no big deal of upscaling 1080p to 4k, but please let your console do it and not your TV. I really don't know why some websites make a hype of this thing. Even MS doesn't hype this, they try to hype HDR, but not 4k upscaling.

A flat linear stretch (1 pixel mapping to 2:2 pixels) is simple. Any other form of interpolation will be as good as the algorithm and hardware performing it. A linear scale will preserve, and sometimes accentuate, aliasing. A good interpolation will heavily reduce it or even eliminate it.

 

[swaaye]

Heh upscaling. Oh boy the thrills.

On a related note though, I got a PS4 a few months ago. I noticed that with my old 720p plasma that the games are obviously not running 720p and are instead downscaling from 1080p or whatever. It looks great.

 

[rockaman]

Interesting about the upscaling, never thought about how it would be for 900p stuff or 720p stuff.

Some games on PS4 are also 900p like Battlefield 4 and Battlefront.

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/396066138875912192
Substitute 1080p with 4k.

Err.... he wasn't even joking was he... lol.

 

[Michellstar]

Interesting about the upscaling, never thought about how it would be for 900p stuff or 720p stuff.

Some games on PS4 are also 900p like Battlefield 4 and Battlefront.

Err.... he wasn't even joking was he... lol.

He was at "full defence mode" back then

 

[shredenvain]

Heh upscaling. Oh boy the thrills.

On a related note though, I got a PS4 a few months ago. I noticed that with my old 720p plasma that the games are obviously not running 720p and are instead downscaling from 1080p or whatever. It looks great.

My Xbox one outputs a 1080p signal to my 720p 52" Samsung plasma as well. It looks incredible to me. My plasma has pretty nice color compared to my 1080p 22" PC monitor. Also the downscale process happening in my plasma really helps to alleviate jaggies in some titles (Forza 5/6 for example).

The one thing I don't like about my plasma is game mode completely takes away all picture options in my menu. I don't even bother using game mode because it looks so washed out. I don't notice any added latency.