Sony Playstation Meeting September 7 2016 [PS4 Slim, PS4 Pro, Rumors, Speculations, and News]

[Arwin]

JVC keeps improving their LCOS native contrast, I think they have the best shot at this. With HDR there's 10 times more brightness headroom, a normal image have 10 times less contrast compared to the same non-HDR setup. So JVC have so much native contrast that they are the only ones in a position to pull it off.

But brightness is absolutely a big issue. HDR has a 1000 nits reference brightness. That means the final mastering is done on monitors where a 1024 pixel value is 1000 nits. A typical home projector is 70 nits, meaning any HDR data would have to be compensated by 10 times, clipping highlights by 10 times, and thus provide no advantages.

I saw an article saying the reference is actually 4000 nits, and even 10,000 nits for Dolby Vision. Most films are mastered at 1000 nits anyway because 4000 is an impossible level with current or near future technology.

Samsung's 2016 lineup contains a few 1000 nits tvs. I saw them in the store today, and they looked like the only ones really benefitting from HDR to my untrained eye.

 

[Cyan]

Pretty much this. I have an old 720p projector I'm occasionally using to watch a movie using the PS4 as a source. It accepts 1080i signals as well, but the image quality is considerably better at its native 720p resolution. As a result I always go to the console's display settings to uncheck 1080i/p prior to watching a film. Last time I did that I forgot to re-check the 1080p box under the console's display settings and then played a good 20 hours of Deus Ex on my 50 inch tv without really noticing it. It's not that I cannot spot the difference either, but resolution really does reach a point of diminuishing returns awfully early. As far as I'm concerned, 4K tvs at anything but truly gargantuan sizes are the equivalent to 24 bit High-Res audio. It's a big-ass number that's easily marketable yet utterly pointless.

720p is quite easily noticeable blurry these days on a 32" screen, at least in my case. It becomes very obvious to me when I play BC games from the X360. As for the size of the TV and 4K..it all depends on your viewing distance. I've seen 4K TVs in electronic stores and the clarity and sharpness is well above 1080p, as you get closer.

Given the fact that my room is small and I don't have much space in it because I can be a bit sloppy too, I always play at a close distance from the TV, so a 40", 42" 4K TV might do for me.

I can also tell the difference between 720p on my 10" laptop display compared to 768p, native. 720p looks just okay if you play windowed at 1:1 scaling though, but so does 800x600.

 

[eastmen]

It seems strange that Sony did not want to make some OS hacks for old games support. Maybe they thought mid-cycle upgrade should play og games perfectly.
If only MS made some games
Third-party won't do that.

stop with this nonsense.

This year I've purchased or will be purchasing Quantum break , Gears 4 , recore , forza which will all play on both pc and xbox one. Next year it will be sea of thieves , scale bound and crack down with perhaps a few other unaounced games.

I think that is similar to Sony's output this year.

I am hoping that some third parties start offering the feature on their games.

 

[Globalisateur]

It can mean 80% GCN 1.1 (vanilla PS4), 10% Polaris features and 10% something beyond Polaris. Importantly, it's not Polaris based, only with some of the the features. And if that's for BC, that bodes ill for PS5. If variations in GPU architecture of the same family can throw out BC without a decent API abstraction, Sony's long-term platform is screwed. That's the point MS really wants to start making - no games are left behind! Because it's looking more like Sony won't be able to offer that. And if in MS's ecosystem you can take the games to Pc as well, it really is the only future-proof platform (because you can take your Windows games from their shite, constantly screwed-with OS to a working console... )

Maybe they needed to keep a base GCN 1.1 tech because of FC, not BC. Which wouldn't be a problem for PS5.

And where do these numbers come from? No need to answer, that's a rhetorical question.

 

[Graham]

Looks like i missed it all.
So dose the new ps4 pro let u have better gfx if you are still on a 1080p display?

The difference between 1080p and 4K downsampled is actually pretty dramatic. You obviously don't get the fine detail, but it does have the same temporal stability and motion clarity.

I'm assuming, and hoping, that Rec709 content that's displayed on a tv calibrated to Rec2020 will look correct.

The 709<->2020 conversion is just a simple 3x3 matrix transform, so yes it should.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...

And where do these numbers come from? No need to answer, that's a rhetorical question.

Do you actually think he was suggesting those were the real numbers?

 

[Globalisateur]

Do you actually think he was suggesting those were the real numbers?

No.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

What's odd about this is that Sony has NO UHD disc player in its electronics lineup. I thought for sure the absence of a stand alone player at the format's launch was a signal they'd be using it to buoy PS4 Pro sales, but now I have no idea what they are thinking. They sell UHD TVs and Projectors, and also publish the movies but have no way for you to play one of their UHD discs on one of their UHD TVs. The hardware and licensing costs must have been excessive relative to the rest of the BOM?

Sony have finally realized what many of us have been saying for the past couple of years. Optical media is rapidly losing its relevance as more and more consumers are moving to fully digital ownership of content. Why continue to invest heavily in optical if optical is on the way out? Sony's internal metrics can see directly the buying habits of PS4 owners. They can see how optical media is diminishing in importance as the generation moves along.

It will always remain extremely compelling to a niche audience that wants the highest quality possible. Similar to how Laserdisc had it's audience. And while as a PC user I want 4K content, when I view that same content on a TV, I'm perfectly fine with either 1080p or 4K content at lower bitrates (digital distribution). It's going to be almost impossible for your average consumer to notice the difference between a 4K video stream and a 4K UHD BRD assuming they have a 4K TV set. Videophiles with home theater's in their basement with 100"+ screens might or might not be able to see the difference but they'll demand UHD BRD either way. But those people are unlikely to be satisfied with a console for UHD BRD anyway.

That won't stop some of your average consumers from buying into the UHD hype, however. But Sony evidently view it as not worth their time or investment and instead are moving forwards with a lower cost (to Sony) and lower risk (to Sony) 4K video streaming service.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm gong mostly by Richard Leadbetter's observations and remarks. Some titles shown weren't upscaling nicely, but three first-party titles were.

If the results on Days Gone and Horizon Dawn are that much better, it likely isn't a fixed upscale solution, as the unnamed developers allude. Could be that the upscale works with a set of data you can supply, and the more you can supply, the better the results?

It could be that to take full advantage of the checkboard rendering at 4K your engine needs to be developed with that in mind or have a separate rendering path for it. And for everything else there's a dumber/generic (for lack of a better word) automatic checkerboard upscaling that can be used with less implementation work on the part of the developer.

Regards,
SB

 

[wco81]

Is there really such a thing as "digital ownership of content?"

They could always revoke.

FWIW, the first few months of UHD Blu Ray sales were reportedly greater than a comparable period of Blu Ray sales. Of course, no format war this time.

I think people who buy UHD BR products don't care if most of the world is moving to digital. As long as the studios release content in the new format, they will be happy. But that's a big IF.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Is there really such a thing as "digital ownership of content?"

They could always revoke.

FWIW, the first few months of UHD Blu Ray sales were reportedly greater than a comparable period of Blu Ray sales. Of course, no format war this time.

I think people who buy UHD BR products don't care if most of the world is moving to digital. As long as the studios release content in the new format, they will be happy. But that's a big IF.

Agreed. And it's to be expected. The early adopters and enthusiasts will have lined up to pick it up. But it remains to be seen whether the general consumer will follow suit.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

Knowing myself, once I get a 4K TV I would have wanted a UHD player for vastly better bitrates.

 

[xz321zx]

Samsung's 2016 lineup contains a few 1000 nits tvs. I saw them in the store today, and they looked like the only ones really benefitting from HDR to my untrained eye.

...against ambient light not even 1000 nits is too much, and that won't be HDR either , but some kind of faux black level because of more visible contrast.

JVC's projectors are nice but unexistent in the "pocket" size.

 

[mpg1]

720p is quite easily noticeable blurry these days on a 32" screen, at least in my case. It becomes very obvious to me when I play BC games from the X360. As for the size of the TV and 4K..it all depends on your viewing distance. I've seen 4K TVs in electronic stores and the clarity and sharpness is well above 1080p, as you get closer.

Given the fact that my room is small and I don't have much space in it because I can be a bit sloppy too, I always play at a close distance from the TV, so a 40", 42" 4K TV might do for me.

I can also tell the difference between 720p on my 10" laptop display compared to 768p, native. 720p looks just okay if you play windowed at 1:1 scaling though, but so does 800x600.

Frostbyte 3 at 720p looks nice when upscaled to 4K...

Edit: this guy has a bunch of videos of games being played on an Xbox One S up-scaled to 4K...it's actually making me consider buy an Xbox One S..

 

[Deleted member 11852]

BUY ONE!!!

 

[iroboto]

Frostbyte 3 at 720p looks nice when upscaled to 4K...

Edit: this guy has a bunch of videos of games being played on an Xbox One S up-scaled to 4K...it's actually making me consider buy an Xbox One S..

Lol I was being lulled with the same type of thing. Now upgrading from OG to S is irresistible and I don't even have a 4K tv yet.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Rikimaru]

Frostbyte 3 at 720p looks nice when upscaled to 4K...

Edit: this guy has a bunch of videos of games being played on an Xbox One S up-scaled to 4K...it's actually making me consider buy an Xbox One S..

It would look same on 4k TV with og xbo. Also offscreen footage percieved better than it is. All his videos are useless.

 

[iroboto]

It would look same on 4k TV with og xbo. Also offscreen footage percieved better than it is. All his videos are useless.

It doesn't, S looks better.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarc...-microsoft-seems-to-think-it-is/#61b4af5480a7

In case too lazy to read article

It’s also been argued persuasively elsewhere on Forbes that the Xbox One S’s 4K upscaling doesn’t make much sense from a gaming perspective given that 4K TVs can upscale from HD too.

The Xbox One S, though, tramples unceremoniously all over these arguments by delivering quite simply one of the finest upscaling performances I’ve seen.

My years of experience in the AV world have taught me that getting good quality source equipment to upscale resolution rather than leaving it to a screen often yields superior results. But even knowing this didn’t prepare me for just how much cleaner, sharper and less noisy games look on a 4K TV via the Xbox One S than they do via the original Xbox One.

Edit: continued

The impact was enough to make games I’ve already played to death on the original Xbox One feel like I was playing them again for the first time on a completely new console at something genuinely approaching 4K resolution.

What’s more, the remarkable quality of the Xbox One S’s 4K game upscaling stands out extremely clearly even against the excellent upscaling built into a very high-end 4K TV like Samsung’s UN65JS9500. If you’ve got a relatively cheap 4K TV the picture quality difference delivered by the Xbox One S’s superior upscaling will be even more pronounced.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Aaron Elfassy]

If the Xbox scaling is so revelatory why are there no comparisons of native screengrabs scaling the same game and settings from a matched 4k native PC output?

There are already comparisons of the ps4pro from compressed YouTube clips. Hardly fair, and seemingly some of these posters are showing true colors of possibly being corporate shills :\

 

[mpg1]

maybe a mod can move this convo to the Xbox Slim thread...

but yeah I'm not saying if you have an OG Xbox that it's necessarily worth it to upgrade but for someone who has no console yet "this gen" it certainly looks good enough for me.