Dodgy PS3 display selection?

[PARANOiA]

You have to consider, though, that you're asking for trouble not having the system check and adjust itself. What if you had one HDMI TV in the house that broke? A vast majority of owners would freak out and assume the PS3 was broken once they plugged it into another television. People are used to the concept of "the cable puts my picture on to the TV" - not stuff like "this cable requires handshaking, supports this table of resolutions. If you need to swap your cable, you need to disable it in software before-hand".

I had a similar problem on my Xbox. I had it set up for 1080i output in XBMC. When I gave it to my brother as a gift, it didn't work on his TV. He called me up and said it was broken! I had to drive over to his house and reset it by holding down certain buttons on boot. Sure, it wasn't an out of the box set-up, but I would have expected basic support for changing a cable. To think an expensive out of the box system doesn't do this is mind-boggling.

Assuming every owner has memorised the user manual cover to cover is simply not good practice for any device. The PS3's wider target audience (families, kids, whatever) will not like this, and I imagine it will cause headaches for people out there. They can probably get away with it for the current user base (ie, enthusiasts only) but it's not a user friendly CE device as is.

 

[AlNom]

I had a similar problem on my Xbox. I had it set up for 1080i output in XBMC. When I gave it to my brother as a gift, it didn't work on his TV. He called me up and said it was broken! I had to drive over to his house and reset it by holding down certain buttons on boot. Sure, it wasn't an out of the box set-up, but I would have expected basic support for changing a cable. To think an expensive out of the box system doesn't do this is mind-boggling.

Were you switching between progressive and interlaced? AFAIK, the Xbox can otherwise auto-detect the different types of cables... e.g. BNC to composite to S-video to component. You should still see something regardless. By default, the dashboard is 480i. In the event that you previously used the button combo to make the dashboard display progressively, you would just get a garbled screen if your TV doesn't support progressive scan .

 

[patsu]

What is the actual behavior of the PS3 when it is plugged in to a non-HDMI output (from a HDMI one) ?

I remember in 1.0 firmware (a year ago), the screen won't even show up and I had to carry the PS3 back to the original TV and reset it.

Then after a firmware upgrade, I thought it would auto switch to the most basic settings after sometime ? Honestly, I can't remember now since it was 3 months ago when I played with a component HD projector, composite SD TV and HDMI->DVI HD monitor in the same night.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What is the actual behavior of the PS3 when it is plugged in to a non-HDMI output (from a HDMI one) ?

Sticks to the resolution previously set, which is the problem. Even when plugging in the default composite cable that can only handle SDTV resolution, it won't display a picture unless you have the resolution set to SD res. Thus changing the machine to any different (unsupported) resolution display, no matter the cable, needs a reset and a reading of the manual. That's gonna flummox a few people. if you take it round to a friend's house for the first time in your little kit bag leaving the manual at home (who carries manuals around?!) and find the default cable doesn't work, I wouldn't say it was your fault for not reading the manual. You'd expect the included cables to work, just as you expect the triangle button on your media player to be Play and the Square to be Stop.

 

[hey69]

RTFM please... lol