PS3 and Automatic Scaling.

How programmable are scalers? I thought they were hardwired processors. Can they be fixed, tweaked, and updated?

 

They are pretty fixed function, and have limitations on what they can scale to and from.

 

One possible explanation might be that it does a very bad job when scaling 720p to 1080i and outputing in 1080i to an LCD TV which then scales down to a native 720p resolution. Due to the widely held misconception that 1080i is 'better' than 720p because it has a bigger number a lot of people would set their PS3 to 1080i rather than 720p in the dashboard. Many of those people are likely to have 720p capable LCDs or plasmas as they are quite common, much more common than 1080p displays or than displays that cannot accept a 720p signal at all. Sony might hypothetically have decided that the bad publicity resulting from this situation would be worse than the outcry over lack of upscaling due to a belief that the number of HDTV sets that can't accept a 720p input is very low.

If this theory were true it might be possible in future for Sony to provide an option for people with TVs that can't accept a 720p input to scale 720p to 1080i.

 

This is a matter of preference, 1080i shows a higher resolution image, while 720p shows more pixels per second but is still a lower resolution image, so I wouldn't call it a misconception.

 

With such a long development time, wouldn't they have fixed it if it's used somewhere ?

 

Ok before we get into an off-topic discussion about this, the point here is not which one out of 720p or 1080i is "better". It's about some TVs that can't take 720p and PS3 not being able to upscale 720p material to 1080i.

 

Perhaps this line of reasoning is stupid, but... IF BluRay has only 1080p copies of the film on disk AND the PS3 is capable of downscaling then it suggests there is a working scaler unless the work is being done by Cell/RSX. Now, given reports of how quiet it is when playing BluRay AND the 'cost' to do scaling in software, it does seem likely that there is a hardware scaler that is un-used by games and can be controlled by software.

 

This is borderline religion.. best is to find a 200+ page thread on AVSFORUM and link it here

 

It has been mentioned that for movies, Cell+RSX are taking care of scaling.

 

i'v just read somebody tested his ps3 to 720p and the ps3 auto changed to 1O8Oi when the movie started playing.

 

It's funny...I was all upset about this because my old HDTV doesn't accept 720p. But I had never fed it 1080i and when I hooked up my ps3 it looked awful - it actually looks better at 480p. Not exactly a happy ending, but the scaling issue no longer concerns me because my tv just plain sucks.

 

Some honesty is very welcome in this forum!

 

From perspective of modern hw, scaling is a very cheap operation (and certainly trivially cheap compared to say, decoding a BR movie).
The reason why hw scaler on video-scanout is nice to have, is convenience.
It takes away the burden of having to explicitly support all different resolutions(+ it saves some memory when you only natively support lower resolutions) at the sacrifice of some image quality.

 

Haven't read the whole thread, sorry if I'm posting nonsense.


1080i vs 720p depends entirely upon the technology being used to create the image on the screen.
For instance, my 34xs955 Sony Wega uses the Super Fine Pitch tubes that offer about 60% more detail than a non SFP tube. The 'natural' or native resolution for this type of tube is 1080i, and many enthusiasts would agree that 1080i on this set looks better than 720p. There are other factors to consider such as how well is the device calibrated. For instance, If the 720p setting is using a different color decoder configuration than 1080i one might choose 720p. Or maybe the ISF technician buggered up the raster. I could go on and on with lots of variables, but my point is, as others have stated, the best resolution for you may not be the best for someone else. It really depends on so many factors that you can't just pick a clear winner. I play every game I can in 1080i on my TV, and it is calibrated pretty well for all resolutions except for a few geometry and convergence issues here and there. You also have to consider the game's native resolution too!


As for PS3 not upscaling DVD's.
I have one of the few component upscaling DVD players available in the US, and while it will upscale through component and HDMI, it only works on DVD's that are not copy protected. I'm pretty sure a law/ban/something was passed in the US to stop the sale of DVD players that upscale through component, and this may be why Sony decided to drop? the support.

 

Evidently Blu Ray only outputs at 1080p (if your tv accepts) or 1080i... no native 720p Blu Ray movie output.

Some with 720p LCDs are reporting disappointment as their tvs don't scale well to 720p from 1080i.

setting 720p in the PS3 settings still allows only 1080i output.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4883190&postcount=57

 

There are no native 720 Blu-ray movies anyway, are there? Though not being able to scale the 1080p ones down to 720p does suck.

 

yes, you know what I meant... you're a smart guy.

 

Depends on your display whether it'll suck or not - some are bad at scaling, some not so bad.

The guy who originally created the thread linked above has updated to say it's not as bad as he originally reported (once he stopped looking at his screen from a few inches away..). PS3 should certainly be doing all the scaling, but I've seen few complaints from 720p owners thusfar, excepting his - most have been gushing with praise re. Blu-ray playback, so I doubt they even noticed this. Regardless, Sony should fix it.

 

are there 720p sets that do not accept a 1080i signal?

IGN is now reporting that some users are reporting their sets kicking down to 480p when playing back Blu ray

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/746/746492p2.html

 

I'd hesitate to say no, but they must be very rare if they do exist. I think here in europe any HD-ready TV has to accept 720p and 1080i.

As per the thread you linked, if you force your PS3 to output 720p and exclude 1080i, it'll only output 480p for BD playback. So you need to let it output 1080i and let your TV do the rest.

edit - the IGN article actually notes that too.