PS3 and VGA?
- Thread starter xerks
- Start date
AFAIK you know an (expensive) box. As I've toyed with the idea of getting a PS3, it's always been on the basis of running it on my 4:3 1280x1024 VGA/DVI monitor. But it's not straightforward. I don't think letter-boxing is even properly supported. Certainly there isn't a cheap, easy, problem free solution - one of PS3's biggest shortcomings IMO.
Well, you can't really blame them because of the BD requiring HDCP
Shouldn't affect games though. If they made it clear HDCP devices are needed for films but games can work on VGA/DVI monitors, that'd be a suitable solution.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
HDCP is always on with the PS3. Only the early debug units had the option to turn it off for the XMB/Games. Your monitor needs to have an HDCP compliant DVI input. Most of the new Samsungs have this, I've noticed. Not sure about others (haven't really looked into them).
There is in fact an adapter available for PS3, and it does allow you to play 1920x1080p games over a VGA cable. It doesn't use the HDMI port, and is not affected by HDCP. A(n online) friend of mine is using it, and I think it cost him something like $40-$50 online. If you know what to google for you should be able to find it (his username is typically maxcre8 so maybe that will help find something).
It could very well be the PS2 version of this thing:
http://www.consolesource.com/ecomm/catalog/XCM-1080p-VGA-Adapter-Xbox-360-Wii-PS3-p-2644.html
I vaguely recall that XCM were the manufacturors of the thing he's got.
It could very well be the PS2 version of this thing:
http://www.consolesource.com/ecomm/catalog/XCM-1080p-VGA-Adapter-Xbox-360-Wii-PS3-p-2644.html
I vaguely recall that XCM were the manufacturors of the thing he's got.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
Very nice.
That one you linked to says it works for the PS3, by the way. That's not the one your friend has?1280x1024 = 5:4
The problem with you is that there are only widescreen resolutions of HD available. Even if you manage to get those VGA ones for free, you wouldn't want vertically distorted images.
The 360 do support 1280x1024, but some devs have chose not to letterbox games which gives you the best image. Strange.
Monitor aspect is 4:31280x1024 = 5:4
.Edit : Actually with a quick measure, I see it's 5:4! Learn something new every day!
Due to the variations in display aspect (4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10) and native resolution (all over the place) without explicit support this isn't going to fly. The 360 VGA support is borderline due to a small percentage of games not letterboxing 720p mode (making the game aspect stretched vertically) ... now imagine the majority of titles being affected like this. I wouldn't call that "working".
Darn, that's bad news for my friend. I better tell him that he should throw it away then. And he thought he had been perfectly happy using this to get 1920x1080p on his PC monitor since June. Poor guy! It just goes to show the powers of the mind though, that he could convince himself that it actually works! Wait, maybe I shouldn't tell him! Let him keep his illusions!
You are beginning to flaim and bait a lot without addressing (and avoiding) the points people make. To review my major points on VGA support on consoles:
• Due to the variations in display aspect (4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10) and native resolution (all over the place) without explicit support this isn't going to fly.
• 360 VGA support is borderline due to a small percentage of games not letterboxing 720p mode (making the game aspect stretched vertically)
• now imagine the majority of titles being affected like this. I wouldn't call that "working".
I am happy your friend was able to use a device to work on his 1920x1080 PC Monitor. Luckily for him:
• 16:9 is the native aspect of PS3 games and his display
• 1920x1080 is a native resolution of PS3 games and his display
Truth be told his VGA monitor is in the minority for VGA users as it has the proper aspect and pixels (e.g. most monitors would be 1920x1200, i.e. 16:10 so wrong aspect and wrong pixel count which could lead into non-native resolution issues, which tend to suck on LCDs, to worse, not even working). Your little rant didn't prove anything about the PS3 having proper VGA support. All you said is effectively that an 1080p display can accept a 1080p signal. On the same note, I can get a 720p console to work perfectly on a 1280x720 pixel monitor as well... yet...
That really isn't the point I was making about "working" VGA support.
Working, as I noted as a VGA user, would entail getting the aspect right on VGA monitors. Like I said, VGA monitors range from 4:3, 5:4, 16:9, 16:10 and the like. And you also have to hit the aspect right on a host of display resolutions. Just some examples:
1024x768
1280x720
1280x768
1280x800
1280x1024
1366x768
1440x900
1600x1200
1680x1050
1920x1080
1920x1200
What VGA users are demanding is that, like a PC, the console give us the highest resolution possible, with the correct aspect (be it 4:3 or 16:9, as most games target one, the other, or both), mapped to our display.
If a game fails on one of these points the result is hit-and-miss (i.e. non-working VGA support). Some examples:
Scenario 1: Your game is 720p (1280x720). My display is 1280x1024. The consoles bonehead VGA device solution maps the horizontal pixels perfectly (1280-to-1280) but destroys the aspect as the 720 vertical pixels are stretched 42% (!) to fill the screen.
Scenario 2: Your game outputs 1080p (1920x1080). My display is 1024x768 CRT. The resolution is outside the bounds of my display (resolution and aspect) and I get no signal.
I could do this all... day... long. VGA displays come in a host of aspect ratios and resolutions. You cannot count on a quality scaler and you have to assume that, in most cases, the VGA (if LCD) will have poor IQ/performance at non-native resolutions.
So a proper, working, VGA solution needs to do the following:
(1) Match the aspect of the display. This can done simply by the console adding black bars ("letterboxing") the content. e.g. a 720p image can add a 152 pixel black bar to the top and 152 pixel black bar to the bottom of the output image and map perfectly to a 1280x1024 display.
(2) Match the display resolution. After any aspect differences are resolved this is solved by upscaling/downscaling. Ideally the game would take the highest resolution at a set aspect and up/down scale it.
So back to your friend. Great, he has a rare 1920x1080 PC Monitor. Most this size are 1920x1200... anyhow, this doesn't prove proper "working" VGA support. The proof that this is a "working" solution for "proper VGA support" would take the next step: How does this solution work on VGA displays with a 1024x768 resolution? 1680x1050? 1280x800? 1280x1024?
Is the aspect correct?
What resolution is the game at?
It is great news for your friend that he was able to essentially buy a HTDV for a VGA display. But most of us have more traditional PC monitors like 1280x1024. I know from doing web development that 1024x768 is very popular still among PC users, and 1280x1024 has been a staple of LCDs for a long while (I am using two right this moment, have a 1280x800 LCD and my CRTs are 1280x1024 and 1600x1200).
I would be excited, as would Shifty and a number of other posters, if the PS3 offered a quality solution that gave me HD graphics at the right aspect on my displays (preferrably my 1280x1024 LCDs as they are by far my nicest units).
Telling us the PS3 works great on a 1080p monitor doesn't offer much help to the overwhelming majority of VGA users.
The point of my highly sarcastic response to your comment "I wouldn't call that working" is that you greatly over-exaggerate. It sounds very stuck-up. Your advice is valuable, but why not simply start with asking xerks what kind of monitor he intends to use, and warn him that some configurations aren't going to work optimally?
I'm sure that there are going to be people with aspect ratio problems that are unacceptable to them, and I know that VGA support could be a lot better if there was proper letterboxing and so on. However, my LCD is 16:10, has a 1650x1080 resolution with HDMI/HDCP support. If I hook up my PS3 in 1080p mode, it will complain for a short while, but it will work. I will have 16:10 instead of 16:9 because it scales the incoming image to fill out the screen, so it looks slightly stretched, but nevertheless games look well enough! It's a big boon for me to be able to play in my office room, never mind some minor stretching issues.
Now the other guy is actually better off than me with his VGA connector, simply because his display actually supports 1920x1080p. His display is probably 16:10 also so he will have those issues, but his screen doesn't complain and displays the full resolution.
What's much more important still, though, is that screens like these can be had for around €200 and less, and if you can find a 720p one, even less, which is still quite different from current LCD tvs, of which even the smallest with a suitable resolution cost more than double.
I certainly agree though that it would be great if Sony added support for older VGA models and better scaling and so on - at least allow black border solution for 1280x1024 monitors - but I don't really see it happen, they haven't even released an official VGA cable. However, if I were 10 or 15 years back in my life, then being able to buy a relatively cheap HD LCD screen for my PC/PS3 and being able to use it for my 360/PS3/PC (I'm guessing I would have had both a PC and a PS3/360 if this was an issue for me at that age), the device would have been a lifesaver.
As it happens, I'm using the LCD myself for my 360 which I don't have in the livingroom, and I have it on 1366x768, as that's what seems to work best with the 360 on this screen.
So, xerks (and gradthrawn), if you're still around, what display device were you planning on using?
I'm sure that there are going to be people with aspect ratio problems that are unacceptable to them, and I know that VGA support could be a lot better if there was proper letterboxing and so on. However, my LCD is 16:10, has a 1650x1080 resolution with HDMI/HDCP support. If I hook up my PS3 in 1080p mode, it will complain for a short while, but it will work. I will have 16:10 instead of 16:9 because it scales the incoming image to fill out the screen, so it looks slightly stretched, but nevertheless games look well enough! It's a big boon for me to be able to play in my office room, never mind some minor stretching issues.
Now the other guy is actually better off than me with his VGA connector, simply because his display actually supports 1920x1080p. His display is probably 16:10 also so he will have those issues, but his screen doesn't complain and displays the full resolution.
What's much more important still, though, is that screens like these can be had for around €200 and less, and if you can find a 720p one, even less, which is still quite different from current LCD tvs, of which even the smallest with a suitable resolution cost more than double.
I certainly agree though that it would be great if Sony added support for older VGA models and better scaling and so on - at least allow black border solution for 1280x1024 monitors - but I don't really see it happen, they haven't even released an official VGA cable. However, if I were 10 or 15 years back in my life, then being able to buy a relatively cheap HD LCD screen for my PC/PS3 and being able to use it for my 360/PS3/PC (I'm guessing I would have had both a PC and a PS3/360 if this was an issue for me at that age), the device would have been a lifesaver.
As it happens, I'm using the LCD myself for my 360 which I don't have in the livingroom, and I have it on 1366x768, as that's what seems to work best with the 360 on this screen.
So, xerks (and gradthrawn), if you're still around, what display device were you planning on using?
But...
Most monitors today have 1:1 pixel mapping and aspect scaling. I have a 26 inch monitor (1920x1200) that I use with my Xbox 360 (VGA), PS3 (HDMI->DVI), and obviously my computer. I have the two consoles output to 1080p, which normally would be stretched vertically on my 16:10 monitor, but with 1:1 pixel mapping I get the correct resolution/aspect (of course with two blacks bars on the bottom and top) without degradation of quality. And with aspect scaling, even if I was to feed my monitor a 720p/480p resolution, it would still scale correctly (scales to a higher resolution while preserving the aspect ratio).
I presume by that you mean new models, but within a recent time frame. Most monitors out there aren't new, but a few years old at best. One of the reasons to want monitor support is because you aren't intending to buy a new HD TV or DVI + HDCP monitor. The whole point here is to avoid an additional cost. I'm a perfect example - I've a monitor that would be just fine for PS3 use letterboxed to 720p, but it's not an option. I'm not going to spend an additional $200+ (probably much more) just for a display to support a PS3!
But I wouldn't expect my old monitor to be compatible with my consoles; it wasn't designed for that purpose (it's only purpose was to be used as a computer monitor). Monitors today are designed for that purpose (they are TV's with no tuners). When you bought your monitor, were you hoping/expecting it would work with consoles?
I just don't feel like Microsoft and Sony should have to support monitors in general; their focus should be on ensuring their consoles work with TV's. If a monitor works with consoles, that's great, but I don't think Microsoft and Sony should go out of their way just to satisfy a market they aren't even targeting.
Prior to this gen, every console ever sold worked with the existing display technology in your house. You had a TV anyway, so had a display suitable for your console. These new consoles are principally intended for use on HD - you can run them on SD but they look pretty pants. Yet most people don't have an HDTV that's suitable. What they do have is an HD monitor that'll do a better job of displaying HD games than their TV.
It's daft to say MS and Sony aren't targeting this market. They are targeting anyone intersted in buying their consoles. I'm interested. One of the reasons I'm hesitating though is that I won't have a suitable display. And the daft part is its not difficult to enable output to monitors - it's just something they've not cared to add. So where before you could sell your SD console to every TV owning house in the world, this move has effectively halved or worse their market, because the number of HDTV owning houses is far, far less. Allow monitor support and you have a much larger target to sell to.
It's daft to say MS and Sony aren't targeting this market. They are targeting anyone intersted in buying their consoles. I'm interested. One of the reasons I'm hesitating though is that I won't have a suitable display. And the daft part is its not difficult to enable output to monitors - it's just something they've not cared to add. So where before you could sell your SD console to every TV owning house in the world, this move has effectively halved or worse their market, because the number of HDTV owning houses is far, far less. Allow monitor support and you have a much larger target to sell to.
Many people may have a HD monitor, but a very few people around me knows that they can hook up their 360 to monitors... hence a lot of them complaining to me that as their old telly doesn't support 60hz it is not compatible with some games.
I still agree that devs AND MS/Sony should support various resolutions. This has been done on PC like standards.
I still agree that devs AND MS/Sony should support various resolutions. This has been done on PC like standards.
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