PS3 vs XBOX 360 1080p ?

[Barso]

I would consider myself tech savvy but what puzzles me is the way the PS3 and XBOX360 output 1080p on their respective dashboards.
At 1080p the PS3 XMB is so much sharper and true than the xbox360's dashboard.
Both are using HDMI, so why would this be?
I don't use the 1080p for gameplay as I know 720p is more suitable for games.
Thanks.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I believe XB360's dashboard is upscaled to 1080p.

 

[AlphaWolf]

dunno, any chance you could post some photos of your 360 dashboard? And you're sure you have it set to 1080 output?

As for gaming... it will probably look better in 1080.

 

[corduroygt]

As Shifty said, 360 dashboard is rendered at 1280x720 while the XMB is rendered at 1920x1080. The reason for that is to save memory and make everything fit in 32MB in Microsoft's case. PS3 OS takes more memory.

 

[Nesh]

Thats because in the 360 dashboard they use fonts and images that are lower res.

It has nothing to do with how they output 1080p

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Doesn't the 360's dashboard downscale any 1080p pictures to 720p and then upscales them to 1080p?

 

[Arwin]

If I remember correctly, they've chosen to do it this way as a trade-off for being able to support a great number of different resolutions. You can set a great variation of output resolutions, and if Microsoft would have had to optimise and test for each one of them for every little graphic they put into the NXE they'd go nuts (and need a lot more space). Instead, they've decided to optimise for 720p and let the decent scaler handle the rest. There's something to be said for that, for sure, although of course it also does come with some downsides - now that most TVs are Full HD, it would be nice if the dashboard supported that natively a little better here and there (I think already for stuff like 1080p video streaming it would support 1080p natively, though not 100% sure).

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Yeah. The decision to only natively support 720p/1080i, during the design phase, probably had a lot to do with the lack of native 1080p dashboard support.

 

[joker454]

I don't use the 1080p for gameplay as I know 720p is more suitable for games.

Just fyi, what you say above is not true for 360. If you have a 1080p tv then set your 360 to 1080p and all your games will get a high quality upscale. The benefit is twofold. First you get close to your tv's native resolution and hence bypass it's low budget upscaler which usually does more harm than good. Second, you benefit from the 360's good quality upscaler. The only time you should consider setting your 360 to 720p mode on a 1080p tv is if you are using a very high quality external upscaler that does a better job than the one in the 360.

 

[Rangers]

Input lagwise, theoretically letting the 360 upscale is faster as well. At least that's what I've heard.

 

[ShadowRunner]

Just fyi, what you say above is not true for 360. If you have a 1080p tv then set your 360 to 1080p and all your games will get a high quality upscale. The benefit is twofold. First you get close to your tv's native resolution and hence bypass it's low budget upscaler which usually does more harm than good. Second, you benefit from the 360's good quality upscaler. The only time you should consider setting your 360 to 720p mode on a 1080p tv is if you are using a very high quality external upscaler that does a better job than the one in the 360.

Unless that game you wanted to play was Resident Evil 5 . Man that game tore frames allover the shop when outputing 1080p, was wondering why people where impressed with it until i set it to output at 720p and realized that was the problem.

Is it still the case that newer tvs have crappy scalers? I know my new tv does a pretty decent job and is the first HDTV ive had that scales SD content pretty well.

 

[joker454]

Unless that game you wanted to play was Resident Evil 5 . Man that game tore frames allover the shop when outputing 1080p, was wondering why people where impressed with it until i set it to output at 720p and realized that was the problem.

I read about that, but I finished that game along with plenty of others with no such issues. I never did figure out why some people had issues at 1080 mode, maybe it was a bug that affect only some people in certain regions, or with certain tv's.

 

[ShadowRunner]

I read about that, but I finished that game along with plenty of others with no such issues. I never did figure out why some people had issues at 1080 mode, maybe it was a bug that affect only some people in certain regions, or with certain tv's.

My 360 was an original launch unit that only had component output, so that could have been something to do with it, or the game was patched to fix it.

 

[AlNom]

IIRC, I think most if not all the Framework Engine games have the tearing issue in 1080p. Quite bizarre. No idea if that extends to intermediate display outputs though. Maybe if there's a Framework game that actually interests me, I'll check that out since I use 1360x768.

 

[dragonelite]

Input lagwise, theoretically letting the 360 upscale is faster as well. At least that's what I've heard.

Depends on the tv model.

 

[AlNom]

There's something to be said for that, for sure, although of course it also does come with some downsides - now that most TVs are Full HD, it would be nice if the dashboard supported that natively a little better here and there (I think already for stuff like 1080p video streaming it would support 1080p natively, though not 100% sure).

One option would be to switch to the higher native rendering res at the full dashboard, where you don't have games sucking up GDDR3. But then again, who knows what their memory usage is like considering all the other things going on in the dash. Rather, they may want to play it safe by having as much RAM for who-knows-what features they can add rather than allocate the extra 2.25x amount of memory per buffer.

If for example, we just have 3x720p buffers (front, back, depth), that's already 11MB, which would shoot up to 24MB. Maybe it's even less for the in-game access to the guide, which is really just a small window being centered and overlayed

At least they've enabled 4xMSAA for the Avatar rendering.

 

[(((interference)))]

Yeah, Joker's right - games on my 360 which outputs at 1080p are always sharper (provided they're not sub HD) than on my PS3 which outputs at 720p and is scaled by my Bravia (unless of course the title is native 1080p).

The 360 definitely has a fantastic scaler chip, what algorithm is it using? Lanczos, Spline resize?

 

[makattack]

Input lagwise, theoretically letting the 360 upscale is faster as well. At least that's what I've heard.

In my case, this is what I do:

I have a PS3 and X360 connected via. a Pioneer VSX 1120, which is in turn connected to a LG 47LE8500.

Both have very good 1080p scalers, but I find the lag unacceptable for both gaming and video when either the receiver or TV are upscaling. Perhaps I'm just sensitive to it... therefore, I game with the 360 configured to 1080p so that the internal scaler is doing it's job, and the PS3 is configured for 720p.

In experimenting, I find the Pioneer and LG can both upscale the PS3 signal much better than if I force 1080p on the PS3, on those games that support scaling. Unfortunately, the lag is unacceptable except for slower games, but I deal with it because the resulting image is noticeably different/better than leaving it at 720p/native. In my case, I have the receiver upscale the PS3 signal. Unfortunately, there are sometimes issues with pixel crawl and such with thin lines, sharp edges, or small fonts. This is less noticeable when the LG TV upscales, but the lag is more noticeable.

 

[RudeCurve]

IIRC, I think most if not all the Framework Engine games have the tearing issue in 1080p. Quite bizarre. No idea if that extends to intermediate display outputs though. Maybe if there's a Framework game that actually interests me, I'll check that out since I use 1360x768.

There are plenty of games that have tearing when set to output 1080, Assasins Creed for example.

 

[(((interference)))]

There are plenty of games that have tearing when set to output 1080, Assasins Creed for example.

I don't recall AC1/2 tearing more in 1080p mode than 720p - I mean why would they when the native res is 720p?