PS3 vs XBOX 360 1080p ?

[corduroygt]

I don't know about lag, but I guess I was lucky with the scaler quality in my TV's. My current Toshiba TV has resolution+ (not CELL based) for upscaling SD content and it actually works quite well. I haven't noticed any 720p->1080p upscaling problems either and I have game mode to cut down on input lag, although I don't know how to measure it.

Another comparison should be on 3D response time, as I'm sure TV's are more laggy in 3D mode.

 

[AlNom]

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

This is about the only thing I've ever heard from a developer regarding the 360 scaler:

lanczos is just one of the selectable filters. Ultimately each game 'could' opt to use a different filter/sample count combination (though I suspect most don't bother)."

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Could that account for the tearing in 1080 upscale mode for some of the games mentioned earlier?

 

[bkilian]

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?

A slide I saw years ago claimed it was a 5 tap hardware scaler in the ANA/HANA chip. I, sadly enough, don't actually know any more than that...

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

A slide I saw years ago claimed it was a 5 tap hardware scaler in the ANA/HANA chip. I, sadly enough, don't actually know any more than that...

Scaling is done within Xenos. ANA/HANA chip isn't suppose to have any scaling ability. It's just an encoder.

 

[(((interference)))]

This is about the only thing I've ever heard from a developer regarding the 360 scaler:
[/I]

Cool, I wonder if next gen it'd be able to do a NNEDI3 resize :smile:

But maybe they won't have to include a scaler chip at all if the consoles can actually render in straight 1080p with high IQ.

 

[bkilian]

Scaling is done within Xenos. ANA/HANA chip isn't suppose to have any scaling ability. It's just an encoder.

You sir, are correct. I was misremembering a slide I saw 5 years ago

 

[MasaC]

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.

Why would you configure the PS3 to 720p only?

Just select which modes your TV is capable of, which would be 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Then the games will choose which output to use. So if a game render 1080 lines it will choose 1080p or if it renders 720 lines it will choose 720p.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Why would you configure the PS3 to 720p only?

Just select which modes your TV is capable of, which would be 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Then the games will choose which output to use. So if a game render 1080 lines it will choose 1080p or if it renders 720 lines it will choose 720p.

Sometimes I didn't like the look of certain games doing horizontal scaling from those 960 by 1080 modes. I actually preferred the 720p upscaled. Just a personal preference.

 

[corduroygt]

Sometimes I didn't like the look of certain games doing horizontal scaling from those 960 by 1080 modes. I actually preferred the 720p upscaled. Just a personal preference.

Which games do horizontal scaling like that? I thought that was only for TV's that support 1080i but not 720p and only happened if you checked 1080i/1080p but not 720p.

 

[tuna]

Which games do horizontal scaling like that? I thought that was only for TV's that support 1080i but not 720p and only happened if you checked 1080i/1080p but not 720p.

The Lego games for example. I am sure you can find more. I like it better than my TV scaling.

 

[joker454]

Which games do horizontal scaling like that? I thought that was only for TV's that support 1080i but not 720p and only happened if you checked 1080i/1080p but not 720p.

Thought GTA4 might have but would have to google it, there are some games that do that though. I do remember the GTA4 devs talking in the ps3 dev forum on how they were software upscaling to 1080. Still though even if they are 1280 across, they often do a cheapie vertical upscale in software, then a better horizontal scale in hardware which isn't ideal.

 

[MasaC]

Sometimes I didn't like the look of certain games doing horizontal scaling from those 960 by 1080 modes. I actually preferred the 720p upscaled. Just a personal preference.

Normally, games would not render in 960x1080 unless 720p is deselected in the settings. 1280x720 is normally selected over 960x1080 if both 1080p and 720p is selected in the settings. The 960x1080 is for 1080i televisions. There are exceptions but they are in the minority.

To not have 1080p selected when you have a 1080p device is missing out 1280x1080 in GT5 or the 1280x1920-1980x1080 in Wipeout for instance.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why would you configure the PS3 to 720p only?

Just select which modes your TV is capable of, which would be 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Then the games will choose which output to use.

Not always true though. Castle Crashers appears to just upscale to 1080p, meaning more work for no gain unless your TV has a poop scaler (and PS3's is by no accounts any thing of beauty). Age of Booty drops to 30 fps and looks loads better to me at 720p60. I tend to keep my PS3 in 720p mode for this reason (plus my displays are 1680x1050 and 1366x768), changing to 1080p for rare Blurays and forgetting to change back again for months.

 

[goonergaz]

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.

Without wishing to start an arguement or counter what others have said, I believe the PS3 output is also 'pure' whereas MS 'tweak' the output prior to the HDMI stage - IIRC this goes back to the pre HDMI days and explains why I always felt (like you) that the PS3 output was always 'eye-cuttingly' sharp. This has also been backed up by (IIRC) lensoftruth or digital foundary (I forget which) - who also explained that's why in screen shots the PS3 version often looks 'washed out' because it's not been 'tweaked'.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Without wishing to start an arguement or counter what others have said, I believe the PS3 output is also 'pure' whereas MS 'tweak' the output prior to the HDMI stage - IIRC this goes back to the pre HDMI days and explains why I always felt (like you) that the PS3 output was always 'eye-cuttingly' sharp. This has also been backed up by (IIRC) lensoftruth or digital foundary (I forget which) - who also explained that's why in screen shots the PS3 version often looks 'washed out' because it's not been 'tweaked'.

that makes no sense

 

[Nesh]

that makes no sense

I think I know what he is talking about. DF made a comparison of the image output between the two consoles. Something about the image capturing. They said something about the color difference and how it changes based on the color settings you choose on the 360 display settings
They found out that the source is identical in terms of contrast and colors in both consoles, but the final image on the screen appears kind of darker on the 360 hence the observed black crash on the 360 and the comparatively washed out look on the PS3 games.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think I know what he is talking about. DF made a comparison of the image output between the two consoles. Something about the image capturing. They said something about the color difference and how it changes based on the color settings you choose on the 360 display settings
They found out that the source is identical in terms of contrast and colors in both consoles, but the final image on the screen appears kind of darker on the 360 hence the observed black crash on the 360 and the comparatively washed out look on the PS3 games.

That's just default settings for contrast and brightness. The consoles and/or the games on them appear to default to different levels on each console. You can't accuse one of doing it while claiming the other doesn't. Not implying you are, but the post you're referring to does.

Regards,
SB

 

[Arwin]

Digital Foundry did a comparison between framebuffer capture and HDMI output capture. Upshot was that none of the three RGB range settings produce an image identical to the framebuffer. Mind you, the PS3 Slim was shown to introduce a tiny bit of noise in its HDMI output. Although pretty much unseeable other than by computer comparison, it's not a perfect match either. But it is true, the 360s HDMI output always enhances the contrast and crushes some color information. I'll find the link.

( I suggested as much ages ago comparing color graphs between PS3 and 360 screenshots here years ago by the way. )

Here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-hdmi?page=3

It also comes with an update to the article that I hadn't seen yet:

Update: An interesting email from a key multiplatform developer this morning corroborates the fact that 360 operates internally in component, the REC.709 standard to be precise, and this contact suggests that in theory it is the correct way to address an HDTV, though in practise sticking to RGB in the way that PS3 and PC do is more developer-friendly. He also suggests that the richer colour we see in 360 Face-Off shots might be explained in some cases because so much development is 360-led: calibration takes place on 360 and isn't corrected on PS3, resulting in the "washed out" look. However, even factoring in the REC.709 component standard, this developer also believes that 360 HDMI output does require adjustment.

Regardless, there does appear to be something rather odd going on here - what is the purpose of the reference levels? Displays operate either at limited RGB (360's "standard") or full-range RGB ("enhanced" on the dash) so you do have to wonder quite why there is an "intermediate" setting at all when to the best of our knowledge there is no hardware that supports it. The intermediate setting does tone back the gamma effect a little, but this setting definitely isn't operating with full-range RGB so the gamut of available colours is lower.

For its part, PlayStation 3 appears to output the framebuffer in exactly the way that developers create it. However, with the advent of the PlayStation 3 Slim, Sony decided to change things around a bit with the hardware make-up of the HDMI interface and this has resulted in a curious side-effect.

DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD audio bitstreaming capabilities were added to the HDMI output, and Bravia Link functionality was also included. This came about via a new HDMI controller chip supplied by Panasonic, which appears to have the unfortunate side effect of adding a slight noise to the video output - something we can only assume is a bug in the design.

Thankfully it's imperceptible to the human eye, but our HDMI cable hash check would've been a complete non-starter if we'd used the Slim to carry out the tests. It's also the reason we don't use the Slim for performance analysis tests, as unique frame-counting requires the noise to be filtered out. We implemented a fix pretty quickly, but for the sake of precision and ease of use, we simply moved back to the noise-free output of the original "fat" PS3.

For the record, the HDMI implementations in all the AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards we've used over the last couple of years have been absolutely fine.

Check out the full article for comparison screenshots.

 

[corduroygt]

Not always true though. Castle Crashers appears to just upscale to 1080p, meaning more work for no gain unless your TV has a poop scaler (and PS3's is by no accounts any thing of beauty).

The only hardware scaler in the PS3 is the horizontal scaler in the RSX. All other scaling implementations that scale in both x and y use the SPU's and you can program as good a scaler as you want to, if they don't already exist in the PS3 SDK, provided that you have the SPU budget for it. A general statement that PS3 scaling is crap might only be applied to RSX horizontal scaling, not for the general case.