Question on game rendering resolutions

[D3v0ur3r]

I just bought a PS3 last night & so far I am not sure its all that great. Question I can't seem to find direct answers to.

Does the PS3 do true 1080i in Movies & Games?

How many games do true 1080i? If yes to the 1st question.

Am I wrong or doesn't the 360 do true 1080i in a hell of a lot of games & demo's?

I'm starting to wonder if I should return my PS3 already. My TV supports all formats except 1080p but I honestly do not want to get something less (720p) then what the best is my TV can do (1080i).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You won't have many consoles to choose from then, as hardly any games are rendering at 1080i! Those that output 1080i/p are mostly upscaled, on both platforms. I also doubt your TV actually benefits anyway. Modern TVs that have a display resolution of 1920x1080 all support 1080p. I don't think there are any sets that only go up to 1080i on the inputs on not 1080p but which still have a high enough resolution to display them. Thus chances are 1080i is 'downscaled' to fit your TV display. If you give make and model we can check this.

720p output is the best you or most people are going to get this gen. If the resolution really is that much of a problem (and I repeat your TV probably can't display a picture better than 720p in resolution anyway) the only option this gen is to get a PC and a monster graphics card and a 1080p TV or monitor!

 

[rekator]

720p better than 1080i… it's question of taste…
720p give generally better results for me…

 

[DuckThor Evil]

720p give generally better results for me…

On what situations and what sort of setup do you have?

 

[macabre]

You won't have many consoles to choose from then, as hardly any games are rendering at 1080i! Those that output 1080i/p are mostly upscaled, on both platforms. I also doubt your TV actually benefits anyway. Modern TVs that have a display resolution of 1920x1080 all support 1080p. I don't think there are any sets that only go up to 1080i on the inputs on not 1080p but which still have a high enough resolution to display them. Thus chances are 1080i is 'downscaled' to fit your TV display. If you give make and model we can check this.

720p output is the best you or most people are going to get this gen. If the resolution really is that much of a problem (and I repeat your TV probably can't display a picture better than 720p in resolution anyway) the only option this gen is to get a PC and a monster graphics card and a 1080p TV or monitor!

There is one exception I know of. The Toshiba 37WL67Z has a FullHD panel but only accepts 1080i.
I think there are some older Philips models as well but I`m not sure.

 

[D3v0ur3r]

Ah! So my post wasn't deleted, just a new thread created.

So here is the issue. I am just a bit frustrated with what I guess I may or may not be understanding about the 360, PS3, & my TV.

I have Dirt for the 360 which supports 1080i which is what I play it at & it looks great. I tried the Dirt demo on the PS3 & it looks like poo in comparison.

I am using HDMI for the PS3 & of course my 360 doesn't have HDMI.

Here is a link to my TV & its specs.
http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/JVC-LT-40X776.htm

 

[DuckThor Evil]

You'd probably get a slightly better picture using 720p, your tv's resolution is nowhere near 1920x1080i, but quite close to 720p, which is 1280x720. It probably doesn't make too much of a difference which resolution you use, but just know that, your TV is not 1080i cabable even though it accepts it in.

 

[kyleb]

Does the PS3 do true 1080i in Movies & Games?

Many PS3 games don't support 1080, and most that render at a lower resolution and upscale that for output. The 360 supports 1080i in all games thanks to it's dedecated scaler, but I don't know of any 360 game, or PS3 game, that renders at 1080i. I highly doubt any do. As for movies, I think there are a few 1080i Blu-ray and HD DVD disks that are 1080i, but there is no reason to favor those over the far more common 1080p releases.

You won't have many consoles to choose from then, as hardly any games are rendering at 1080i!

Do you know of any modern games that use field rendering at all? I figure maybe some of the 480i only games on the Wii do, but I'd guess all the 360 and PS3 games just render full frames and interlace on output as needed since they need to support progressive output anyway.

720p better than 1080i… it's question of taste…

It depends on the display, and the content as well. 1080i has over double the pixels per frame, but 720p has double the frames per second. So content with a framerate of 30fps or less but a resolution higher than 1280x720 is inherently better when output at 1080i; but content with a resolution of 1280x720 or lower but over 30fps is obviously better when output at 720p. Then there is content with resolutions higher than 1280x720 and frameates higher than 30fps, and that is when it comes down to a question of taste.

 

[macabre]

Picture quality is normally great over HDMI.
Your TV might need some seperate calibration for the HDMI input. Like black level and so on.
Also make sure you have all your TVs image enhancers set to off. Like digital noise reduction , stuff like that your TV might have.

 

[D3v0ur3r]

BAH! Figures. Ignorant consumer.

 

[D3v0ur3r]

Picture quality is normally great over HDMI.
Your TV might need some seperate calibration for the HDMI input. Like black level and so on.
Also make sure you have all your TVs image enhancers set to off. Like digital noise reduction , stuff like that your TV might have.

Hmmm. Why would I want those off when the picture looks great otherwise like my HDMI Cable channels & 360?

 

[macabre]

Hmmm. Why would I want those off when the picture looks great otherwise like my HDMI Cable channels & 360?

Why don`t you try and find out ?

 

[kyleb]

Noise reduction generally does more harm than good on clean signals, causing smudging and in some cases even color banding. But yeah, separate inputs generally require different picture settings to look their best.

As for Dirt, I'll bet that if you switch your 360 to 720p it will look about the same as it does at 1080i. and of couse still much better than it does on the PS3. I haven't played the PS3 version, but multiplatform games tend to look notably better on the 360.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Do you know of any modern games that use field rendering at all? I figure maybe some of the 480i only games on the Wii do, but I'd guess all the 360 and PS3 games just render full frames and interlace on output as needed since they need to support progressive output anyway.

That's what I'm thinking. I think a few PS3 download titles are notable for true 1080p rendering, and I presume that outputting to 1080i outputs interleaved fields from the full-resolution renders.

 

[Arwin]

Ah! So my post wasn't deleted, just a new thread created.

So here is the issue. I am just a bit frustrated with what I guess I may or may not be understanding about the 360, PS3, & my TV.

I have Dirt for the 360 which supports 1080i which is what I play it at & it looks great. I tried the Dirt demo on the PS3 & it looks like poo in comparison.

If you could be a little more specific on what the differences are, that would help us determine the exact cause. For instance, the 360's version of Dirt is, for most people, too bright (HDR / contrast levels) and has too high a contrast, for others it is great. The PS3 version is much more balanced, but depending on your set, that can make it look too dark for you. In this case, it is really a matter of balancing.

I am using HDMI for the PS3 & of course my 360 doesn't have HDMI.

There are actually some 360s out there with HDMI you know.

Here is a link to my TV & its specs.
http://www.hdtvsolutions.com/JVC-LT-40X776.htm

So like mine, it is a 1366x768.

In your case, a lot of things will depend on the scaler situation and how that affects your game. For instance, most games when you set the PS3 to 1280x720p will be upscaled by your TV to 1366x768. If your TV's scaler sucks, then if you do the same on the 360 and the 360's scaler is better, you'll have a better image using the 360, given that all other factors are identical.

Same kind of thing goes for 1080i. If you have your 360 scale the image to 1080i, then (depending also on the original game's resolution) you'll again have a two step scaling process, because your TV will take that image and scale it to 768p. In some cases, such scaling may end up taking away a lot of jaggies, again depending on how all the scalers involved work.

To determine what looks better on your TV with the PS3, I have decided to base that on in which mode the webbrowser looks best. You may want to give that option a try - also look for color banding, which is often worse if your TV does a lot of scaling (in my case that is true).

 

[D3v0ur3r]

There are actually some 360s out there with HDMI you know.

We got ours just before last Xmas. So the Elites were not out yet. No HDMI for me.

As far as Dirt goes on the 360. I had it first & imo it looks fantastic. With all the same settings & the PS3 it looks like ass. RFoM demo doesn't look that great either but I can't compare that to a 360 version.

Is this a case where the 360 just looks a lot better more often then not & its a pretty well kept secret?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Depends what you mean by 'better'. Describe the problems you have with the PS3 output. Is it blurry? Dark? Light? Different TVs handle different inputs in different ways, so you could find using composite or VGA gives better results than HDMI or DVI. Have you tried the XB360 on different inputs? That's something to do no matter what console you have in this overcomplicated times! But back to your point, if it's image quality you have issues with, the likely culprit is your TV, as generally there's been no complaints over PS3 IQ.

For those more knowledgeable, could this be one of those HDMI handshaking problems with the TV only getting 480p or something else weird?

 

[D3v0ur3r]

The PS3 reports its using 1080i & all the menu's look great . But the games do not seem very impressive so far compared to the 360 games I've played. I was wondering if I should get the HDMI to Composite cable.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

1080i

I just bought a PS3 last night & so far I am not sure its all that great. Question I can't seem to find direct answers to.

Does the PS3 do true 1080i in Movies & Games?

How many games do true 1080i? If yes to the 1st question.

Am I wrong or doesn't the 360 do true 1080i in a hell of a lot of games & demo's?

I'm starting to wonder if I should return my PS3 already. My TV supports all formats except 1080p but I honestly do not want to get something less (720p) then what the best is my TV can do (1080i).

1) 1080i is cheap alternative to true 1080p. It is still much higher resolution than 720P.

2) Modern televisions (LCD, DLP, Plasma, etc) are never 1080i no matter what untrained Best Buy/Circuit City/etc salesman/woman claims. If a modern TV is not "FullHD" 1080P (Sharp, Samsung, Sony, etc. all make FullHD) then the TV is 720P only.

3)If your TV is modern TV (LCD, Plasma, DLP, etc) and your TV "supports" 1080i, then set your PS3 to 720P output because that is what your TV is. Your TV is not 1080i. It only has 1080i INPUT support. Actual display capability is 720P (technically 1366x768, which is very close to 720).

3) No video game is 1080i. Xbox360 "supports" 1080i OUPUT which means it has a chip that takes even non-highdef games like Halo3 and stretches it to 1080i. This does not mean you can play Halo3 is 1080i. It is still low resoluton only it is stretched (like photo enlargement).

 

[D3v0ur3r]

Reduced to 720 & everything does look better.