With the 360 you can buy an vga adpator and plug it into any old monitor for a cheap way to experience HD gaming. Am I right in saying the PS3 does not support vga output, and instead you need a hdcp compliant monitor. I was just wondering, is there any technical reason for this, why the 360 officially supports vga output and Sony doesn't with the ps3? Or is it purelly a marketing decision?
Why do Sony not support vga output from PS3?
- Thread starter mjdted
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Vitaly Vidmirov
Newcomer
HDCP is required for Bluray DRM system
I think purely marketing, as you will find that if you look hard enough, you can in fact find VGA adapters that work with the PS3. A friend of mine is using one.
The main reason the 360 got one in the first place was originally that there wasn't an HDMI port on it in the first place, so this was the only way to go on modern displays. But it's still very useful that it has one.
I didn't need one for the PS3 myself though, as I have DVI/HDCP on my PC Monitor.
Red Herring
Newcomer
On a slightly lesser note it also allowed the Xbox 360 to do DVD upscaling as upscaling is officially only permitted via HDMI though VGA/DVI are exceptions.
I thought I heard once that the PS2 linux kit came with a VGA output cable though it's probably rare to find such a thing and who knows if it would work on the PS3.
There are plenty of component to VGA adapters out there that work just fine with the PS3 on VGA displays.
I thought I heard once that the PS2 linux kit came with a VGA output cable though it's probably rare to find such a thing and who knows if it would work on the PS3.
There are plenty of component to VGA adapters out there that work just fine with the PS3 on VGA displays.
archangelmorph
Veteran
There was a massive thread on this in the general console forum, a simple search should pull up all the info needed..
Oh and the PS2 linux kit VGA cable will work with the PS3 provided your monitor supports sync on green IIRC..
Yes, every game works over VGA.
Gradthrawn
Veteran
I thought the reason VGA output is not officially supported was simple, no internal scaler (or completely working scaler), unlike the 360. Makes VGA support a lot more complicated in terms of resolution requirements for games, vs just having a scaler, well, scale them.
How does it handle resolution and aspect? e.g. a 1280x1024 LCD is the wrong aspect, resolution, and not widescreen.
It handles it as simply as you can possibly imagine. E.g. it sends out the resolutions it knows (480p, 720p, 1080p) and if, how, and how well that works is up to the receiving monitor. The guy I know had a non DHCP 1920x1080p screen and used this VGA solution to get 1920x1080p on it.
About what I guessed considering the scaler situation i.e. It doesn't work well at all on 4:3 and 5:4 aspect screens.
This would be a major reason Sony wouldn't support VGA (signficant image distortion). I kevetched when less than a handful (2 or 3) of 360 games didn't properly "letterbox" 720p games on 1280x1024 displays. The complaints about every game being stretched vertically wouldn't be worth the cost of support/complaints.
You do a lot of kvetching at the moment Joshua. Maybe you'd better have a doc look into that? 
The monitor thing was IMO a very bad move. With the price of PS3 coming down, I'm tempted. But if I need to buy a new display for it, forget it. If I could play it letterboxed on my 1280x720 monitor, with the added bonus of FreeView TV reception so I can use the PS3 as a TV tuner on same monitor, Sony may have bagged themselves an (entirely unjustified and inappropriate) sale.
The monitor thing was IMO a very bad move. With the price of PS3 coming down, I'm tempted. But if I need to buy a new display for it, forget it. If I could play it letterboxed on my 1280x720 monitor, with the added bonus of FreeView TV reception so I can use the PS3 as a TV tuner on same monitor, Sony may have bagged themselves an (entirely unjustified and inappropriate) sale.
You do a lot of kvetching at the moment Joshua. Maybe you'd better have a doc look into that?
The monitor thing was IMO a very bad move. With the price of PS3 coming down, I'm tempted. But if I need to buy a new display for it, forget it. If I could play it letterboxed on my 1280x720 monitor, with the added bonus of FreeView TV reception so I can use the PS3 as a TV tuner on same monitor, Sony may have bagged themselves an (entirely unjustified and inappropriate) sale.
1280x720? I'm sure you meant 1280x1024
There's no way of telling how your monitor will handle the 1280x720p signal. Sometimes it will do 1x1 pixel mapping, other times it will scale. If it does the 1x1 pixel, then you're fine obviously, and will get your letterbox automatically.
If it does scale though, I'm wondering if you can turn off widescreen as you can sometimes do in games and in the xmb. May not be available for 720p resolutions though, I would have to check that.
EDIT: here's one description I came across:
http://www.ps3hacks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=3546
It's not ideal though, personally I would probably rather invest in a new display, as the prices for these are coming down nicely and they benefit your PC experience too.
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1280x720? I'm sure you meant 1280x1024
Oh yes there is! Set Windows to 1280x720, and it was stretched.
There's nothing stopping you from doing it; you just may need to toss on an extra adaptor head since they don't have an "AV Multi-Out > VGA" cord. For instance, using a $4 S-Video/RCA-to-VGA adaptor from Monoprice.You do a lot of kvetching at the moment Joshua. Maybe you'd better have a doc look into that?
The monitor thing was IMO a very bad move. With the price of PS3 coming down, I'm tempted. But if I need to buy a new display for it, forget it. If I could play it letterboxed on my 1280x720 monitor, with the added bonus of FreeView TV reception so I can use the PS3 as a TV tuner on same monitor, Sony may have bagged themselves an (entirely unjustified and inappropriate) sale.
And that's if your monitor ONLY has VGA. If it has DVI, just go HDMI-to-DVI. You won't be HDCP compliant, but there's nothing to worry about from that for years.
Unless you have a PS3, which has that enabled all the time...
I think you're thinking of the option in Bluray to enforce digital-only HD output (i.e. no more component out for HD) which isn't planned to be used for the initial few years of use (last I heard, anyway).
If you plan on using HDMI or DVI from a PS3, better make sure you can support HDCP.
Going from composite or S-Video to VGA requires a transcoder, and those const considerably more than $4.
And yeah, you need HDCP for digital output from a PS3, as well as for commercial HD movie playback from any Blu-ray or HD DVD player. The few more years thing is the ICT, which will require a digital connection for full resolution playback, and otherwise downsampled to 960x540 or lower prior to being output over analog.
Oh yes there is! Set Windows to 1280x720, and it was stretched.
Well even that isn't as clear cut as you might think. On the same monitor, my older computer's image got stretched, while my laptop's image was shown with 1:1 pixel mapping. And we're talking about the same resolution, both over VGA. Strange huh?
Just realised this is over DVI, bit VGA. No HDCP as I don't think it was invented when this monitor was produced! Is a signal over DVI likely to be differently scaled? I'd have thought in your example, the VGA output was adding blank space in the signal timings from the laptop. I can't see why the monitor would scale on one VGA input and not on another if they're supposedly identical signals. As PS3 clearly doesn't do such things with VGA timing, it ought to be scaled always.
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