Ps3 1.80 update (upscaling)

[BHvrd]

I also hear that the European emulator runs games smoother than the actually EE/GS combo in the NTSC PS3's. If that is true, then there IS no rush to run out and buy one with the chips still in it in the US "before it is too late". This would definitely be a selling point for me if Sony really nails it.

Unless they add the software emulation to the existing EE NTSC ps3's. In which case you would be able to play more ps2 games obviously.

We'll see I guess, hopefully they serve both equally, though non-EE seems it would have further to catch up in regards to actual playback of games.

[j_factor]

Sounds like much ado about nothing to me. Oooh, now I can upscale Jumping Flash! to 1080p. Whoopie.

[Anthony1]

Sounds like much ado about nothing to me. Oooh, now I can upscale Jumping Flash! to 1080p. Whoopie.

It is a pretty big deal for watching regular DVD movies though. Well, for anybody that doesn't already have an upscalling dvd player. I didn't have one prior to this firmware upgrade, and after doing the upgrade, I put in Cars by Pixar, and it almost looks HD. At least it almost looked HD until I rented Pirates of the Carribbean on Blu Ray, and saw the actual preview of Cars on Blu Ray (I normally NEVER purchase movies but this will be very, very tempting)

I have a 16'x24' room. The seating is stadium with two couches on the back wall, two couches in front of them, a row of 6 theater chairs and another row of 6 theater chairs.

I usually sit in the back, but my kids like to sit in the front. Guests usually pick the second row of couches.

Hey, could you please take some pics of the room, and the seating arangement? My room is a similar size, and I would be interested in seeing how you did all the seating. Sounds awesome!

[roushimsx]

(I normally NEVER purchase movies but this will be very, very tempting.

I've pretty much quit buying movies since signing up for NetFlix, but I'll still be buying the Pixar movies on BD. Brad Bird and John Lasseter are just so damned awesome

[Anthony1]

I've pretty much quit buying movies since signing up for NetFlix, but I'll still be buying the Pixar movies on BD. Brad Bird and John Lasseter are just so damned awesome

Yeah, I'm not the type to buy movies either, but I do have two young boys, and they have certain movies that they can watch over and over and over, and I don't mind buying the ones that they love that I can also enjoy. I definitely enjoy all the Pixar movies. I'm not sure they've made a total dud yet. To get those movies in High Def, with the lossless sound, yep, I'm gonna buy em. Eventually, I'll buy them. I don't see myself running out and paying $34.99 plus tax or whatever it is they are going to cost, but once I can get them for under $20 out the door, I will.

[heybtbm]

I also hear that the European emulator runs games smoother than the actually EE/GS combo in the NTSC PS3's. If that is true, then there IS no rush to run out and buy one with the chips still in it in the US "before it is too late". This would definitely be a selling point for me if Sony really nails it.

That's wishful thinking at best. Sony will never get around to emulating even a fraction of their entire PS1/PS2 catalog.

Also...if 360 emulation can be used for comparison, even the "working" titles glitch up all the time. Playing Xbox games on a 360 is not the same as playing Xbox games on a Xbox...not even close. Full emulation of PS2 and Xbox games is much more glamorous is theory than it is in practice.

[veronica_marsfan]

Anybody tried out the DVD upscsaling? How is it?

Question:

Why would you want to upscale a DVD (or PS1/2 game). Why not just play them in their original 480-scanline resolution?

(curious)

[Emuaust]

That's wishful thinking at best. Sony will never get around to emulating even a fraction of their entire PS1/PS2 catalog.

Also...if 360 emulation can be used for comparison, even the "working" titles glitch up all the time. Playing Xbox games on a 360 is not the same as playing Xbox games on a Xbox...not even close. Full emulation of PS2 and Xbox games is much more glamorous is theory than it is in practice.

Well that was a load of shit, Im sorry but how do you think they do the BC in the Euro consoles
without the Ps2/PSX chipsets? What, Magic?, yeap Emulation and its a little more then a small FRACTION........

Also dont compare Xbox360 BC to PS3 BC the euro consoles are showing MS up to no end.

[heybtbm]

Well that was a load of shit, Im sorry but how do you think they do the BC in the Euro consoles
without the Ps2/PSX chipsets? What, Magic?, yeap Emulation and its a little more then a small FRACTION.

Can you tell me specifically what I said that was a "load of shit"? Emulation is always glitchy. That's a simple fact.

Don't get angry with me because Sony screwed the European PS3 owners with emulation instead of perfect backwards compatibility right out of the box.

Also dont compare Xbox360 BC to PS3 BC the euro consoles are showing MS up to no end.

?

You lost me there.

[roushimsx]

Why would you want to upscale a DVD (or PS1/2 game). Why not just play them in their original 480-scanline resolution?

It depends on a number of factors, really. Your TV, the original resolution of the source, and the display mode all play a part in it. PS1 games almost always were not 480i (most were much lower, such as 240p) and a bulk of PS1 games were 480i, while most modern HDTVs are 720p, 1080p, or 1080i. You're going to have to stretch the image to fit the pixels for the best look at your TV's native res (unless you like postage stamps), and for most 4:3 PS1/PS2 games, that means scaling them up to ~1436x1080 or 958x720 (whatever your TV's native res it).

Most TV's have built in scaler chips and a lot of DVD players do as well, but the quality of the scaler differs pretty wildly. Imagine breaking out an image in photoshop and playing around with different resizing methods, like bilinear, bicubic, and nearest neighbor...it's a bit like that. You're still bound by the quality of the source material, but depending on the method used for stretching it, you can really make it look a hell of a lot nicer.

It's why sometimes you'll see an HDTV with a normal SD cable signal coming it and it looks like pure poo while othertimes it'll look pretty decent on another model of TV. On lower quality upscaling DVD players the scaler is most likely inferior to the one in your TV already. In comparison, the PS3's scaler seems to be pretty fucking sexcellent, especially as a bonus on what's generally considered, "just an overpriced game console".

[mailman187666]

WOW. Just.

WOW

Play GOW 2 with the "full screen" option ON. Do NOT use progressive scan (obviously). Holy shit!!! Consider this new feature the Jaggy Eliminator.

this may be a dumb question, but why would you leave progressive scan off? is it because it would automatically set it for 480P only?

[Emuaust]

Can you tell me specifically what I said that was a "load of shit"? Emulation is always glitchy. That's a simple fact.

Don't get angry with me because Sony screwed the European PS3 owners with emulation instead of perfect backwards compatibility right out of the box.



?

You lost me there.

How much time have you spent with your EU PS3?
The Emulation is a lot better then what you give it credit for, Im angry at your ignorance
to be honest. The 360 Emulation of Xbox games is a glitchy mess far from what we
see with the PS3.

Im sorry if your offended and I dont really want to start a flame war but the truth of the matter is
us EU gamers Have EU ps3's and have some idea what the software emulation is like

[Cinder6]

Okay, but how well do upconverted DVD's look through HDMI?

Cause that's the real question for me. If this thing will do a better job of upconverting than my standard Samsung unconverting player, as well as make the PS2 versions of the Brother's In Arms games look good, and allow me to enjoy GTA IV AND play High Def movies, Sony totally has my $600 this coming January.

From what I've seen of it (and admittedly, I only tested The Fellowship of the Ring), it looked great. Of course, I don't have an upscaling DVD player to test it with (well, it's not hooked up; this is a new TV), but the difference between what the PS3 outputs now and what it output before the update is night and day. I am now completely satisfied with my purchase.

[roushimsx]

this may be a dumb question, but why would you leave progressive scan off? is it because it would automatically set it for 480P only?

The games will run in whatever resolution they were last configured for, not just what the XMB tells them to run in. Kind of makes sense, because the PS2 had no way of telling the game to run at a set resolution (unlike the Xbox where the dashboard controlled it). So when you enable progressive scan in the game, you're telling it to go from whatever you were upscaling to back down to 480p.

It'd be neat if they found a way to get around that in a future patch for the backwards compatibility, but I'm not getting my hopes up on anything happening before the full software emulation rolls out.

[roushimsx]

I didn't think it deserved its own thread, so I thought I'd bump this one...

IGN Takes on PS3's Upscaling

Three things to note:
1) The writer of the article made zero effort in trying to get the shots to match up worth a damn
2) The full resolution shots are in 640x480 (both original and upscaled). How are you supposed to see how the games look upscaled when they're in the original resolution...?
3) He clearly states that he enabled progressive in God of War 2, oblivious to the fact that this would drop the game down to 480p from whatever else it was run in.

My theory: He snagged all of these shots over svideo with the smoother turned on. You can tell because of how Marvel vs Capcom looks. Pretty sad that a basement dwelling poopsocker can churn out a better blog post than their paid staffers

Shoddy, slanted journalism, but to be expected from IGN.

Hopefully they take the article down and replace it with an honest comparison. I'd LOVE to see some native res shot comparisons.

edit - Feel free to digg it if you want to highlight IGN's retardness. If not, that's cool, too. I just get a kick out of watching "professional" sites completely fudge shit like this.

[Captain Wrong]

My PS2 games are in transit, so I really can't check that, but the DVD upscaler doesn't seem to be anybetter than what I got in my TV. That's not a knock, I guess it's more a compliment to the Visio I'm watchng through.

Sidenote: Personally, I'm finding BC to be less and less of an important feature for me as I'm getting more and more into imports. I'm still going to have to have my PS2 with hard drive and blue debugger PSX hooked up when all is said and done.

[xmagxus]

Does this update mean that I can no play resistance on my oldest HDTV.... my oldest HDTV is only 480p/1080i which always meant resistance would downscale to 480p.

Will ps3 games also now upscale to the highest resolution on your tv? or is this limited to dvd movies and older games?

[roushimsx]

new article up on IGN about the upscaling

This time they completely make up for the previous article (which sucked) and previous screenshots (which sucked). Solid cases for and against upscaling with native res screenshots that match up wonderfully and even a comparison of upscaling vs native rendering.

God, I hope the dude that shit out the other article got his pee pee slapped.