PS3 and it's hardware scaler

[Daekwan]

Originally Posted by coneyparleg

I've been looking at the Vizio, seems to get mixed reviews but the price is sweet. I'm planning to move in hte near future so I want to wait until then to invest, and put together a nice home theater room.

I just get annoyed at the attitude that I should toss the crt, its not going anywhere, we still watch SD channels and nothing matches the crt for SD channels.

If theres ANYTHING avsforums should have taught you by now is never depend on reviews here to make a final judgement. Hell look at the people making comments in this forum, you already had 1 guy tell you go buy a new tv.

Costco has the greatest return policy in the world.

Pull $1699 out of the your bank account.. go get the Vizio 1080P 47" LCD.. take it home and hook it up.

If you dont like it take it back to Costco and get your $1699 back.

Did I mention you have technically an unlimited amount of time to 'test' this unit. So try and accomplish every piece of video viewing you can on it (PS3, HDTV, BR, HDDDVD, even hook your computer up to the VGA port).

Then make your final decision based upon YOUR eyes and YOUR experience.

5 years ago this site was great for making a final decision on an audiovideo product. I know because I was here 5 years ago.

These days with 100,000's of members and people with ridiculously varying degrees of opinions its hard to determine your azz from your eyeballs reading the millions of posts.

You already see how varying the degrees of opinion are in the PS forum concerning the PS3, would you advise someone to come to this forum to decide if they should get a PS3 or not?

[coneyparleg]

Originally Posted by Daekwan

If theres ANYTHING avsforums should have taught you by now is never depend on reviews here to make a final judgement. Hell look at the people making comments in this forum, you already had 1 guy tell you go buy a new tv.

Costco has the greatest return policy in the world.

Pull $1699 out of the your bank account.. go get the Vizio 1080P 47" LCD.. take it home and hook it up.

If you dont like it take it back to Costco and get your $1699 back.

Did I mention you have technically an unlimited amount of time to 'test' this unit. So try and accomplish every piece of video viewing you can on it (PS3, HDTV, BR, HDDDVD, even hook your computer up to the VGA port).

Then make your final decision based upon YOUR eyes and YOUR experience.

5 years ago this site was great for making a final decision on an audiovideo product. I know because I was here 5 years ago.

These days with 100,000's of members and people with ridiculously varying degrees of opinions its hard to determine your azz from your eyeballs reading the millions of posts.

You already see how varying the degrees of opinion are in the PS forum concerning the PS3, would you advise someone to come to this forum to decide if they should get a PS3 or not?

Good points,
only if there was a forum on how to convince the wife that you could never have too many hdtvs in one NYC apartment

[Dralt]

So, there is a hardware scaler in there...one less thing to be disappointed about.

Now, we know it's a standard issue: 1) Force developers to render into frame buffers that match output resolution or 2) let them have their games upscaled without efforts on their part.

It's sad when your customers ask you to lower your standards.

[nith]

Originally Posted by Dralt

So, there is a hardware scaler in there...one less thing to be disappointed about.

Now, we know it's a standard issue: 1) Force developers to render into frame buffers that match output resolution or 2) let them have their games upscaled without efforts on their part.

It's sad when your customers ask you to lower your standards.

Well Sony never did admit there was no hardware scaler in PS3; only Microsoft did somehow admitted for Sony.

[oldbucsfan]

not to render in 480 and just upscale to 720. Or render in 720 and upscale to 1080 and then claim that they were the highest resolution.

[Daekwan]

Originally Posted by coneyparleg

Good points,
only if there was a forum on how to convince the wife that you could never have too many hdtvs in one NYC apartment

Dude I belong to that forum too. Well the forum on how to convince the fiancee' that you could never have too many hdtvs in one small NJ apartment..



Seriously man.. I work in Chelsea (isnt is coldest day in the world today???) and live about 10 miles away in Paterson. Its me and my sign. other living in small 1 bedroom Jersey apt probably about 900 sq ft.

I actually have two of the Vizio 50" 720p plasmas, one in the bedroom one in the living room. And she loves BOTH of them. Her old tv was a one of the Chinese imitation 36" WEGA flat screens. While the picture is great that TV is about the size of a full size oven, no lie. And weighs about 120lbs.

The plasmas are both less than 4" thick, weigh about 80lbs, can be wall mounted, make the apartment look more modernized and most importantly creates more space for her to put more of her shyt.

Oh and I forgot to add the picture quality is incredible. Because thats the part WE care about.

But if you are seriously looking for advice, spin those female attributes off to her. About how much space you will gain with a plasma or LCD, how much more modern and contemp the apt will look, and of course how it would only be 'this much more' when you consider the difference after selling your old TV on craigslist.

Not to mention SHOW her the tv.. once you take her in Costco you will be in control. She will see so many things she wants to buy for herself and the home, she will forget you want to drop $1700 on a new tv..

Good luck!!

:0)

[Daekwan]

Originally Posted by nith

Well Sony never did admit there was no hardware scaler in PS3; only Microsoft did somehow admitted for Sony.

can you post a source.. or do you always make things up?

[jlohrenz]

Well despite all of the flames that get thrown on this, I'm still excited to hear about the scaler. I'm guessing they 'opened' it up as soon as they felt the SDK coding was stable enough to use it. Based on the fact that the PS3 was late to market, it was probably something they decided to sacrifice at release in order to prevent more delays. The code in the SDK is just as important as the scaler itself. Poorly designed code can degrade the capabilities of the scaler.

[freestyle]

Originally Posted by nith

Well Sony never did admit there was no hardware scaler in PS3; only Microsoft did somehow admitted for Sony.

Originally Posted by Daekwan

can you post a source.. or do you always make things up?

Microsoft on PS3's HD Problem
"Posting about his general PS3 impressions on his Microsoft Ozymandias blog Andre Vrignaud, director of technical strategy for Xbox Live, commented, "...it appears there's no internal hardware scaler in the PS3."

[ndskyz]

It APPEARS that he could be wrong. Just because he says so doesnt mean it does or doesnt. What matters is whats in the SDK's

Originally Posted by freestyle

Microsoft on PS3's HD Problem
"Posting about his general PS3 impressions on his Microsoft Ozymandias blog Andre Vrignaud, director of technical strategy for Xbox Live, commented, "...it appears there's no internal hardware scaler in the PS3."

[Daekwan]

1) its a personal blog.. not an official announcement

2) it appears theres no internal hardware scaler



So that would be the equivilant of me writing on my Blog that OJ allegedly killed Nicole..

[freestyle]

nith said "Microsoft somehow admitted for Sony"...

Who said the announcement was official?... it was a quote from an Xbox Live employee...

Not sure what there is to be defensive about... Sony hasn't confirmed or denied the existence of a scaler and a MS employee has stated that he's pretty sure there isn't... Isn't that all that nith posted?

"My guess is the 'fix' they're working on is going to be a bit of streamlining in the dashboard (perhaps a switch to automatically change back to 1080i/p when returning from a game), but the core issue isn't going to be fixed." - Vrignaud

Originally Posted by Daekwan

So that would be the equivilant of me writing on my Blog that OJ allegedly killed Nicole..

OK... Sure... Now what company do you represent?

[Daekwan]

Freestyle I'm agreeing with you, its the Niths comment that I have a problem with.

What I'm saying is that was NEVER an official announcement from MS saying such..

Factually all you can provide is a employee stating his personal opinion about what appears to be or appears not to be.. citing no technical proof just his personal observation..

[freestyle]

I'm still interested in this discussion:

The video scaler itself remains shrouded in mystery, as strange as it may seem, but at least now we can say with confidence that it does indeed exist. There are multiple reasons for this continuing secrecy, and insiders are reluctant to discuss them even off the record, nevermind for publication. Nonetheless, the reasons behind SCEI's choices are not our subject today. While a great deal could (and will) be said about the nature of this scaler in the future, today's article will focus on the recently exposed functionality; the details of its hardware and the way that it is integrated into the PlayStation 3’s architecture will be reserved for a later article.

My only guess is they want to make sure developers aren't cheating and creating games in less than HD and relying on the PS3 to upscale it... and then slap 720p or 1080i/p on the box!??

[Scotty L]

Originally Posted by Daekwan

The guy has a right to be dissapointed and shouldnt have to buy a new tv to have a resolution supported on the TV he already had.

Right to be disappointed yes, but we have a different opinion on the second part of your sentence. Sometimes you just have to upgrade in this hobby. I'm a little tiffed my H/K is obsolete because it doesn't do HDMI and the next-gen audio formats but I'm happy the industry is advancing at the same time.

Oh well, just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that. Sorry I came off so harsh.

[Dralt]

Originally Posted by Daekwan

can you post a source.. or do you always make things up?

We all know Microsoft spent 2 months going around to any media outlet and pundit, showing Ana, their hardware scaler, and clearly stating it guaranteed the superiority of their console.

[Dralt]

Originally Posted by Daekwan

Freestyle I'm agreeing with you, its the Niths comment that I have a problem with.

What I'm saying is that was NEVER an official announcement from MS saying such..

Factually all you can provide is a employee stating his personal opinion about what appears to be or appears not to be.. citing no technical proof just his personal observation..

Gee, come on, the 360 is not your child and Microsoft is not your family. Day after day, your posts lead us to believe otherwise.

[Kingram]

Daekwan , You accused Nith of always making things up and asked for a link.
He provided you with the link and now you want to split Hairs over what level of authority the Microsoft employee has. It takes a man to admit his mistakes.
You need to apologize to Nith and let it go. thanks

[briankmonkey]

Daekwan, don't forget with 2 50" Plasma's they help keep the place a bit warmer

[Darknight]

I'm not sure that article is totally accurate since the hardware scaler was available to developers prior to launch. The problem was developers were not allowed to use it in their games. There was a specific note that the hardware scaler was not to be used or the game would not pass approval. So I'm not sure where the original article got their info from and I haven't checked specifically to see what may have changed in the SDK relating to that which may have caused him to say such a thing. I do know I used it at one point so that is how I knew it existed as well as the documentation referring to it which has been known for some time now to developers. The article is very suspect in its valildity.

[freestyle]

Originally Posted by Darknight

I'm not sure that article is totally accurate since the hardware scaler was available to developers prior to launch. The problem was developers were not allowed to use it in their games. There was a specific note that the hardware scaler was not to be used or the game would not pass approval. So I'm not sure where the original article got their info from and I haven't checked specifically to see what may have changed in the SDK relating to that which may have caused him to say such a thing. I do know I used it at one point so that is how I knew it existed as well as the documentation referring to it which has been known for some time now to developers. The article is very suspect in its valildity.

Darknight... you're confusing me... Isn't the article saying that the new SDK acknowledges the scaler and reveals a method for horizontal scaling?

What is the question about the validity? It seems to be saying what you are saying... Or am I not understanding?

[Suhnder]

Good news. I hope this means PS2 games will possibly upscaled as well in the future...

[nith]

There were two guys, Henson and Moore (I think from Xbox 360 design team). They went to CNET to demonstrate xbox 360 scaler ANA. There was even video for the demonstration as well. Now I cannot find it in CNET site. Maybe it wasn't valid anymore so they took it off?

Here is some reference: http://arstechnica.com/articles/headstart.ars/2

I know that it wasn't come from the PR dept.; however I think from the top down they supported this presentation.

edit: if the information is posted in the forum, I'll take that as a personal blog.
but if they went to CNET to give the presentation that means they represented the company and therefore the company is responsible for the comment they made.

Which company that does a formal official announcement on the competitor products?

[IeraseU]

I wonder if they implented this into games that only just recently went gold, such as Virtua Fighter 5 and Sonic.

[Krevnik]

Originally Posted by Richard713

If this issue affected me I would not take any solace in the article posted. Basically with games needing to add support for the feature and 'missing' vertical scaling it does sound somewhat broken still. I wonder how long until a game is released that uses the new scaling feature.

The lack of vertical scaling with this solution doesn't matter. If this article is true, my belief that the engineers behind Sony are bizarre geniuses has been reaffirmed. Their face to the world is still pretty horrible, but the geeks making stuff work are some of the best I have seen.

When rendering in this 960x1080 mode, you can get near-1080p visual quality, at 720p cost. The key to this is that the human eye doesn't mind horizontal stretching nearly as much as vertical stretching when it comes to pixel shape. This is partly why anamorphic DVDs work as well as they do at providing the wider aspect ratios in 740x480 resolution (which isn't even as wide as 16:9).

Not a bad solution for getting around the RAM limitations, if vertical scaling isn't possible/ready yet. Although it is good for getting more games that support "1080p" out the door as well.

[JD23]

Originally Posted by Darknight

I'm not sure that article is totally accurate since the hardware scaler was available to developers prior to launch. The problem was developers were not allowed to use it in their games. There was a specific note that the hardware scaler was not to be used or the game would not pass approval. So I'm not sure where the original article got their info from and I haven't checked specifically to see what may have changed in the SDK relating to that which may have caused him to say such a thing. I do know I used it at one point so that is how I knew it existed as well as the documentation referring to it which has been known for some time now to developers. The article is very suspect in its valildity.

With the uproar from the 1080i only crowd, can you provide any insight as to why use of the scalar was prohibited?

[freestyle]

Someone on another forum suggested that maybe some of the functions of the PS3 have been limited so as not to canabalize the Sony backed blu-ray format (which has plenty of other hardware makers making blu-ray players). It is already the cheapest blu-ray player, if the higher end players had NOTHING new to offer (ie upscaling) maybe they thought they'd be shooting themselves in the foot a bit with 3rd party support?

A theory that makes sense thinking back to the original Xbox and the hidden progressive scan dvd player functionality that you could only unlock with a modded xbox.

Possible?

[nith]

Originally Posted by Kingram

Daekwan , You accused Nith of always making things up and asked for a link.
He provided you with the link and now you want to split Hairs over what level of authority the Microsoft employee has. It takes a man to admit his mistakes.
You need to apologize to Nith and let it go. thanks

It's alright. If that was his opinion; I'm fine. There was no heart feeling for me.

[mmukalian]

Another thought (again, my opinion, not factual) is that the usage of a scaler to scale an image from its native resolution to another is not considered "True HD", given that it had to be scaled to that. Combine this with the fact that Sony's been trying to push the whole "True HD" thing, it does kinda make sense to have them not include access to the scaler to force developers to write games for native resolutions.

Again, an opinion.

[freestyle]

^^
Yeah, that's what I was trying to say here . Don't know if it is true or not.