[freestyle]

I was following this thread on the Sony forums and none of the respondents seemed to be able to give a technically competent answer to what is going on.


Can someone here possibly explain how the PS3 is able to display 720p trailers on 1080i ONLY sets, and why the same method couldn't be used by the PS3 to display THE FINAL OUTPUT of a 720p game in the same way?


Here's the text of the original post for reference:

Quote:
I have a 1080i-only TV (Mitsubishi 65" rear projection), so I suffer from not being able to play 720p games in anything but 480p (this sucks, but is not the point of my post).


So last night I'm playing around with the various movie/demo clips I've downloaded when I noticed something strange- most of the game trailers (the two motorstorm ones and the R:FoM one) are in 720p natively (1280*720- you can read this in the "information" screen). The strange thing is, when I play these trailers, they display in 1080i.


Tha actual demos themselves for both these games won't run in 1080i , but the trailers will...


How\\Why is this happening? I thought the PS3 would not scale a 720p to a 1080i?


-Foo

 

[Jetrii]

I wasn't aware that this was new. I figured that the PS3 simply scaled trailers via software.

 

[freestyle]

^

So then what would the hiccup in the process be for doing the same with the final output stream of a game?

 

[delrmx01]

Is the set upscaling?

 

[freestyle]



Quote:
Originally Posted by delrmx01 /forum/post/0


Is the set upscaling?

No... his set is not capable of accepting a 720p signal. The PS3 (via the XMB) is showing the 720p trailer in 1080i... somehow.

 

[coneyparleg]

no the upscaling is on the PS3 end, does the same thing on my crt which wont take a 720p signal.

the PS3 upscalls the output of the 720p game trailers, but not for the games.


Very Interesting

 

[Jetrii]



Quote:
Originally Posted by freestyle /forum/post/0


^

So then what would the hiccup in the process be for doing the same with the final output stream of a game?

For that to work, it would have to process everything, render the frame to a buffer, scale the frame, then send it. It is much less intensive to scale a video.

 

[freestyle]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetrii /forum/post/0


For [scaling games] to work, it would have to process everything, render the frame to a buffer, scale the frame, then send it. It is much less intensive to scale a video.

I don't understand why... The PS3 is obviously capable of doing all that when the final output to picture is 720p (or even 1080p)... Why can't the "video upscale" occur as the last step? Meaning... why can't the PS3 just do everything it would normally do when running a game at 720p and then do that same software upscale to the finished 720p signal before it hits your monitor?

 

[Jetrii]



Quote:
Originally Posted by freestyle /forum/post/0


I don't understand why... The PS3 is obviously capable of doing all that when the final output to picture is 720p (or even 1080p)... Why can't the "video upscale" occur as the last step? Meaning... why can't the PS3 just do everything it would normally do when running a game at 720p and then do that same software upscale to the finished 720p signal before it hits your monitor?

Because it takes more power. Games run expecting a certain load on the system from the OS, the rest is theirs. If Sony suddenly added that, the FPS of every game would drop while scaling.


However, It is said that the PS3 does have a scaling chip built into the GPU, it is just disabled. I am not sure if it's an actual hardware fix or if a simple firmware upgrade could enable it though.

 

[sisaacs]

Because it's done in the software, the game people are perfectly capable of doing it the software also, the software being the game, they are just choosing not to.

 

[freestyle]

That seems to make sense, but with all this un-tapped power of the PS3 we hear about I don't know how this "much less intensive" process of just scaling the output video would tax the system in any measurable way.


Thanks for the explanation though. From what I understand, this video upscaling was added in one of the firmware updates. If anything, this makes it SEEM a bit more possible that there is a solution on the gaming side too.

 

[spwolf]

it is up to game maker to allow that - GT HD demo allows you to select both 720p and 1080i (for my screen).


On the other hand, video player will upscale everything to its current resolution...

 

[MaliciousBraham]



Quote:
Originally Posted by spwolf /forum/post/0


it is up to game maker to allow that - GT HD demo allows you to select both 720p and 1080i (for my screen).


On the other hand, video player will upscale everything to its current resolution...

Thats not upscaling, thats the actual rendering...


The point of upscaling a game is that you get the performance benefit of 720p, but still the display output of 1080i/p.


If you are rendering at 1080i/p, the performance wont be as good as 720p (unless you have the overhead to handle it)

 

[freestyle]

Just wanted to add...


This then means it is ABSOLUTELY possible for the PS3 to upscale DVDs from 480p then... Correct?

 

[GamerGuyX]



Quote:
Originally Posted by freestyle /forum/post/0


Just wanted to add...


This then means it is ABSOLUTELY possible for the PS3 to upscale DVDs from 480p then... Correct?

Yes.