Ps3 And HD Scaling Issues

DundalkKid

Howdy Folks,

I bought a ps3 this week and am now looking to buy a HD TV. However there are lots of articles on the internet about problems between the ps3 and TVs that don't support 720p. Supposely a large number of ps3 games will try to play at 720p but if your TV doesn't support 720p you will be changed to 480p as opposed to 1080p. It appears that some HD TVs will only support either of 720p or 1080p.

Just wondering has anyone come across this ?


Here a couple of the links

http://www.playstatic.com/news/205
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/in-brief-ps3-scaling-problems-on-old-hdtvs-217080.php

Cheers

LookingFor

Look for a 'HD Ready' TV. At the bare minimum it will support 720p and 1080i signals.

Thus if a game is 720p, your TV will accept it. If it's 1080p, your TV will accept it as a 1080i signal. Blu-ray will play back at 1080i on such a TV.

As far as I know, pretty much all HDTVs sold in Europe are 'HD Ready'.

Paulw

Most TVs do 560p/720p/1080i/p

Check with the TV before you buy.

Many of the PS3 games are 720p or 1080i/p

I've a Sony Bravia and it supports all modes needed for the PS3.

McDermotX

DundalkKid wrote:

Howdy Folks,

I bought a ps3 this week and am now looking to buy a HD TV. However there are lots of articles on the internet about problems between the ps3 and TVs that don't support 720p. Supposely a large number of ps3 games will try to play at 720p but if your TV doesn't support 720p you will be changed to 480p as opposed to 1080p. It appears that some HD TVs will only support either of 720p or 1080p.

Just wondering has anyone come across this ?


Here a couple of the links

http://www.playstatic.com/news/205
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/in-brief-ps3-scaling-problems-on-old-hdtvs-217080.php

Cheers

DundalkKid,
if you're buying a modern HD-Ready display, it will support 720p and 1080i (interlaced), as well as 480/576p........top dollar 1080p screens are 1080 panels which can also support 1080p (progressive) as well as the above resolutions..
Most PS3 games are 720p, so when using HDMI the PS3 will detect the highest supported resolutions.....in most cases with Irish HD-Ready screens, it'll be 720p and 1080i..
Games will play fine at 720p, but Blu-ray playback requires 1080i output at a minimum (otherwise it'll downscale to 480p)....The PS3 will be able to switch modes on the fly as long as your screen is OK
The vast majority of HDMI supported HD screens will be OK with the PS3, its mostly older sets before HD Ready certification that may run into issues..

Edit:
The lads beat me to it

DundalkKid

Cheers guys for the all the info :-)

Zombrex

DundalkKid wrote:

Howdy Folks,

I bought a ps3 this week and am now looking to buy a HD TV. However there are lots of articles on the internet about problems between the ps3 and TVs that don't support 720p. Supposely a large number of ps3 games will try to play at 720p but if your TV doesn't support 720p you will be changed to 480p as opposed to 1080p. It appears that some HD TVs will only support either of 720p or 1080p.

Just wondering has anyone come across this ?


Here a couple of the links

http://www.playstatic.com/news/205
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/in-brief-ps3-scaling-problems-on-old-hdtvs-217080.php

Cheers

The problem was with older HD-TVs that didn't support 720p, only 1080i

This isn't so much a problem for newer TVs that support 720p or 1080p.

Older HDTVs that don't have enough pixels for 720p can still support 1080i since you only need 540 actual pixels (though you need an interlance CRT HDTV, an LCD doesn't physically do interlance in the first place anyway). But this seems to confuse the PlayStation and make it want to go back down to 480p, which is non-High Definition.

It is more of an issue in America where CRT HDTVs are much more common than over in Europe, where everything is LCD or Plasma

scrapland

one last thing - make sure the TV has HDMI if you want to watch BluRay movies in HiDef. Otherwise they will be downscalled to the same resolution as DVD - making the process pretty much defunct.

Most TV's these days should at least offer 1 hdmi - but it's worth double checking.

trixter

Paulw wrote:

I've a Sony Bravia and it supports all modes needed for the PS3.

imagine that



on a side note does anyone know of a 1080p pci card? The only hdmi card I have seen does not do the copy protection stuff (which is enabled even during game play) so its useless to me for that. I have seen PAL but not HD pci cards. I also dont know what would work 'good' being this is my first tuner in europe.

I have a nice 30 inch monitor and I would love to use that instead of the old pal only tv (which is smaller)

Thanks

Noreik

Personally i dont have a degree in rocket science nor devine wisdom but a few things to be very wary on the 1080p front if you are looking to hook up a PS3 or xbox 360 elite (hdmi output rumoured to hit europe in summer you need to know thes games may have a 1080p60 output rather then 1080p30 output - whats the difference - 1920x1080 at 30 frames per second versus 1080p60 at 60 frames per second

the issue with the tv is the full definition FD1080P logo (in gold writing on the latest tv's) does'nt tell you if the tv shows a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 at only 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second, coupled with whether the tv hdmi input socket is hdmi version 1.3 and coupled with if the vga input takes and adaptor to put a component lead (rgb lead) into it - makes it difficult to make an informed choice

at the moment sony samsung and shap seem to be the front runners in the FD1080p stakes however going to their websites and looking at the tecnical specifications to get some plain english answers is like trying to get blood fom a stone only less enjoyable

trixter

Noreik wrote:

Personally i dont have a degree in rocket science nor devine wisdom but a few things to be very wary on the 1080p front if you are looking to hook up a PS3 or xbox 360 elite (hdmi output rumoured to hit europe in summer you need to know thes games may have a 1080p60 output rather then 1080p30 output - whats the difference - 1920x1080 at 30 frames per second versus 1080p60 at 60 frames per second

I dont have a degree either, but then rocket science isnt brain surgery

There are rumors that 1080p/60 doesnt have an 'official' standard behind it yet /30 does. If this is the case many TVs are likely to be /30 since they can legitly claim that they do 1080p and 'cheat'. 1080i is interlaced, at 60Hz give or take, so without beefing up anything they can typically do 1080p at half the refresh rate. At least with NTSC which is 29.97 frames/sec interlaced (and a little bit extra for VBI). This is what the US HD standard is, which appears to be adpoted elsewhere as well. PAL was generally about 50Hz (it has to do with the power which was the easiest way to tell the flyback transformer way back when to start a new frame, EU uses 50Hz power, US uses 60Hz power).

With that said, its likely that 1080p/60 is a far cry. But what I have read on the flaws in HDCP and requirements for vendors to support it, you *cannot* have a HDCP enabled card that would let you capture data. To do so would violate the spirit and intent of the HDCP deployment. Now its somewhat trivial to break (get keys from 40 devices which isnt *that* hard compared to other things, and do some simple algebra). These weaknesses have been published, but so far no one has created such a device that only strips out the info. There are actually about 5 attacks published on HDCP which is the big problem here.

Why oh why couldnt sony have just made it DVI in the first place (which has a higher possible screen resolution, especially when you consider DVI-D which is about 4x the resolution). And they still could have had their silly HDCP garbage.

But in a nutshell, HDCP works by the generation device (ps3 in this case) sending a nonce (disposable random number) and a couple other bits of info to the playback device (monitor/tv for example) and some math is applied and a response is used by both sides. The monitor also sends its info, which is fundamentally the same, although unique to it. Neither side gives up its keys outright. Because both sides share information that is unique to them, blacklists work. Once that is done, encrypted data is transfered.

Because you cant really spoof this without knowing what would be a mathmaticaly valid key, some degree of content protection can be ensured, even against eavesdropping on the signals. To get an assigned key you have to sign contracts, agree to hardware protection methods (to prevent key theft from the device), and other stuff.

Anyone making a pci card wouldnt qualify outright since the content must be encrypted from the generation device to the display device. The card would violate that rule, as such getting a card that doesnt violate some law (DMCA in the US, european nations have some law forced upon them by the EU, etc) would be difficult at best.

There are amplifiers (all? some? I know of at least one, which I wont reveal but if you cant find it you dont deserve to get it, although its over 200 EUR anyway) that strips the HDCP (which has to be negotiated for each endpoint anyway) and would allow you to play it on devices that do not support HDCP, such as the one card I have found. Effectively enabling you to get full resolution screen caps for a webpage, enabling you to play it via your computer to avoid the cost of both a high end monitor and a tv, etc.

I have a dell 3007wfp monitor, which supports HDCP so I really dont need to be bothered by this, and given its DVI I am not worried about any loss in quality since DVI can support higher resolutions than HDMI

Hopefully the mods dont censor this post, I have tried to keep it clean enough, but still informative on why things are the way they are.

Noreik

yikes!

"There are amplifiers (all? some? I know of at least one, which I wont reveal but if you cant find it you dont deserve to get it"

you don't by chance happen to work in marketing for either sony, microsoft, sharp or samsung?

trixter

Noreik wrote:

yikes!

"There are amplifiers (all? some? I know of at least one, which I wont reveal but if you cant find it you dont deserve to get it"

you don't by chance happen to work in marketing for either sony, microsoft, sharp or samsung?

heh.. discussions like this border on what the mods allow, I felt it best to be somewhat vague. there are many sites that talk about one device (I dont know if its blacklsited yet or not though, the blacklists are updated to your device, which has a 'serial number' only higher serials are applied to prevent rollback. If it is on anything your device will permanately blacklist the amp when you play that media). But basically the one I saw will take one input and two outputs. It just doesnt regenerate HDCP on the output side. Google is your friend.

The bigger points above were to explain how HDCP works and why cards like I asked for wont.