PS3 vs 360 vs Bravia • Gaming • Digital Foundry • Eurogamer.net

oupe 3 Oct 2009 11:36:40 84 posts
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I've got my 360 and ps3 hooked up to a Sony 32d3000 (720p, hd ready). The 360 outputs at "optimal resolution" which is 13??x768. It produces a nice, sharp picture.

However, when the ps3 is set to output to 720p the in-game picture quality looks appalling at moments. The Wipeout HD menu for example looks very shitty, fonts are ugly, etc. The same thing happens with the new Katamari intro, I can almost count the pixels in the Namco logo.

When the ps3 is set to 1080p output, these effects don't appear and stuff looks smooth. Does this mean that the ps3 scaler isn't very good and the one in my tv is fine or vice versa?

phAge 3 Oct 2009 12:07:13 25,487 posts
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AFAIK, the PS3 scaler is pretty damn good.

Not sure what your problem is, though. Sorry.

Retroid Moderator 3 Oct 2009 12:14:40 45,464 posts
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The PS3 scaler only does its job horizontally, IIRC.

That's why there's all that stuff about Wipeout HD being 1080p but varying the horizontal res as needed; because the vertical res doesn't change, the scaler can make sure it still pumps out 1920x1080p.

oupe 3 Oct 2009 12:50:50 84 posts
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@phAge
This is what happens:
720p: http://i38.tinypic.com/2rw6pnp.jpg
1080p: http://i37.tinypic.com/qx6kau.jpg
Note the 'r''s in the word 'Forever'

(photos courtesy of oef!'s own DF with high-tech shaky hands and a 5MP N95)

@retroid
So, if I understand correctly, the PS3 would scale 1024x768 to 993x768 and not to 993x744 (keeping the aspect ratio (bogus numbers of course))

Retroid Moderator 3 Oct 2009 22:37:53 45,464 posts
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oef! wrote:
@retroid
So, if I understand correctly, the PS3 would scale 1024x768 to 993x768 and not to 993x744 (keeping the aspect ratio (bogus numbers of course))

Kinda, yeah. It allows them to get increased vertical resolutions with lower RAM and processing requirements.

Beyond 3D forum thread:

PS3
For whatever reason, the Pure Video scaler in the G7x derived GPU (RSX) is gimped to horizontal scaling of specific front buffer resolutions. See B3D Article
As of the January 2007 PS3 SDK, only the following front buffer resolutions are supported for hardware scaling to 1920x1080p: 960x1080 1280x1080, 1440x1080 and 1600x1080
Games whose back buffers are rendered at strange resolutions must upscale the front buffer (at a cost of extra memory) to either 1280x720 (720p output) or to one of the acceptable 1080p resolutions. (Note: native resolution = back buffer resolution, front buffer = image for displaying/hardware scaling)