1080P and 360/PS3

[Matt2]

I've been using my PS3 and xbox 360 on my cheapo 32" Olevia LCD with one HDMI input for 2 years now. While 720p is nice, the enthusiast in me always wants, but can't afford the best.

My PC took a crap the other day so I went out and bought a hdmi to dvi adapter and connected my PS3 to my 24" 1920x1200 Gateway monitor.

I enabled 1080p output in the xmb and the xmb was nice and sharp. When I loaded up MSG4, I was half expecting to be stunned, but instead I was horrified by how the game looked.

I looked on the back of the box and it said 1080p on the back, but sure enough, my monitor was reporting 720p. I turned on 1:1 pixel mapping and the game looked good again, but what's the point if I lose almost half the viewable area to black bars?

Next I tried to unselec 720p in the xmb thinking 1080p might be forced, but that only made it look considerably worse.

I tried RE5, Fallout 3 and dead space, all with more or less the same result. Instead of getting a nice clean , crisp picture that my PC gave me, all I got was a fuzzy, stretched, low res joke. Same with my xbox using same cable and adapter.

Now I understand why it is happening. He systems are rendering the games at 720p or lower native and there is some poor attempt at scaling similar to running a PC game at a non native resolution.

What I am wondering is if the same thing happens on 1080p tvs? Everyone I know who owns a nice 1080p tv and a PS3 tells me how amazing games look and how I'm missing out by only having 720p tvs.

Yet when I hook the systems back up to my 720p tv, I am amazed by how much better it looks than at 1080p.

Is there something different about how actual tvs handle non native resolutions? I just can't wrap my mind around someone spending $2000 on a legit TV and then being greeted by the god awful mess that I was.

Besides having most of the screen filled without black bars when using 1:1 pixel mapping, there is no indication that either system is doing anything else besides stretching a non native resolution.

 

[gorcorps]

From what I understand the scalers in the TVs are better optimized at scaling the video game resolutions to 1080p. So the 1080p TVs should look considerably better than your monitor. I'm not 100% positive though.

 

[zerocool84]

The only reason to get 1080p is for Blu-ray cus there is no game that is true 1080p. They are just scaled accordingly. No reason to get it for playing console games.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Matt2
Besides having most of the screen filled without black bars when using 1:1 pixel mapping, there is no indication that either system is doing anything else besides stretching a non native resolution.

Thats pretty much all of what they do. There's quite a few games that even render only 640ish lines and just scale it up to 720p.

There are a few games that do true 1080p, even on the 360, but nothing worth getting excited over. The simple fact is that at true 1080p, there's twice as many pixels to push than at 720p, and thats just too much for our poor consoles to handle while putting out decent graphics, even the "supercomputer" in the PS3.

You can set your console to 720p and let the TV scale it, or set it to 1080p and let the console scale it. Pretty much the same result in the end, although at 1080p it should render the menu system in 1080p. Whoopee!

 

[Thraxen]

Originally posted by: gorcorps
From what I understand the scalers in the TVs are better optimized at scaling the video game resolutions to 1080p. So the 1080p TVs should look considerably better than your monitor. I'm not 100% positive though.

This has been my experience as well. Computer monitors are terrible scalers. Every computer game I've ever tried to run at something other than my LCD's native resolution looked horrid unless I ran it windowed so that it displayed without scaling.

 

[DaveSimmons]

PS3 games look great on my 1080p 50" Samsung DLP. It must have a good scaler though since even my PS2 slim looks pretty good with a component cable.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
PS3 games look great on my 1080p 50" Samsung DLP. It must have a good scaler though since even my PS2 slim looks pretty good with a component cable.

Or you sit far enough away from your screen not to see the jagged edges.

I really hope that the next gen consoles are powerful enough to handle rendering current games at that time in 1920x1080 4xAA/16xAF. While it does look like there is some AA being applied in most games on the 360, they still look low-rez and a lot of them look like they do not have much AF going on. I've taken 16xAF (high quality) for granted on the PC for years now.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
PS3 games look great on my 1080p 50" Samsung DLP. It must have a good scaler though since even my PS2 slim looks pretty good with a component cable.

Or you sit far enough away from your screen not to see the jagged edges.

I really hope that the next gen consoles are powerful enough to handle rendering current games at that time in 1920x1080 4xAA/16xAF. While it does look like there is some AA being applied in most games on the 360, they still look low-rez and a lot of them look like they do not have much AF going on. I've taken 16xAF (high quality) for granted on the PC for years now.

Yea same here but even on PC's you need a pretty decent system to run everything smoothly @ 1920x1080 4xAA/16xAF and I'd doubt consoles would be able to do that and not have slowdowns.

 

[mmnno]

Originally posted by: zerocool84
The only reason to get 1080p is for Blu-ray cus there is no game that is true 1080p. They are just scaled accordingly. No reason to get it for playing console games.

Wipeout is all 1080p/60, all the time :] (well, not 60fps all the time, but pretty damn close)

I notice a big difference between 1080p and 720p on my 16:10 computer monitor, but it's a lot bigger difference with my 360.

 

[sswingle]

The difference between 16:9 and 16:10 shouldn't make your black bars THAT big.... And of course it looks bad when things are stretched taller to make up for it.

Not sure why everyone is going on about scalers. If the PS3 is outputting the 1080p, the monitor has nothing to scale...

 

[mmntech]

Originally posted by: mmnno

Originally posted by: zerocool84
The only reason to get 1080p is for Blu-ray cus there is no game that is true 1080p. They are just scaled accordingly. No reason to get it for playing console games.

Wipeout is all 1080p/60, all the time :] (well, not 60fps all the time, but pretty damn close)

I notice a big difference between 1080p and 720p on my 16:10 computer monitor, but it's a lot bigger difference with my 360.

Depends on what kind of monitor you use. I finally caved in and bought an HDTV because PS3 games look horrible on my 1440x800 monitor as it couldn't scale the pictures properly, or take a 1080p signal. Games ended up looking washed and blurry. 1920x1200 is a lot closer to 1080p though. I'm not sure why they don't make consoles that can output to standard VGA and WVGA resolutions though. A lot of people do use monitors with them.

 

[TheStu]

I used to use my PS3 on my Gateway 2400FHD but it had Faroudja DCDi to make the image awesome* (awesome is a technical term). That was at 1080p and everything looked spectacular, though there was some black bar action on the top and bottom.

I then had it hooked up to a 20" Dell E204 monitor, 720p stretched to 1680*1050. Significantly less awesome to tell you the truth.

It is now hooked up to a Bravia 40" LCD 1080p 120Hz TV... incredible picture. BluRays are crisp with almost no motion blur, and games... wow, the detail is incredible.

So, yes, there is a difference between 1080p and 720p, you just have to have a screen that can show it to you.

 

[zerogear]

Originally posted by: mmnno

Originally posted by: zerocool84
The only reason to get 1080p is for Blu-ray cus there is no game that is true 1080p. They are just scaled accordingly. No reason to get it for playing console games.

Wipeout is all 1080p/60, all the time :] (well, not 60fps all the time, but pretty damn close)

I notice a big difference between 1080p and 720p on my 16:10 computer monitor, but it's a lot bigger difference with my 360.

Actually, Wipeout HD isn't 1080p all the time, it scales between 720p to 1080p depending on the movement/activity of the screen.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Ridge Racer 7 is 1080p all the time.

Most PS3 games output to 720p, almost all of them do actually. TVs have significantly better scaling hardware by necessity, they are going to handle several different resolutions all the time. PC monitors it would be a waste to add comparable scaling hardware, I know I wouldn't consider spending extra for something I have a video card for, and monitors make rather poor displays compared to TVs for movies or most games of the non RTS/FPS variety.

I'm not sure why they don't make consoles that can output to standard VGA and WVGA resolutions though.

It would be an incredible waste of money, comparable to having expensive scaling hardware in a PC monitor. Percentage wise almost noone does it. It is likely more popular to run PC games on a HDTV then the other way around.

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: TheStu
I used to use my PS3 on my Gateway 2400FHD but it had Faroudja DCDi to make the image awesome* (awesome is a technical term). That was at 1080p and everything looked spectacular, though there was some black bar action on the top and bottom.

I then had it hooked up to a 20" Dell E204 monitor, 720p stretched to 1680*1050. Significantly less awesome to tell you the truth.

It is now hooked up to a Bravia 40" LCD 1080p 120Hz TV... incredible picture. BluRays are crisp with almost no motion blur, and games... wow, the detail is incredible.

So, yes, there is a difference between 1080p and 720p, you just have to have a screen that can show it to you.

Huh?

My 24" gateway has the faroudja chip too.

When the PS3 "scales" to 1080p in MGS4, for example, I get a picture that is 1920x1080 leaving small black bars at top and bottom. But if you look closely at what is actually being displayed, it is still a low res, washed out 720p picture. If the PS3 doesn't scale at all, I still get the same washed out graphics, but I have to turn 1:1 mapping off in order to get a full screen picture.

So I don't know what kind of super ridiculous magic faroudja chip you have, but 1080p looks no where near as good as 720p native on my TVs.

EDIT:

I am talking about games not Blu-ray movies. BD movies look fine because it is true 1080p output. My gripe is with games that are being internally rendered by the PS3 at resolutions that are no where near 1920x1200.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Matt2

Originally posted by: TheStu
I used to use my PS3 on my Gateway 2400FHD but it had Faroudja DCDi to make the image awesome* (awesome is a technical term). That was at 1080p and everything looked spectacular, though there was some black bar action on the top and bottom.

I then had it hooked up to a 20" Dell E204 monitor, 720p stretched to 1680*1050. Significantly less awesome to tell you the truth.

It is now hooked up to a Bravia 40" LCD 1080p 120Hz TV... incredible picture. BluRays are crisp with almost no motion blur, and games... wow, the detail is incredible.

So, yes, there is a difference between 1080p and 720p, you just have to have a screen that can show it to you.

Huh?

My 24" gateway has the faroudja chip too.

When the PS3 "scales" to 1080p in MGS4, for example, I get a picture that is 1920x1080 leaving small black bars at top and bottom. But if you look closely at what is actually being displayed, it is still a low res, washed out 720p picture. If the PS3 doesn't scale at all, I still get the same washed out graphics, but I have to turn 1:1 mapping off in order to get a full screen picture.

So I don't know what kind of super ridiculous magic faroudja chip you have, but 1080p looks no where near as good as 720p native on my TVs.

EDIT:

I am talking about games not Blu-ray movies. BD movies look fine because it is true 1080p output. My gripe is with games that are being internally rendered by the PS3 at resolutions that are no where near 1920x1200.

What monitor do you have? I had my PS3 hooked up to my 2400FHD directly over HDMI and all my games looked great. Movies looked good too of course, but the games were gorgeous.

 

[Matt2]

FPD2485W

I'm connected via hdmi to dvi adapter with the audio being passed off to of speakers.

 

[Xellos2099]

I dunno, I connect my 360 with vga cable to my LG227wtg and it look as good as my brother's 360 connect to his 47 inch sony 1080p tv.

 

[BD2003]

The reason monitors dont look as good when they scale isnt so much because theyre inferior at it, but because the way you want to scale the typical PC desktop is very different from the way you want to scale video.

A desktop is all text, hard edges and sharp contrast, and a monitor needs to recreate that clarity when it scales, and it's much simpler to do this.

Video rarely has hard edges and text, and since todays games have more in common with video than older consoles, you'll want to scale them "video" style.

Some monitors have decent scalers and allow you to adjust this through the menu though.

 

[postmortemIA]

the other problem is that you sit far away from TV, while you sit next to your computer monitor.
I agree with others, LCD monitors are great only for PC gaming on native resolution.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Ridge Racer 7 is 1080p all the time.

Most PS3 games output to 720p, almost all of them do actually. TVs have significantly better scaling hardware by necessity, they are going to handle several different resolutions all the time. PC monitors it would be a waste to add comparable scaling hardware, I know I wouldn't consider spending extra for something I have a video card for, and monitors make rather poor displays compared to TVs for movies or most games of the non RTS/FPS variety.

I'm not sure why they don't make consoles that can output to standard VGA and WVGA resolutions though.

It would be an incredible waste of money, comparable to having expensive scaling hardware in a PC monitor. Percentage wise almost noone does it. It is likely more popular to run PC games on a HDTV then the other way around.

This. Computer monitors leave the heavy lifting of scaling to the video cards, because they can. TVs don't have this luxury, so they need to have good scaling hardware built-in.

All that I know is, if you look at multi-platform games, the box for the 360 version usually lists 1080p and the PS3 version usually only lists 720p. I doubt that Microsoft is lying about their games outputting at 1080p, or you know they would have been hit by ten thousand false advertising lawsuits by now!

 

[phantom404]

Correct me if I'm wrong but i heard on the ps3 that when you go to select what resolutions your tv can handle and if choose all of the options (480, 720, 1080) it will select auto select the "best" one for the game. COD4 for instance, I have mine hooked to a 42" LG at 1080p but the ps3 will auto run the game in 720p because thats what the game was rendered at.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Ridge Racer 7 is 1080p all the time.

Most PS3 games output to 720p, almost all of them do actually. TVs have significantly better scaling hardware by necessity, they are going to handle several different resolutions all the time. PC monitors it would be a waste to add comparable scaling hardware, I know I wouldn't consider spending extra for something I have a video card for, and monitors make rather poor displays compared to TVs for movies or most games of the non RTS/FPS variety.

I'm not sure why they don't make consoles that can output to standard VGA and WVGA resolutions though.

It would be an incredible waste of money, comparable to having expensive scaling hardware in a PC monitor. Percentage wise almost noone does it. It is likely more popular to run PC games on a HDTV then the other way around.

This. Computer monitors leave the heavy lifting of scaling to the video cards, because they can. TVs don't have this luxury, so they need to have good scaling hardware built-in.

All that I know is, if you look at multi-platform games, the box for the 360 version usually lists 1080p and the PS3 version usually only lists 720p. I doubt that Microsoft is lying about their games outputting at 1080p, or you know they would have been hit by ten thousand false advertising lawsuits by now!

It's scaled to the resolution. It's not 1080p. There are onoly a handful of games on both systems that are NATIVE 1080p. Not even GT5 is Native 1080p. It's 1280x1080 upscaled to 1920x1080.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: zerocool84

Originally posted by: RyanPaulShaffer

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Ridge Racer 7 is 1080p all the time.

Most PS3 games output to 720p, almost all of them do actually. TVs have significantly better scaling hardware by necessity, they are going to handle several different resolutions all the time. PC monitors it would be a waste to add comparable scaling hardware, I know I wouldn't consider spending extra for something I have a video card for, and monitors make rather poor displays compared to TVs for movies or most games of the non RTS/FPS variety.

I'm not sure why they don't make consoles that can output to standard VGA and WVGA resolutions though.

It would be an incredible waste of money, comparable to having expensive scaling hardware in a PC monitor. Percentage wise almost noone does it. It is likely more popular to run PC games on a HDTV then the other way around.

This. Computer monitors leave the heavy lifting of scaling to the video cards, because they can. TVs don't have this luxury, so they need to have good scaling hardware built-in.

All that I know is, if you look at multi-platform games, the box for the 360 version usually lists 1080p and the PS3 version usually only lists 720p. I doubt that Microsoft is lying about their games outputting at 1080p, or you know they would have been hit by ten thousand false advertising lawsuits by now!

It's scaled to the resolution. It's not 1080p. There are onoly a handful of games on both systems that are NATIVE 1080p. Not even GT5 is Native 1080p. It's 1280x1080 upscaled to 1920x1080.

He does make an interesting point though. Why are they putting 1080p on the games when they aren't? I've wondered why there hasn't been a class action suit yet... Someone sues MS for everything else, and this is clearly (and intentionally) mis-labeling products to deceive consumers.

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
He does make an interesting point though. Why are they putting 1080p on the games when they aren't? I've wondered why there hasn't been a class action suit yet... Someone sues MS for everything else, and this is clearly (and intentionally) mis-labeling products to deceive consumers.

From my experience the last few days, when a game on either system, claims 1080p on the case, it is referring to final output to the display. The system's GPU is rendering a 720p frame, then the system scales that frame to 1080p before it hits the display. A game that only says 720p on the case is rendering the same 720p frame, but outputs to the display without scaling to 1080p leaving the scaling to the display.

I dont know if that's clear, but for example:

MGS4 claims 1080p on the case. When playing on my 24" Gateway using 1:1 pixel mapping, I get a picture that is actually 1920x1080. But if you actually look at the graphics, they're washed out, stretched and blurred. Clearly 720p upscaled.

Resident Evil 5 only claims 720p on the case. When using 1:1 pixel mapping, I get a 1280x720 picture that is crisp and sharp. Native 720p with no scaling by either the PS3 or the monitor. In order to get a full screen picture in RE5, I ahve to turn 1:1 mapping off. The result is a zoomed in, stretched and hideous picture, just like MGS4.

That's why I dont buy this "TVs scale better" banter being thrown out in this thread. Scaling to a certain resolution is not going to make a low res, blurry and washed out picture look as it would if it were 1080p native. The scaling only refers to the amount of pixels displayed.