I agree with all of the editors and all of the people who say this really is a disappointment, because the graphic performance is actually hurt in many ways.

Yesterday I explained things from a technical point of view and made comparisons. Today I can do the same, but also with added knowledge about what the firmware update is actually like.

Yesterday I was explaining things based on technical terms and comparisons. Today I can do the same, but I have also added some information based on the PS3 firmware update after a day of experience with a 1080p HDTV set. People asked for a better explanation about what all this means, so I decided to explain the facts.

A lot of people have been asking about what this means for the PS3, and how it compares to other game systems along with other DVD players and HDTV sets. I have done quite a bit of research on the subject. I have copied-and-pasted some information, I did some re-wording, and I added some thoughts of my own. The game system that directly competes with the Playstation 3 is the Xbox 360. There are a few times it is useful to compare the two systems later in the article, but I will do so from the beginning to keep things in perspective from both sides at all times.

First I will talk about games, and comparisons with similar systems. Xbox 360 is better than the Playstation 3 in terms of resolution and resolution upconversion, for several fundamental reasons:

1. Xbox 360 has a true hardware chip that is fully dedicated to resolution upconversion; it is much more flexible. The Xbox 360 doesn’t just “Smooth” edges by turning down the Sharpness, like the PS3 does. The Xbox 360 actually applies 4x Anti-Aliasing so the Sharpness can remain high at all times, yet still eliminate visible jagged lines and pixels. The Xbox 360 allows games or movies to be upconverted to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, depending on what kind of HDTV you have.

The Playstation 3 really seems to be having a lot of reported problems when people select 480p as the resolution they want to upconvert. We tested this update on each of the different television types. On the 720p HDTV set we tested, there was a very slight improvement. There appeared to be less of an improvement, if any, on the 1080i HDTV set we experimented with.

When we tested the Playstation 3 on our 1080p HDTV set, which is a Samsung HL-5687W, we were not surprised to see that there was no improvement at all. The reason for this is because the Samsung HDTV set already was upconverting resolution to 1080p all along.

In the past it was very annoying how we would always have to turn the Sharpness all the way down while playing older PS2 and PS1 games on any of the HDTV sets, because the jagged lines and pixels were so visible. With this Firmware 1.8 update the PS3 removes a tremendous amount of Sharpness from the games when the Smoother is turned on, but in all honesty there is way too much Sharpness removed, which causes the games to look much too blurry in an annoying way.

2. The Playstation 3 does not have a hardware upscaling chip. The firmware update is working with the PS3 CPU in a way that uses Floating Point processing in a way that isn’t flexible; in fact, it is actually watered down and offers diluted performance, regardless of the resolution. This is likely the reason why this firmware update is apparently only fully compatible with 1080p HDTV sets.

Yesterday I wrote, “To be fair, we will likely see future firmware updates that allow 720p and 1080i compatibility, if it isn’t already included.” Today I can report that there are plenty of problems being reported with 720p and 1080i HDTV sets, so it appears not all of the bugs have been worked out of the 720p and 1080i HDTV sets. Different reports are coming in from North American and Europe with errors based on how the games are cropped and whether or not they work properly.

However, not all “upconversions” are created equally. Nothing compares to dedicated performance from the appropriate type of processor. If you watch a cartoon, you will think the PS3 is doing a great job of upconverting. However, when you watch movies like Tomorrow Never Dies, you will quickly realize the Playstation 3 doesn’t do a good job of upconverting DVD movies when the scenes are more complex.

3. We also need to remember that the upconversion does not help the Playstation 3 with the cables included with the Playstation 3 system. The only way Playstation 3 owners will be able to take advantage of this feature is if they buy cables sold as accessories. The cables included with the Playstation 3 system won’t allow these updates to be used.

Although a Component cable will allow the games to be seen at the higher resolution, the only way standard DVDs can be seen higher than 480p is through the use of an HDMI cable or a VGA cable, because copyright restrictions prevent a Component cable from carrying anything higher than 480p for a standard DVD signal.

This is a shame, because 75% of all PS3 owners only use the cables provided with their system. That isn’t a surprise, because most people believe that when they are spending $600 they are probably getting everything they need. Sadly, that isn’t the case with the Playstation 3.

4. Xbox 360 upgrades all original Xbox games to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, depending on what type of HDTV you have. But the Xbox 360 also upgrades the original Xbox forms of Anti-Aliasing used to 4x Anti-Aliasing. The reason there is a need for increased Anti-Aliasing with the older games is because their Native Resolution is 480p. When a 480p game is running in a higher resolution, it will need better Anti-Aliasing, otherwise, it would actually look worse when seen on an HDTV. Thankfully, the hardware engineers of the Xbox 360 realized this from the beginning, which is why original Xbox games look so much better when you play them on any type of HDTV.

5. The problem with PS1 and PS2 games is the fact that the PS1 and PS2 hardware did not include any form of Anti-Aliasing. This is likely the reason why Sony didn’t mention any type of Anti-Aliasing upgrade that would be applied when the games have their resolution upconverted. After all, there is no form of Anti-Aliasing to upgrade, because no Anti-Aliasing existed in the first place with PS1 and PS2 games. The major problem with playing a PS1 or PS2 game with Native Resolution of 320×240 or 640×480 on a 1080p HDTV set is that there are going to be very noticeable pixels and jagged lines, more noticeable than ever, in an unsatisfactory way!

6. Yesterday I wrote “It may not be an exaggeration to say that when you play PS1 or PS2 games on your 1080p HDTV, you will likely need to turn the Sharpness all the way down every time you play a game. If you don’t turn the Sharpness down, you will likely be very disappointed with all the pixels and jagged lines you see. People used to make fun of games like Tekken Tag Tournament on the Playstation 2, because of all the jagged lines. A lot of the magazines called it “Tekken Jag Tournament.” Jagged lines that were noticeable on PS1 and PS2 games are going to be VERY noticeable when seen on the Playstation 3 on a 1080p HDTV. The PS2 was the only system that didn’t include anti-aliasing in the hardware last generation. It’s unfortunate that what Sony thought at the time was a money-saving decision to not include anti-aliasing in the Playstation 2 hardware would continue hurting future Playstation game systems.”

Today I can say that with the Smoother feature turned on there is no “need” to take the time to turn the Sharpness all the way down on your HDTV set each time you play a PS2 or PS1 game. However, there may still be a “want” for you to do so. The reason I say this is because when the Smoother is turned on it is essentially automatically removing a large amount of Sharpness from the games. The problem is that when the Smoother is turned on there is far too much Sharpness being removed from the games. The Smoother eliminates a lot of the jagged lines, but it also removes the quality of the textures, because all of the textures in the games become much too blurry.

Many people believe it’s actually better to leave the Smoother off, so the texture quality isn’t affected, and take the time to turn the Sharpness down every time you play a PS2 or PS1 game. It can get very annoying turning the Sharpness down, and then back up, each time you play a PS1 or PS2 game on your PS3, but in many ways it is better to do that than it is to use the Smoother, because the Smoother blurs out such a large percentage of texture quality.

Situations like this almost make me happy that a lot of games out there, like Guitar Hero, still don’t work properly on the Playstation 3. The reason I say that is because it motivates me to forget about using the PS3 to play older games on, and it motivates me to just keep my PS2 to play on the Standard-Definition TV it was meant to be played on. Plus, when I play PS2 games on my PS2 rather than my PS3, I get to use all of the cool rumble features in the PS2 controller. I agree with the millions of people out there who think it’s a shame the way the PS3 doesn’t let us use rumble in the controller, even when we play PS2 or PS1 games.

7. Yesterday I wrote: “As bad as PS2 games will look on a 1080p HDTV set, the PS1 games will look even worse. Last generation, the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox all used excellent forms of pixel filtration so that you didn’t see all sorts of pixilation when you walked too close to an enemy or wall. Although the N64 game system did use Tri-Linear Mip-Map Interpolation to eliminate pixilation in games like Mario 64, the Playstation and Saturn did not have access to similar types of pixel filtration. As a result, Playstation and Saturn games often pixilated when you walked too close to an enemy, an object, or wall. When PS1 games are played on an 1080p HDTV set, it will become very clear to people that it is literally better to use a Standard TV to play PS1 and PS2 games than it is to use an HDTV, because the HDTV will make all of those flaws so very noticeable that the games are not fun to play because the graphics looks so annoyingly poor.”

Today, I can say that when you play with the Smoother turned off my theory was 100% correct. The reason I say that is because I knew what PS2 and PS1 games would look like on a 1080p HDTV set all along, because I have a Samsung HL-S5687W that upconverts everything to 1080p. When the Smoother is turned on, the PS1 and PS2 games have a lot of the visible pixels and jagged lines removed, but they are removed at the expense of the texture quality in the games. The Smoother removes far too much texture quality in the game, because it “blurs out” so much of the detail, by removing so much of the Sharpness in the game.

8. Sony has experienced, and continues to experience a lot of major problems with the resolution of actual Playstation 3 games. For example, the “1080i Resolution Problem,” does still exist with the Playstation 3. Any of the millions of people who own an HDTV with a Native Resolution of 1080i will end up seeing their Playstation 3 games in 480p Standard-Definition resolution, rather than 720p or 1080i High-Definition resolution. The reason for this is because the Playstation 3 does not include a hardware chip dedicated to the upconversion of resolution, like the Xbox 360 does.

With the Xbox 360, you simply select the resolution you want the system to output, and it works fine. But with the Playstation 3, if you have an HDTV set with 1080i Native Resolution, you really are screwed in a lot of ways. Only Playstation 3 games with a Native Resolution of 1080p will work appropriately with a 1080i HDTV, because the 1080p resolution can be selected in the game, and it will then be downcoverted to 1080i. The problem is, almost all of the Playstation 3 games available have a Native Resolution of 720p. Since the PS3 does not have a resolution upconversion chip, it will try to send a 720p signal to the 1080i HDTV. When the 1080i HDTV doesn’t accept the signal, the PS3 will then downgrade the signal to 480p. This means you are playing PS3 games at the same resolution as your PS2 games.

Sony needs to get their hardware re-resolution problems fixed with the Playstation 3 before they starting worrying about the PS1 and PS2. It has now been confirmed the adjustments talked about here for the PS1 and PS2 have frustrated and disappointed a lot of people, because in many ways the games look worse with all of the “blurrying” that occurs, which removes far too much Sharpness detail and texture quality. The necessary Anti-Aliasing and pixel filtration techniques are not being used, so this watered-down upconversion process for the games really is offering only diluted performance that is very disappointing, just like all of the editors at the Playstation-Fanboy website said.

Anyone know if it’s possible that my HDTV isn’t upscaling as it isn’t an HDTV but rather and HD monitor?

“We chose to use component cables to hook up the Xbox 360 [...] If you buy the VGA cable, you can upscale DVDs to HD resolutions; we’ve tried this before, and it absolutely does not fix any of the problems we’ll highlight here. To make sure we have a fair comparison, we set our Denon DVD player to output 480p as well.”

So both were at 480p, meaning they were comparing the deinterlacing features only (DVDs are 480i). The upscaling in 360 didn’t improve anything, meaning it was probably just stretching the 480p output.

IIRC the PS3 in January was getting 73/130 in the HQV test (360 got 20, a cheap DVD player gets 35, high-end and nVidia/ATI get 100+).

Is it possible that my HDTV isn’t upscaling at all as it’s not technically a TV but an HD monitor? As I said before I notice huge differences between upscaled content on my 360 and non-upscaled content. The same appears true with my series 3 Tivo… it doesn’t have any upscaling capability and the standard definition programs are almost unwatchable!

John, the images in the link John provided seem to be a bit slanted. Please correct me if I’m wrong but it appears to be a comparison between a high end DVD player ($800 from the sound of the comments) compared to a $400 gaming console that doesn’t seem to be properly configured. It’s not terribly clear in the link how the 360 is configured… but based upon a what little they did specify and the comments it would seem they’re using 480P playback on a console that is capable of upscaling to 1080P. Again I’m not entirely up to speed with all this scaling stuff… but that seems a bit unfair to me. If they regularly compare equipment like this I’d imagine a PS3 review would probably be over component cables at 480P… even though like the 360 it’s capable of 1080P using different cables. I’d be very interested if they’d do the same comparison over with the 360 over VGA at 1080P. That was the point at which I noticed a fairly major difference in my picture quality.

At the very least it looks like my TV must have a horrible scaler. Perhaps I should look into one of those standalone scalers that I’ve heard talked about on the AVS forums.