PS3 firmware 1.30 "fixes" 1080i problem

My rear projection HDTV only supports the 1080i HD format and the 480p 480i. Most of my friends have rear projection tvs and are in the same boat. Those that say there isnt a difference between 480p and 1080i are being foolish or are seriously misinformed.

My two year old __SONY__ televions accepts 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i signals. If the signal is 720p it downsamples it to 480p, meaning that feeding it a 720p signal is useless. I have my 360 set to output 1080i and everything works great.

heh. wow. jeff, that was a big, sticky load of stfu.

funny.

m3mnoch.

Wow... I guess it sucks to be a Sony fan now.

i love all of the "that's what you get for buying a ghetto tv" sentiment. that's so damn funny. especially considering what an hdtv cost 4 years ago compared to today.

you people don't understand.

instead of paying more for something that was out first with less features, you need to pay more for something that's late and has less functionality! duh!

you silly early adopters, you.

m3mnoch.

ok, it's not about the tv's scaling chip. nearly all CRT HDTV units have scaling chips. but the original problem was that if the system was not natively designed to run at 720p or 1080p then the PS3 would downscale the resolution to 480. and sure, your tv could scale that, but what do they say about a copy of a copy?

oh, and the difference between 480p and 1080i is huge. it's not a difference of sixty lines of resolution. it's a difference of six hundred lines of resolution. that the 1080 are drawn in alternating passes of 540 at a time is meaningless. you're still getting a moving image that is 1920x1080.

this fix just goes to show that Sony isn't a software adept at all. just like the 'wisdom' they showed by selling us Linux boxes.

here, instead of making you do the work to hack the box, we'll give you the keys to the kingdom and attempt to control the hacker community with our firmware updates, because that's been so effective on the PSP.

boy, this is going to end well.

"Stop perpetuating the myth that 1080i only has 540 lines of resolution. It's not true. "

"Are you implying that there isn't much difference between 480p and 1080i?"

I'm perpetuating the FACT that the vast majority of crt hdtvs do not have fine enough tubes / big enough guns to actually display 1080 lines of vertical resolution, much less 1920 'pixels' of horizontal resolution. You can't get computer monitor quality out of a tube that big and shallow.

I'm STATING, not implying, that although there is a big difference between 480p and 1080i for fixed pixel displays (720x480 = 345k pixels vs 1920x540 = 1mil pixels, or 2mil if you want to argue about frame vs field resolution) there is nowhere near as big of a difference for crt displays (mushx480 vs mushx540)

Feel free to send someone from AVSforum over to dispute . . .

"How many of you *actually* have TV's that cannot display or scale 720p?"

Right here. I own a Hitachi Rear Projection 51F50 HDTV. It only supports inputs of 480i, 480p, and 1080i. So... until Sony fixes this problem, no PS3 for me.

"It's my understanding that the video signal that's sent over component cables is split into Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr spectrum whereas RGB is considered to be the 'purist' video signal available and is generally used when connecting over what are traditionally 'computer-based' connections; VGA, DVI and the like."

Here's the deal: Y, Pb, and Pr vs. VGA RGB are essentially the same. The difference is that component combines a synchronization signal across the green cable, whereas RGB over VGA spits sync into a fourth wire. That's it.

DVI is a different game. Traditional DVI connectors (and cables) include cables and connectors for both digital and legacy analog VGA signals. HDMI is a DVI cable with DD5.1 audio added and the VGA analog leads removed.

There's your explanation.

I don't have a ps3 yet (blooming europe delays :@ ) but I think this post is quite hilarious to be honest. How many people are complaining that their TV which they bought 3-5 YEARS AGO cant run the latest stuff, how about I complain that my 5 year old computer can't run oblivion or rainbow 6 vegas at full resolution and graphics settings? Because that is basically what you are doing...

"How many people are complaining that their TV which they bought 3-5 YEARS AGO cant run the latest stuff, how about I complain that my 5 year old computer can't run oblivion or rainbow 6 vegas at full resolution and graphics settings?"

this, my friend, is the difference between consumer electronics and computer electronics: relatively cheap, replaceable parts.

your precept states that everyone should buy a new hdtv every 2-3 years. remind me to come by your house every 2 years to make sure you've purchased a brand new $2000 or $3000 tv.

you, sir, are stupid.

m3mnoch.

m3mnoch, thats not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying however is that you can't expect something you bought over 2 years ago to still be perfectly up-to-date can you? You may just have to settle for second best because you didn't buy the best model you could have at the time or bought it too long ago.

and, what i'm saying is that computer electronics with it's life cycle of 18 months has nothing to do with the consumer electronics cycle of 5-10 years.

in "computer world," content drives hardware adoption. the reason being it's relatively easy and relatively inexpensive to "throw in" a new graphics card.

conversely, in "consumer world," the hardware drives the content. that's why consoles take a loss on their costs -- for lightning-quick adoption rates. if a hardware manufacturer steps out of line and tries a shoe-horn-end-around, well, it absolutely needs to play nicely in a home theater.

here's an analogy for you:

the WHOLE home theater is equivalent to the WHOLE computer. graphics cards being tv's. recievers are processors. etc. enthusiest gamers spend upwards of $3k on their computer rigs. av enthusiests can easily spend $10 or $15k on their setups.

5 x the price equates to about 5 x the expected longevity. 5 x the longevity equates to 5 x the adoption rate delay.

that means it's perfectly acceptable to expect a product touted as "true hd" to deliver as promised. especially given this long tail of home theater equipment.

it's not like 1080i is a strange format.

it's not like the ps3 doesn't support it.

it's not like someone with 1080i tv is expecting 1080p.

they just (rightly) want it to work with their fully compliant high definition televisions. so, you're saying that's too much to ask?

m3mnoch.

so. kod. help me understand your theory... sorry... statement.

your basic posit seems to me that crts have a crappy picture as the pixels-per-square-inch decrease? whereas the "fixed pixel" displays (lcd and plasma, i'm assuming) have a better picture with lower pixels-per-square-inch ratios?

for example:
a 1920x1080 interlaced image looks fine on a 65" plasma or a 19" crt -- but like poo on a 65" crt?

am i grokking that correctly?

m3mnoch.

I have a 40 inch Sony XBR CRT that was their top of the line model about 3 years ago. The picture in 1080i still puts plasmas/lcd's to shame. Guess what? My SONY tv isn't that old, but it makes the PS3 essentially worthless to me. I do have a PS3, still unopenned in the box. I'm likely returning it b/c the only game I'm semi interested in is Resistance. Decent games are roughly a year out? Blu Ray movies? I don't really care. I've had 360 since Zero Hour. I'll buy the HDDVD add on for 360 and a Wii and put a couple hundred bucks back in my bank account. I can not believe this PS3 abortion. There are WAY more than a "small number" of people affected by the 1080i issue. The truly sad fact is many of us own Sony tv's.

#43 kod,judging by your comments,your nothing more than a sad,pathetic,misinformed,indubidibly discombobulated dick.It's 7p.m,past your bedtime.Go to bed.Have a nice day.

To answer the above wii question, the next wii update is the 23 of December, the weather channel is going to be added, followed by the news channel on January 27th.

hrm.

"Feel free to send someone from AVSforum over to dispute . . ."

i guess kod was just kidding.

m3mnoch.

The upgrade has improved Blu-Ray play for me.

My HD TV display is 720p.

Before the upgrade, Blu-Ray movies were output at 1080i, which my TV accepts and converts to 720p for display. (the PS3 was set for 720p output).

After the upgrade I can choose which formats to output on the PS3. If I disable 1080i and enable 720p, a Blu-Ray 1080p movie is output at 720p. IMO this is better because the PS3 does the convert to 720p. Before the 1080p was converted to 1080i by the PS3 and my TV converted this to 720p for display, so there were two conversions. After the upgrade there is only one conversion, 1080p to 720p by the PS3.

Up until a month ago I owned a CRT HDTV that could not display 720p. I sold that TV to a friend who is having no problems using it with an Xbox360.

In response to the comment about 2-3 year old technology, maybe someone should remind them that these same consoles intentionally support composite video for 20 year old TV's... which can further be converted to RF coax... Not to mention product line refreshes are much further and far between in consumer electronics. These are investments. Displays, although evolving quickly these days, still can last many years. 2.5 years ago I bought a LCD panel monitor for my PC (that I still have) and that same monitor is STILL on store shelves to this day.

720p support should NOT be required, and not all TVs support it.

Kod, are you as ignorantly moronic as you sound or worse? The fact is that 1080i displays 1080 lines of resolution every 1/30th of a sec, i.e., one field every 1/60th. As was mentioned with 480p DVDs, they are scaled from 480i so that means there are only 240 lines of resolution, by your logic. As long as 1080i source material isn't overly compressed, it looks much better than 720p. People always assume that 720p is much better for sports because of the fast movements, but since networks compress 1080i so much, it gives it more pixelation and macro blocking. I've watched a few games where the 1080i compression was fairly low and it blew away the 720p broadcast!

i for one am glad they are patching to fix the 1080i issue i paid out the arse for my hdtv 52" and it supports 1080i but not 720p and as i chould less a crap about watching movies i prefer the fact that they are makeing it to where you don't have to have a a newer tv to get the grafics i paid for cause i'm not buying another tv and go'n through that payment hell and screwing i took on interest again ! thank god for sony!

I was originally bummed when I saw the games downgrade to 480p (I have a 55" Mitsubishi - 480i/480p/1080i). Once I started to play the games (Resistance, Fight Night 3 and Marvel: UA), I was still impressed. I was pleasantly surprised when Marvel: UA stayed at 1080i, but the other games look great as well, and movies look fantastic. Once I upgrade to 1.30, we'll see if there's an improvement. For all the whining about this issue, I wonder how many people have actually seen what difference it makes. It still looks amazing. Hopefully this patch and future patches will help things even more.

This is complete crap if this is the case then I am taking my PS3 back tomorrow. I have a 5 year old TV and at the time not many had an option of 720p. So now I have a basically 480p machine, the same as I had before with my PS2. What does Sony want us to do? Buy one of their $3000 TVs that suffer from what many call the "Green Blob" problem? How hard is it to scale from 720p to 1080i? My 4 year old Radeon video card can do this as well as some old Nvidia Geforce cards. If Sony wants to stay ahead of the Xbox then this is not the way to do it.

Date 01-12-07 I called Sony on the 10th and they had a tech. person call me the next day to help me with the 720p problem. I asked him 4 different ways if sony is going to fix the video problems and he would not tell me nothing. I think by the way he was talking to me that sony IS NOT planning to fix it. He was acting like that it was not sony's fault for the incompatablity problems. I don't think it is my tv's fault or my fault, IT IS MY FAULT for buying a PS3 though. It's funny my 360 works fine on the same tv. He tried to tell me that the 360 was stretching the picture to 1080i. If it is, it looks good. How about getting the PS3 to strech the picture like the 360!

All of this is really confusing to me. I just purchased a PS3 yesterday. I have a TV that does NOT have a HDMI port, only a DVI. My Yamaha receiver does NOT have an HDMI port, just component video. I have Dish HD which works fine in my 480p/1080i TV (55" Mitz). My question is this: Will this ps3 work in 1080i? Someway? Somehow?

Does anyone know how one would get this firmware update if they don't have access to broad band?

Where I live the only option is dial up..