Meet Ana, the Xbox 360 hardware scaler

by Ross Miller { Jan 5th 2007 at 3:25PM }

How did Microsoft dodge the scaling issue that has plagued Sony since its launch? Maybe it was the timing -- an HD console in a Standard Def world -- or perhaps it was Ana, the affectionate title for Xbox 360's hardware scaler.

Whereas the PlayStation 3 downscales to meet resolution, Ana upscales Xbox 360 titles to 1080p to impressive results, according to Ars Technica's Ben Kuchera. Speaking with Microsoft's Scott Henson, Kuchera learns that Ana was designed at the same time as Xenos, the console's GPU. Though the addition of a PS3 hardware scaler is possible in the future, Xbox Group Product Marketing Manager Aaron Greenberg opines that it would be difficult for Sony to fix the issue with software, leaving first-generation PS3 owners in the cold.

However, the truth is, as Kuchera notes, differences between the two console's graphics are minimal to nonexistent. "By [the time PS3 has second-generation titles] we'll have Halo 3," Henson said. "We'll be on the third–generation games. We hope to always be a little bit ahead." When will Sony pull ahead of the Xbox 360, graphically, and to what extent is Ana Microsoft's secret weapon in keeping up?

See Also:
The second Xbox 360 (with HDMI): introducing "Zephyr"

[Thanks, Theo1130; image inspiration]

Tags: ana, ars technica, ArsTechnica, hardware, microsoft, playstation 3, Playstation3, ps3, scale, sony, xbox 360, Xbox360, xenon, xenos, zephyr

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

LunarDuality @ Jan 5th 2007 3:33PM

Ana isn't MS's secret weapon in the graphics pissing contest. That honor is bestowed on their *beast* of a GPU from ATI.

Jason B @ Jan 5th 2007 3:35PM

When was it that the Xbox pulled ahead of the PS II in the graphics department? That's right...NEVER. So what makes people keep thinking that the PS3 will some how magically get better than the 360 over time? Is the 360 going to stop getting better? I don't think so. The theory about PS3 games' graphical quality someday surpassing the quality of 360 games is bunk. If the hardware were that much more powerful graphically we would already be seeing it. But we're not. In fact, many PS3 games are demonstrably inferior to 360 games.

Just my .02

nerfgun @ Jan 5th 2007 3:35PM

I don't quite understand why upscaling is so great... I mean, its a nice wrinkle I suppose if your TV doesn't do 720 (not very many of those I gather)... but upscaling is generally BAD. You are taking an image resolution and making it higher with the same # of pixels.

I would think that if a game outputs at 720p, I want to see it at 720p. If it puts it out at 1080i, I want to see that. DOWNscaling is more important as not many of us have 1080p-capable HDTVs. (of course the PS3 doesn't go down to 720 from 1080, and thats a drag if you have one of those weird old sets).

Jason B @ Jan 5th 2007 3:53PM

Dangit, I meant FROM THE BEGINNING

Where is the dang edit option

Steve2 @ Jan 5th 2007 8:47PM

Plagued Sony?

It affects a small number of people who have TVs that didn't implement the HDTV spec fully. For the vast majority of people, it affects their gameplay not at all.

Additionally, PS3 doesn't downscale. The PS3 does resolution matching. Since Resistance only supports 480i, 480p and 720p, if you put on a TV that only does 480i, 480p and 1080i, it selectes 480p as being the highest matching resolution.

Many games support 1080i. If you play Ridge Racer, it'll come out in 1080i on that very same TV.

As nerfgun points out, any scaling is not a good thing. It's better than a blank screen, that's sure, but really developers should support all resolutions.

Beast of a GPU, that's hilarious. The GPUs in the two machines are very comparable. One does some things better, the other does other things better.

Krazy Koala @ Jan 5th 2007 3:43PM

For once, can someone PLEASE explain to me what legitimate reason there is for PS3 games to look better than 360 games. For crying out loud, the 360 has a better GPU, isn't that somewhat important of a factor in determining graphics. Ok sure, the PS3 has the cell (which is amazing according to Sony, but I don't know the technical stuff and I avoid believing hype due to fancy marketing strategy (Emotion engine). Suppose the Cell is awesome, so maybe the PS3 can handle better physics effects, cool. But give me a damn reason to believe the same for graphics. (Killzone 2 CGI doesn't count)

Thought @ Jan 5th 2007 3:48PM

Not necessarily Jason B. When the 360 was first released were the graphics as good as a year later when gears of war was released? if you say yes your a liar, so what makes you think that a ps3 game a year later from now wont look better. im sure wii titles will look better overtime too. I still think that whole rambling of 360 and ps3 graphics are on par with each other is garbage, they want you to believe that and sure the only comparison have been 3rd party titles but time will tell.

A @ Jan 5th 2007 3:49PM

@ Jason B
you really dont think xbox games looked any better than ps2 games? youve got to be kidding- compare ninja gaiden to well, any ps2 game. Or better, compare games that hit the xbox and the ps2. i see a clear difference, in favor of xbox.

cubbiechris @ Jan 5th 2007 3:52PM

Xbox graphics blew away PS2. Compare Xbox Splinter Cell to the PS2.

Jason B @ Jan 5th 2007 3:53PM

A

You obviously didn't bother to read post #4

Sean @ Jan 5th 2007 3:57PM

Nerfgun:

Think about an LCD that supports 1080p, that means its native resolution is 1920x1080. Displaying a 720p signal on that TV will actually look *worse* than on a TV that only supports 720p because 1280x720 doesn't scale evenly onto 1920x1080. The LCD will use its shitty built-in scaler to upsample the 720p signal to fill a 1920x1080 screen.

By including a really good hardware scaler, you don't have to use the built-in scaler on your LCD and you can display in whatever native resolution you have, the result is that the picture looks better.

Think about scaling an image on the web using width/height constraints in HTML versus actually resampling that image using photoshop. That's pretty much the same.. LCD scalers are that bad.

Derbeste @ Jan 5th 2007 4:04PM

I got a question for you all...

Who CARES!?

I don't understand why you all think graphics are going to decide the "winner" of this generation anyway.

I mean...the hottest seller (ATM) is the Wii!

The Gameboy obliterated Game Gear, Turbo Graphcis Express, and Wonderswan

The DS is DESTROYING PSP!

The PS2 TROUNCED Xbox and Gamecube!

The PS1 denied the N64!

History has shown time and time again that the guy with the bigger penis doesn't usually get the girl!

So put yours back in your pants and go back to enjoying the porn you like the best. There is CERTAINLY enough to go around.

Jason B @ Jan 5th 2007 4:01PM

Thouht

I wasn't saying that the PS3 graphics will not get better because they will continue to improve. Just as the 360's graphics will continue to improve. The assertion that I am railing against is that at some point in time either the 360 graphics will stop or improving or that PS3 graphics will somehow improve at a faster pace than the 360's graphics. This is the argument that I believe is bunk. Throughout this generation each console's graphics will improve, but their position in relation to one another will not change (i.e. the 360 will alway be superior by the marginal amount that it currently is).

BTW - I still think that the graphics (especially the textures) from PDZ (a launch game) are very impressive.

The Kid @ Jan 5th 2007 4:13PM

LOL; READ THE ARTICLE!!! They admit that ANA is a cheap azz scaling chip; far from top of the line.

They are also praising the Sony BRAVIA; ROFLMAO!!!
The MS presentation was all smoke and mirrors to try and talk up a cheap feature to compete with the technically superior PS3.

If I remember correctly; it was almost a year before 1080 upscaling was possible; u had to wait for a firmware update. On top of that you had to pray your console wasn't one of the tens of thousands that got bricked and then had to pay 170.00 to repair and ship it to MS to get fixed before they put the extended one year warranty in place.

PS3 is only one month old and MS is doing the Shucky Duck shuffle to keep up with Sony!!!

Thousands of Fanboys are sitting in corners crying at all of todays bad news!!!!

What goes around comes around byotches!

Sony PS3PEAT

jSn @ Jan 5th 2007 4:14PM

Everyone keeps thinking that the Cell processor is somehow going to make the Nvidia RSX capable of pushing more pixels than it can realistically push and that's why people think the PS3 has all this hidden graphical power, but that simply isn't the case. The GPU has its fill rate and the CPU isn't going to change that.

Where the cell might show some benefit is in the AI/physics/interactivity department, but whether or not it will offer something that Microsoft's 3core system cannot remains to be seen.

As far as graphic quality goes, the games are only going to look as good as the generation of tools that are currently being used to produce them. Just because a system is capable of doing more, you still aren't going to see that MORE until the developers are creating art and models that are a step above what everone is doing today, and that hasn't happened yet (well, maybe on some upcoming pc games like crysis).

Jason B @ Jan 5th 2007 4:12PM

I hear what you are saying Derbeste and I agree with you but that is not the point of the discussion. I am agitated at the assumption that is being made by many that the PS3 will someday surpass the 360 graphically and I just don't think that argument holds up and I think it is misleading to consumers to imply as much.

JET @ Jan 5th 2007 4:19PM

The only problem with 360's scaler is that it introduces dot crawl when upconverting a 720p game to 1080p. It isn't really noticable when sitting a comfortable distance away, but it is befinitely there. It is especially noticable on text. None of my 720p PS3 games have the same issues when displayed on my 46KDLV2500.

HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays both look amazing in native 1080p, though!

JET

Rob @ Jan 5th 2007 4:19PM

Just so people know- because I didn't- most HDTVs that don't support 720p *will* display it as 1080i. I have a CRT that only displays 1080i and 480p and I was *sure* that the PS3 wouldn't display in 720p, but I bought one anyway and by a fluke I plugged it in set to 720p - and it looked great. A lot of commercial broadcasts are apparently in 720p, i.e. football games, so basically any newer HDTV will display the resolution as 1080i.

nerfgun @ Jan 5th 2007 4:19PM

Sean -

I see what you are saying, except that the issue with the various HD resolutions is no longer really operative.

It was very old, first-gen (5 years ago) sets, and then only a subset of those, that only supported 1080i but not 720p. Every modern HDTV (last 3 years) supports at least 720p.

Now, as to 'LCD scalers suck' - this is not really true. It used to be so, but that went away quite some time ago. Now it really depends on the scaler hardware in your set, and it is possible to buy crap scalers with crap sets, but some are stunning - particular the LG ones, or Samsung's DNIe. They do a great job. Scalar chips don't cost a whole lot even for a decent one.

- - -

Jason B -

The reason people keep talking about the possible 'advantage' the PS3 would have graphically a year down the line is just a function of the fact that it has a radical CPU design (Cell) and a blu-ray drive that holds, what, at least 3-7 times more than a DVD. There's going to be some things that the Xbox360 just won't be able to do. Don't get me wrong, its a beast as well - but you can't apply what we knew about games and game development in a linear fashion to such new tech. For instance, take a look at Spore. Huge amount of procedural rendering. This was simply too expensive to do before computationally, but is now coming to the fore. There are programming techniques only some math nerd has dreamed of, and that nerd will make the Cell scream, and it will be really impressive.

Now, as to whether the PS3 'screams' this way for a critical mass of games is a different question.

Strike Man @ Jan 5th 2007 4:21PM

The Kid, the 360 scaled games up to 1080i since day 1, but yes, it took a year for them to enable 1080p scaling in an update. Will Sony be doing the same in a year? They're already on borrowed time for scaling to the other resolutions.

The problem is, you seem to be complaining that the 360's scaler isn't "top of the line." Which is fine, but the point of the article is...one machine has it, the other does not. A good number of PS3 owners are hooking their PS3s up to their HDTVs, and they are NOT getting an HD picture due to the lack of a built-in scaler and a vast majority of games that only go up to 1280x720. I'm sure many of those would take a "cheap" scaler over no scaler any day of the week.

Jason B @ Jan 5th 2007 4:33PM

Nerfgun-

Explain to me how the size of the storage medium has anything to do with the graphic capabilities of a system? As for the Cell those dreams you speak of have yet be be realized - the may come, but what have you done for me lately? On the procedural synthesis side, MS has been touting this for the 360 since launch. As a matter of fact I beleive portions of the Oblivion landscape (i.e. trees, etc.) use procedural synthesis to generate what you see.

The True Gamer @ Jan 5th 2007 4:34PM

LMFAO@ The Kid. Strike Man pwn3d your monkey little $ony fanboi ass. PoS3 superior, when it doesn't even HAVE a scalar. A hope $ony lubed your ass when they raped it.

Bennyishere @ Jan 5th 2007 5:01PM

I think the 360's main advantage in graphics besides the GPU is the 512 MB System Memory. CliffyB demanded Microsoft to have it in their consoles. Gears of War would not be as great without it...

@ 3:

As several others have implied, Xbox PWNED the PS2 with graphics. EVERY multiplatform release looked somehow better on the Xbox.

I expected the tables to be turned this generation. I expected PS3 to be slightly better, but the difference is nonexistant. Look at any graphics comparison from sites like GameTrailers or 1up. NO difference! The only difference I notice is that PS3 versions are brighter...

Evan @ Jan 5th 2007 5:13PM

Nerfgun-

Everything that's rendered to the screen at a particular moment has to fit in the system's RAM - the textures, the 3D models, the character animations, etc. The 360 can render higher-detail textures than the PS3. The PS3's GPU can only access 256MB of its memory for textures, of which over 32MB is reserved by the operating system. However, all of the 360's 512MB is accessible by the GPU, and even when accounting for the game code and operating system, a game could still allocate upwards of 400MB of RAM for textures!

Neil @ Jan 5th 2007 5:10PM

There is no argument here. PS3 is more powerful and Gears of War can run on PS3. Big whoop.

Gran Turismo and Genji on the PS3 are easily some of the best looking games out there aside from Gears of War.

nerfgun @ Jan 7th 2007 11:44AM

Jason B -

Are you actually arguing that less storage is better for games than more storage? Not sure what to do with that one...

Evan -

I am familiar with the technical vagaries of the two consoles in question, and I don't really feel like getting into a pissing match about it. The Cell chip has advantages in regards to accecssing memoryspace that affects performance on traditional multicore setups. Its not all about GPU. In fact I would disagree with your assertation that 'all assets must be in memory' - heck, Grand Theft Auto figured out how to cram a lot of stuff into 64 megs of RAM, eh? Or could it be that it was streamed...?

All I'm saying is that with a radical new proc and a huge optical storage system, we will see some new tricks that systems which don't have these things will not really be able to reproduce 100%. Its hardly a controversial statement.

Tao @ Jan 5th 2007 5:27PM

"The assertion that I am railing against is that at some point in time either the 360 graphics will stop or improving or that PS3 graphics will somehow improve at a faster pace than the 360's graphics."

Why would they improve at the same rate? That's like saying that the DS and PSP would improve at the same rate. Different beasts you know... Just look at the technicalities... (yeah, not a ps-fanby.....)

lothar @ Jan 5th 2007 5:36PM

Whats interesting is that even though MS didnt build in the old architecture from their previous system (PS3 did) they had the foresight to include a hardware up scaling chip. Some time ago gamespot had an article about how the XBox games looked better on the 360 with and without HD.

I love the arguments from the SDF how the 360 was a rushed system LOL. No up scaling on the PS3 for PS2 games or standard DVDs.

Konchu @ Jan 5th 2007 5:56PM

Yeah I am of the opinion that as far as basic visual quality level games are going to be very similar between the 360 and the PS3 as the GPU's can only show so much at a time and the video ram can only hold so much data.

Visual quality will go up as they learn more tricks. I think its foolish to think that you can turn around in the game and in less than a few seconds see several gigs worth of textures(imagine the same analogy in a racing game) but I will say Im curious how fast they can stream the textures as that is part of the argument for Blu-Ray. Say they do a GTA on it that has a City that takes up 25gig would the city look better than say the 360 version or would if have to be so signifigantly larger to take advantage of the extra data for textures and such (not that it is neccessarly a bad thing) and that is assuming that both versions are using the same compression. The PS3 might possibly be able to pull ahead and show some muscle maybe in Physics and AI but I dont think we should underestimate the 360's 3 cores for doing some of this also. But really ony time will tell.

It is an unfortionate fact though most of the last generation the most popular system dictated the visual quality of the games due to the popularity of ports. The PS2 was inferior system graphics wise to the XBOX and even the GameCube in many areas though the PS2 had great lighting effects. I still dont know what Sony was thinking of with 4MB of texture memory we suffered muddy games and poor textures for years on the system because of this, I remember beating God of War (love the game)and in the extras they talk of having to make adjustments to the textures to make them work but imagine if they had more of a canvas to work with what magic they could have done.

Sorry for the rant :)

Me @ Jan 5th 2007 6:09PM

I don't understand why people think software upscaling is impossible on the PS3. I'm doing it right now using the Xploder HDTV disc made for PS2. You have probably heard of the pixel-flipping issue that makes PS2 games look so crappy on the PS3? Well, Xploder fixes that for a number of games, including Final Fantasy XII. I think this shows that software upscaling, at least for PS2, is a real possibility.

tkodarkside123 @ Jan 5th 2007 6:23PM

"Well, Xploder fixes that for a number of games, including Final Fantasy XII. I think this shows that software upscaling, at least for PS2, is a real possibility."

See, there's the problem. This should have never been an issue from the day they released the ps3. Now consumers are having to find alternate methods to be happy with their purchase.

Oh yea.....@ the kid.......you're a fucking idiot.

Digi Smalls @ Jan 5th 2007 6:35PM

can't believe no one's mentioned the biggest consequence for the PS3 lacking a proper scaling chip.

it's the reason none of the PS2 games look BETTER on the PS2, and all your non-progressive scan PS2 games (obscure titles like METAL GEAR and FINAL FANTASY) look like utter shit on PS3.

360 upscales xbox1 games to high def and they fantastic. even PS2 improved the graphics on PS1 games.

so much for 'superior' hardware. i can't wait to hear The Kid Mendez tell us how blu-ray's half as slow as DVD data rate is going to decrease load times...yeah load times. that's next gen.

.

Zack @ Jan 5th 2007 6:58PM

#23, Neil: You are mistaken. When asked if GoW could work on the PS3:

“256 MB of RAM makes a huge difference. There is no way we could ever do Gears of War on 256, we had trouble fitting everything on 512MB. We pushed the 360 to the limits.” - Epic

The above quote was even blogged by Joystiq.

Red Neo @ Jan 5th 2007 7:49PM

Jason B, the XBOX graphics are much better than PS2 graphics, even more so for the 360.

kftgr @ Jan 5th 2007 7:39PM

@27 Konchu:
"... but I will say Im curious how fast they can stream the textures as that is part of the argument for Blu-Ray. Say they do a GTA on it that has a City that takes up 25gig would the city look better than say the 360 version or would if have to be so signifigantly larger to take advantage of the extra data for textures and such (not that it is neccessarly a bad thing) and that is assuming that both versions are using the same compression."

1) About streaming...you know that the PS3's Blu-Ray drive is slower than the 360's 12x DVD, right? Even then, both drives are far too slow to be streaming textures on the fly. For pre-caching to avoid load screens is totally different though.

2) A city that's 25 GIGABYTES -- COMPRESSED??! That's pretty optimistic, but definitely not in this generation. It would be impractical to make textures that large and numerous, and map geometry that detailed to fill up 25 GB. The art asset costs alone would be tremendous. Also, the systems now won't be able to handle it (very limited memory vs data size), resulting in a lot of wasted potential.

"The PS3 might possibly be able to pull ahead and show some muscle maybe in Physics and AI but I dont think we should underestimate the 360's 3 cores for doing some of this also."

Wasn't there anecdotal evidence from the Assasin's Creed devs that the 360 handled the AI better because of the seperate cores?

Konchu @ Jan 5th 2007 7:43PM

Well I dont remember the full thing and not sure if its fair to say a Gears like game could not work for PS3 as the 360 has 512 Unified memory and the PS3 has 256 system and 256 graphical.

I was thinking that when Epic asked MS to put 512 in the system they meant total I could wrong. I was kinda taking this as MS was originally thinking of puting 256 unified memory in the 360 but I could be mistaken. Does anyone know off hand.

Regardless though this does mean the 360 can definatly have more texture memory so that could possibly cause difficulties to match texture quality. Of course there are other resources that need that memory too so it comes down to how efficiently the system runs.

Konchu @ Jan 5th 2007 8:17PM

Im sorry if I come off as pro Blu-Ray on my previous post cause that is not really the intent.

I do keep an open mind to the arguments that more space is better. But that was an analogy ment to question if more space is even a viable option based on the bandwidth to stream the data(that being the Blu-Ray Drive and the Bus) to system and graphical memory at a fast enough rate to exceed the quality we see now in games on DVD. And if not the only way it would be viable is if the games were signifigantly larger, but really that might make the game unviable from a development standpoint as you stated. I personally dont see Blu-Ray super viable except for extra content like movies and extra audio.

I really believe they will be able to do some wonderful things with the other cores on the 360, many 1st gen titles used a single thread on a single core for most of the game and were nice titles. And I remember them stating they were able to get some good AI on the 360 on Assasins Creed. Thats why I said not to discount the 360's cores. We will have to see what Sony is able to do with there extra SPU's and they might be able to pull out some magic but I do fear the learning curve is going to be steap and cause them to cheat alot at 1st and not really use them much.

xyz123456 @ Jan 5th 2007 8:22PM

@17 nerfgun wrote: "It was very old, first-gen (5 years ago) sets, and then only a subset of those, that only supported 1080i but not 720p. Every modern HDTV (last 3 years) supports at least 720p."

Really? Well let's see my Mitsubishi rear projection is less than a 2 year old model and supports 480i/480p and 1080i, not 720p. I have a family member with a larger model Mitsu that is less than 3 years old, same issue. I have multiple friends all with 2 year old or less rear projection CRT big screen HDTV's that do not support 720p from various manufacturers, yet all support 1080i.

The fact the 360 has a builtin scaler is obviously very important to me and those I know with similar tv's. At this point even if I wanted a PS3 (and so far I see no compelling games or reasons to get one) I would be stuck with playing most games in 480p which isn't even HD but ED. Gee thanks Sony. Isn't it ironic that the large electronics manufacturer didn't include an upscaling chip in its "4D" and "future proof" system when a company known mostly for its software got it right?

I guess Sony and their fan boys will argue that I should just toss out a perfectly working 2 year old TV and buy a new one that supports 720p to fix Sony's mistake. While I can afford to do that if needed, I don't see that happening. I'll just stick with my 360 and if/when Sony adds an upscaler and has some compelling exclusive game I want to play then maybe I will pick up the PS3.

Mick @ Jan 5th 2007 9:32PM

Soooo. As a 360 owner and a PS3 owner (dual fanboy) Am I to understand "once and for all" that my BLU-Ray movies will never be in 720p??? Yes my Sanyo PLV-Z2 PJ handles 1080i just fine, but this really pisses me off!

SquirrelPhister @ Jan 5th 2007 9:43PM

2. nerfgun:
"I don't quite understand why upscaling is so great... I mean, its a nice wrinkle I suppose if your TV doesn't do 720 (not very many of those I gather)... but upscaling is generally BAD."

upscaling isn't ideal, but it's a necessary evil to enable full compatibility for all televisions. ideally, the console could produce all resolutions natively, but that requires extra programming time as well as extra testing. having this chip ensures that Xbox 360 game developers can target and test for one resolution and the chip can scale it to whatever you want. (i'm not saying 720p scaled to 1080p is going to look as good as native 1080p, but 95% of people will never be able to tell the difference)

the lack of a scaler is one of the big reasons I don't want the PS3 right now. I have 2 HD televisions, a 50" Samsung DLP 720p set and a 36" Toshiba CRT that only accepts 1080i. If I hook up a PS3 to the Toshiba, all games will be downgraded to 480p resolution. No good. If I hook the PS3 up to the Samsung, I can only watch Blu-ray movies at 1080i resolution (that's right, the PS3 can't even scale 1080p res down to 720p). The picture will still look basically as good, but forcing my TV to do the de-interlacing and re-scaling causes sync problems. this is something I never have to think about with the 360, just set the resolution in the dashboard and you're all set (it even remembers to keep it at 720p when I use the VGA connector and 1080i when I use the Component cables, no switching necessary)

so, from my perspective the PS3 is just plain broken right now. until they fix the scaling issues there is almost no chance I will buy one

SquirrelPhister @ Jan 5th 2007 10:28PM

is everybody reading the nonsense posted here by 'The Kid'? this guy is hilarious! facts just bounce off him, like it doesn't even register in his brain! check out this gem:

"14. LOL; READ THE ARTICLE!!! They admit that ANA is a cheap azz scaling chip; far from top of the line."

here's the quote he's referring to: "This isn't a $1,000 scaler," Henson says, "but it's a good one."

see what he does here? it's brilliant, he acts as if he doesn't understand what words mean and claims that "good one" means the same thing as "cheap ass"

clearly this guy is trying to parody those morons that believe every talking point Sony issues them (with an Andy Kaufman-esque level of commitment to playing this retarded character). either that or he has a very weak mind, incapable of self-examination, and completely unwilling to put his own assertions to any kind of test