Sony: PSP Brite's scanlines caused by hardware, no plans to fix [update]

No one is going to do that. Look at the 360 sales and the rabid fan circus that has turned into. Thing was garbage for the first 2+ years of its life cycle.

I did say "hopefully". While collectively us gamers have demonstrated as much independence as a flock of sheep with separation anxiety, the difference the 360 fiasco and this boondoggle is that Microsoft actually acknowledged that the machines were not functioning and *fixed* them. The messed up nature of this defect is being called, to paraphrase, an improvement. It's kinda like the episode of the Simpsons where the car salesman tried to sell a bullet-riddled car by calling them "speed holes". Hopefully our brother and sister gamers can stop baa-ing long enough to avoid this thing like the plague.

I doubt that this was not pointed out by QA.

It was very likely shipped regardless. That happens all the time.

People love to dump on QA when in fact, in my 8+ years of QA management, problems are pointed out and the decision is made by higher level execs to ship it anyway. Happens all the time.

It's not an interlaced signal. It's a characteristic of the LCD panel. So it isn't that the PSP isn't driving the panel well, the panel itself uses an interlaced technique to update. I have done a lot of work with small LCD panels (meaning not like a computer monitor or HDTV, instead like what you'd have in a handheld gaming machine) and some of the panels do interlaced updates so as to reduce power usage, increase color display (gamut, contrast and less brown ghosting) and other positive things. The problem is that of course, you can see scissor effects when there are movements of high contrast objects.

Display vendors will come in and offer these displays and it is up to the company to decide whether the tradeoffs are worth it. In this case, I think many would say Sony made a bad decision.

Wow... so we have LCDs that refresh the same way CRTs do. That's just absurd. These things shouldn't even exist.

They should start buying the screens where Nintendo buy them from. The have no problems like these.

My DS Lite has a little bit of the interlaced screen issue, and it also has a little big of ghosting. It's not a perfect screen, but neither is it distracting. Of course, it's entirely possible that Ninentendo uses multiple sources and mine is not the most preferable.

I got a phat, a launch white and a onyx/black and none have problems other than one stuck pixel on the phat. You should contact Nintendo about your screen since it probably came faulty.

I've never seen "interlacing" issues on any DS screens, but all of them have ghosting issues to some degree, although the ghosting is just because they're really cheap-o displays with low response times. Nothing new in that regard for portable game systems.

But this PSP-3000 scanline thing is the first I've ever seen an issue like this on an LCD display that shouldn't even be de-interlacing anything.

*high response times

Cheap-o bad screens have HIGH response times (i.e. really slow response times).

They're the same issue. You're seeing individual scanlines because of this interlacing issue (even though it makes no sense for there to be interlacing on an LCD screen).

Scratch that. The scanline issue and the interlacing issue actually *are* two different problems. This is my understanding of it:

1) scan line issue -- The term "scan line" is used here only to describe what the effect looks like. That is, there are not actual scan lines in the traditional CRT sense on the PSP-3000 screen, but the term "scan line" is effective in describing what the problem actually looks like.

As for what the problem actually is? Basically, on the PSP-1000 and PSP-2000 (and most LCDs in general nowadays), the *subpixels* of each pixel (the red, green, and blue components of each pixel) are arranged from left to right in the typical RGB order (each subpixel is taller than it is wide, as if it's "standing up" vertically). However, on the PSP-3000 screen, the subpixels of each pixel are arranged from *top to bottom* in the RGB order (each subpixel is wider than it is tall, as if it's "lying down" horizontally).

Therefore, when a subpixel is turned off on the PSP-3000 screen, there is a small black horizontal line where the subpixel is. This is as opposed to the PSP-1/2000 screens, where when a subpixel is turned off, there is a small black vertical line. When you have a bunch of these subpixels turned off in a line next to each other, you can get what appear to be "scan lines".

So, in both cases, there are what appear to be "scan lines": on the PSP-1/2000 screen, the "scan lines" run vertically, while on the PSP-3000 screen, the "scan lines" run horizontally. But the problem is that we as humans are more susceptible to seeing these "scan lines" if they run horizontally than if they run vertically, which is why the "scan line" problem suddenly got noticed on the PSP-3000 screen.

In fact, you can simulate this effect with most regular LCD screens (though preferably with one that has somewhat large pixels, like the DS or even the PSP-1/2000 screens). Simply display a full solid color somewhere on the screen (not white or black), and physically rotate the screen itself 90 degrees. If your subpixel layout is the typical left to right in the normal viewing positon, then you'll be able to see the horizontal "scan lines" when your screen is rotated 90 degrees (keep in mind you may have to get kind of close to the screen to really see them, though). This is because, when you rotate the screen 90 degrees, you're effectively changing the subpixel layout from a left to right order to a top to bottom order (or to a bottom to top order -- it doesn't matter).

As for a solution to the problem on the PSP-3000 screen? It's impossible. The subpixel layout cannot be changed; it's a part of the hardware, and any current PSP-3000s are simply stuck with it. Who knows, though, maybe Sony will change the screens in a later revision... then you can buy it again. ;)

I am curious why Sony decided to change the subpixel layout in the first place, though...

2) interlacing issue -- Now this one's a strange beast. The simple fact is that yes, what we are seeing here is in fact interlacing on an LCD screen. So, instead of updating *every single* row of pixels every 1/60th of a second (60 *frames* per second, the way it's done on the PSP-1/2000 screens), Sony has decided to only update *every other* row of pixels every 1/60th of a second (60 *fields* per second) on the PSP-3000 screen. In short, it's interlacing. You can find out more about interlacing in general on Wikipedia.

As for the reason Sony did this? Well, it *may* be to save battery life, since now only half the number of pixels have to be updated every 1/60th of a second.

And as for a solution to the problem? It's unknown. It may be possible that this could be changed with a firmware update, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.


There's some more information here in a YouTube video, of all places (be sure to watch it in High Quality):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isC1IOhQt_A

The poster of that video explains things a bit more and also provides a link to some pictures that show both issues more clearly.

And fiiinaly, please ignore Sony's response to the issue. It makes absolutely no sense (unless someone can decode it for me...?).


Oh, and as long as we're on YouTube, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYyiI1o6n_o

So freaking awesome. !!

Another thing I thought of:

You should also be able to make the "scan line" problem magically disappear on the PSP-3000 screen by rotating that screen 90 degrees (though it'd be quite difficult to play it like that, of course).

This is just applying the same concept in reverse that we used to simulate the "scan line" problem with an LCD screen that has an ordinary left to right subpixel layout.