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PS3 doesn't do 1080i?

engadget.com — Apparently if you're an early adopter with a 1080i TV you have more than HDMI - HDCP issues to worry about. You're stuck with 480p gaming too!

Who dugg this? Made popular Nov 17, 2006

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  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+53I guess we have to hear about this every half hour
  • saarela, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15Screw that. I bought a 36" Sony WEGA a couple of years ago just to play video games on. I knew buying a Sony would come back to bite me.
  • Nick22, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11this was on teh front page twice yesterday
  • magaman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8your inaccurate that is the dumbest comment I've ever read. a Tv that is labeled as 1080i DOES 1080i.
  • SimonKay, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I hate engadget (that's where the title came from). It should read "PS3 Downscales 720p to 480p on Older 1080i HDTVs."

    Here's the original IGN article:

    http://ps3.ign.com/articles/746/746282p1.html
  • gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8More lies and half truths to follow, stay tuned.
  • chocobomog, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10Wow, you are really focused on the numbers aren't you? I don't know the technical specifics, but I do know that the PS3's 256 MB of RAM does not equal the 256MB of RAM I had in my computer in 1999. By your reasoning the PS3 couldn't even run Win2000 optimally, and yet I don't remember anything looking like White Knight Story being available for my 256MB PC in 1999. Obviously, there is something more to the system than the amount of RAM.

    It's people like who are stuck on numbers that the processors companies are trying to get away from. Otherwise, someone might think a 4.2 gHz P4 is much fast than a dual 64 bit 2.2 machine
  • rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6CHRIST. This was on the front page 3x in 5 hours last night.

    Actually, no -- the stories saying the PS3 not "doing" 720p were on 3x last night because that's the actual story. The PS3 does 1080i just fine, and the submitter needs to learn how to read. Now I don't know whether to mark this is as inaccurate or duplicate.
  • andydumi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Linux is available already for it. We just need the consoles.
  • LouisC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well, we already know they blow up rubik's cubes and make babies go insane.
  • SpanishBrowne, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8@saggygrandma

    No.. but it is Sony's fault they don't support 1080i gaming.. you know... one of the HIGH DEFINITION formats... ring any bells? We were lead to believe HD was the cornerstone of their console...
  • Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8@saggygrandma -- I'm afraid I will have to repeat the fanboy line -- if Microsoft could do it over a year ago, why can't Sony do it now?
  • mikehorn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/About/TechnicalSpecifications

    The specs page says it outputs: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p.

    By the way the "i" in 1080i stands for interlacing, which was invented in the 1930's by a guy who got the idea while looking at corn fields, supposedly. It was a solution to a 1930's problem with vaccum tubes not being able to scan an image fast enough, yet somehow has stuck around to plague us today. The 1080i format is a cop out. It's half the bandwidth of 1080p and therefore much cheaper. Yet, most HD tv's today are natively progressive scan "p", so they have to de-interlace the image before displaying it so you don't see the horizontal interlaced lines. Only CRT HD tv's are interlaced, LCD's, Plasma's, Projectors, computer monitors... are all progressive. Interlacing just die all ready! I prefer 720p over 1080i... I think it scales up to 1080p better as well.
  • MalaysianMafia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5more like its sony's fault for not having the console that they are pimping as the "true" HD console actually work with all HD resolutions...
  • Muyoso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2At least Sony didnt come up with their own standard, you know, like 845w, and have the PS3 support that and gigapixel HD, so the only possible chance a consumer has to play on it is to buy TV's they produce.
  • YoHowdy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Moron...everybody who bought an HDTV until about 9 months ago only had the choice of 1080i. True, the sets have been able to accept 720p for some time but I'm sorry I didn't have my time machine when I bought my HDTV 4 years ago.
  • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5That's totally wrong.

    These HDTVs in question display 1080i on a CRT. They scan every line. Now, the dot pitch of the display is such that not every pixel is fully resolved, but each one is drawn, it is not converted to 720-768 first.

    Anyhow, this is a molehill, not a mountain. Any decent HDTV accepts 720p. Even good-quality tube-based HDTVs take 720p (my previous one did).

    This behavior is the exact same as Xbox 180. If you set your PS3 to know your TV does 1080i but not 720p, then any game that can render in 1080i as well as 720p will show up in 1080i. It is games that only do 720p and 480p that will drop to 480p. Unfortunately there are a fair number of these right now.

    This will not effect BluRay discs, as they are 1080i/1080p.

    It is possible Sony could address this in software in the future by scaling to 1080i, as the chipset the PS3's video hardware is derived from is capable of this kind of on-the-fly scaling.

    Magaman, there are lots of TVs (non-tube) that say they do 1080i and don't display 1080i. My current HDTV for example, has a fixed pixel resolution of 1360x768. Many TVs are this res or lower. Plasmas are often 1024x768 and older ones even 800x600! Most of these accept 1080i, but they don't really display it as 1080i.
  • Nick22, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2heres a solution for ya: mark it as innacurate, make a dupe acount and mark it as a dupe. problem solved ;)
  • WhereAmI, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2heres a better solution
    stay out of the Digg gaming news area, you will get so pissed off....
  • teamparadox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thats not what this article is about...did you read it?

    Its saying if your TV is 1080i, The PS3 will downsample 720p games to 480p instead of upsampling to 1080i like it should...jesus half the whiners in these comments about the article being inaccurate are themselves inaccurate because you didnt bother to RTFA!
  • jeznav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is somewhat ironic: I own a 2yr Sony 42' LCD Rear Projector that can go as high as 1080i. If a game that delivers true 1080p, it will downscale to 480p not 1080i or 720p? Seriously, I'll never buy another tv just for not having 1080p.
    A Sony tv not being compatible with a Sony product is basically shooting themselves on a mobius strip.
  • mchammer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4@tabledesk
    it has 512 ram split in 2 xdr and DDR3

    this is only a problem on non 720p, 1080i monitors which is very few
  • HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No, it'll do 720p or 1080i. See what the stupid misleading title gets us?

    The PS3 will select the highest res the game supports and the TV supports. Your TV certainly does 1080i and 720p, and the game does one of these two. For example, Resistance only does 720p, 480p and 480i. Your TV does 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i. The highest res both support is 720p, so the game will do 720p on your TV.
  • chriskzoo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3On another note, if you can score some Wii component cables, "YOU GET 480p GAMING!!! w00000t!!!!"
  • retral, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Btw choco... I tried to add this to my last reply but ran out of time:

    256MB of ram is 256MB of ram. It may be faster; but that doesn't mean it can magically store 1GB+ of data.. In other words, you just might get an OS to run but there's no chance a game like fear or farcry would run on the otherwise capable hardware. Saddens me.

    Another thing I'd look at using the PS3 for would be a DVR... recording tv with a tuner addon & a bigger HD.. Probably too much to ask though.

    Yes, the PS3's 256MB of ram is faster/better than your old computer's 256MB of ram, but in this case (trying to run an OS+software(games)), quantity means more than quality (though both are preferred).
  • inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm sick of all the sony bashing. Is there anything good at all in the ps3 ? lol
  • dengzhi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i want 1080p!
  • ZenMojo, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5It supports 1080i. It doesn't support 720p. Buried as inaccurate.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0WEll, it is YOUR fault for not reading hte article and just blindly accepting the ***** that the submitted handed you.
  • zeroduck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1But if your 1080i screen doesn't do 720p (which, apparently, most games are in), you're stuck with 480p. The smarter thing, according to everyone else, is to upscale to 1080i (which is apparently what the 360 does).

    Not a big deal to me . . . I play my 360 on a SD 27" TV. Either a lot of people are crying about a non-issue for them because they don't have HDTVs, or there are way to many people out there with more money than me. I'd expect that this is something they can fix late with a firmware update, but don't quote me on that.
  • Sagags, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3yes its sonys fault, the PS3 is supposed to be the HD center of the home, and alot of hd TVs sold over 3 years ago only have support for 1080i
  • iloveVWs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1who the hell wants interlaced anyway, go progressive!
  • tendonut, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1IGN posted an article about it. They tested out a bunch of 720p games on their HDTV that doesn't not support 720p, and it downscaled them to 480p instead of upscaling them to 1080i or 1080p
  • tendonut, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Lets also not forget the PS3 wouldn't even need more than that. Sure, your PC from 1999 had 256MB of RAM, but it was also trying to run a memory eating OS that has a lot more on it's agenda than just playing games. Just think, to run Farcry on a PC, you need enough memory to run the OS AND the game.

    BTW, most Linux distros will work perfectly fine of 192MB or RAM. Windows on the other hand......*cough* vista *cough*
  • jdb252, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3It supports progressive scanning - 1080p is considered the better of the two.
  • ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2it's not inaccurate.
    Title: 'PS3 doesn't do 1080i"
    meaning of article: the PS3, when given a choice between 1080i and 480p, downsamples 720p to 480p instead of up to 1080i.

    therefore, it does not do 1080i. Headline is dead on.

    I'd like to point out, that this means that for most people (480i/p, and 1080i) it is equivalent to the Wii as far as resolution goes.
  • Harabeck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Most games are in 720p, which is what the article is about.
  • erikjernberg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1This is innacurate, and it is a misleading title. This is a TV dependency issue. If you have a 1080i tv, PS3 does play to it. Buried as innacurate.
  • uptown, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4give it a day
  • archiesteel, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Wow, the MS-backed anti-Sony astroturfing campaign continues. Money well spent, I imagine...
  • Freakinweirdo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0This isn't sony screwing anybody, this is people who don't know what the difference between 1080i and 1080p is.

    I am sorry to say it, but if you bought a 1080i television, you are a moron, don't go blaming sony for making a system that doesn't support a crappy interlaced signal. Blame your own ignorance for slapping down a big chunk of cash for an interlaced TV.
  • andydumi, on 10/12/2007, -17/+12It does 1080i just fine, its an option on its menu. What it does not do is upscale for now. Innacurate.
  • retral, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3256MB system ram is barely enough for XP alone... you couldn't really do any intensive tasks that the cell is capable of without totally maxing the ram; if it would even run XP.

    And I highly doubt it's upgradeable.
  • Declarent, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Look at the bright side, at least now some PS3 folks can claim gameplay as their number one priority :)
  • tendonut, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Too bad Sony put all their time into hardware development to sell their system. "What? Huh? You mean....I actually have to make good GAMES too? *****, I thought the awesome specs could hypnotize our audience"
  • evansls, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2where does it say this officially and not in just a tech blog? does it say this in the ps3 manual, ps3 website, etc?
  • npinski, on 10/12/2007, -17/+12no, they rape your mother.
  • omghi2u2, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Innacurate.

    There are no 1080p or 1080i TVs, as they are standards for transmitting video and in no way related to maximum native resolution of a physical display.
  • greenbox, on 10/12/2007, -17/+7man, it's just one disappointment after another. what's next, they overheat and explode?
  • retral, on 10/12/2007, -14/+3This is sorta off-topic, but the only way I'll buy a PS3 for 600 dollars is if it ever boots windows or a linux (with interface)... But that's not really probable considering that it only has 256MB of ram.
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