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58 Comments
- hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -8/+50Because giving them access to a hardware scaler gives them an excuse to produce a work at a lower level of detail and then pass it to the hardware scaler to scale it up, worsening the quality of PS3 titles.
- EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13The PS3 outputs 720p fine. The problem exists only for people (such as myself) who own a TV that does not support 720p. Rather than upscale 720p to 1080i, it downscales the content to 480p.
- inajeep, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I didn't get the 'likely to use' it from the article. The reason why they don't use the scaler is an unknown and currently it's as good as not there or disabled.
- catalysis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13The PS3 supports 720p. Sorry you wasted all that time.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15Vertical scaling is more difficult. In addition, going between 720p and 1080i requires interlacing and twitter suppression. It's unclear if Sony's hardware does this, or does it well.
It's sad that arstechnica thinks it's okay to write an article based upon conjecture from a posting from an unknown person on avsforum. - Sarki, on 10/12/2007, -7/+17I know this may turn into a flame fest, but can someone give me a good reason why Sony would have originally instructed developers not to use this?
Whatever the case, this is GOOD news. There is a scaler, and it is now likely to be used. - pooper, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12http://digg.com/hardware/Ripping_off_the_veil_The_mysterious_PS3_hardware_scaler_exposed
- berwiki, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12...only Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer.
- eastbeast314, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14I think this post presents a good rationale for Sony's actions concerning the scaler:
http://ozymandias.com/archive/2007/01/29/Bruce_2700_s-Thoughts-on-PS3-Horizontal-Scaling-in-SDK.aspx
Summary: Cheap Horizontal scaling is very simple to do, even without special hardware, but a hardware scaler is needed for vertical. - Scorpion1169, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9System Longevity
Don't allow developers to use all the available hardware at first. Then, just as the graphic quality is peaking, give them access to the hw scaler.
True... it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense but neither have a lot of their decisions lately. - enforcerpsu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10You forgot it cures cancer.
- EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The article is actually based on a Beyond3D article, the content of which I don't believe anybody disputes. The only reason the AVSForum comment was mentioned was because it might provide additional insight. Given that ArsTechnica repeatedly warned that the comment was unverified and possibly inaccurate I don't see the problem.
- jacksons98, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8@CrimsonBlur Your post is totally inaccurate. The issue for PS3 is only with some older HDTV sets that support 480i/480p and 1080i "only". If your TV is standard defintion or a HDTV that supports at least 720p, and/or 1080i/1080p then you are set to go. Secondly, upscaled to 1080p is not the same as 1080p native. There is a big difference.
- jacksons98, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@Canadiangeese You know I do agree with you to a certain extent. But at the same time if it's not integrated developers will never support it. ie, Sega CD, X360 HD-DVD for games are 2 examples. I also remember these same points being made when Sony pushed CD and Nintendo wanted to stay with Cartridges, and when they pushed DVD but everyone said CD was enough. It will be interesting to look back in 5 years and see if Blu-ray really was a good idea.
- andydumi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Could be used for something else like HD Eyetoy support, PSP game streaming thing... Since developers can support various resolutions by designing their games as such, the hardware scaler can then be used for other purposes.
Its hard to say what the total architecture is, or what all the Sony plans are, all we can do is speculate. The good thing is that now its even more accessible, and Sony is responding to customers, rather than leaving them in the dark and making them buy new TVs. - jacksons98, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10@ZeroMP I'd like to know why you are against Blu-ray. I can still play my DVD's on the PS3, the Blu-Ray movies look fantastic, and it has a whole bunch more capacity than DVD for games. Secondly my PS3 was only $100 more than a X360 and I'm not paying for internet play, didn't have to buy a recharge kit, etc. To me the HDMI and Blu-ray were worth it.
- andydumi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@ brombie
"A developer can't develop a 480p game and ask PS3's scaler to display 720p for his game."
"On xbox, I can develop at 720 and the hardware can upscale it to 1080."
Your statements are contradictory. The developer can develop whatever resolution they want, even 16 pixels by 9 pixels and have a hardware upscaler do its best to stretch it to 1080.
Thats what Sony wants to avoid. Force the developers to do their best and make 1080p games, not make 720 games and then get illusory 1080 through a hardware upscaler. The idea is to get really good games with elegant coding and full resolution developed, not simple ports from Xbox of 720p and rely on hardware to upscale. It can and has been done, and Sony is forcing the developers to work and not be lazy. - catalysis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Appearantly there is a very good reason for this which Sony has let all of the developers know. However, the developers are bound by an NDA and can't really say anything at this point.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5First of all, if anyone is truly wondering if the PS3 has a built in hardware scaler, you need to look no further than the Toshiba Super Companion chip. This chip is an audio and video processing powerhouse and if you look at the Toshiba presentation of the SCC chip (page 13), you'll see a diagram that clearly shows 2 scalers located within the SCC. The hardware scaler functionality is built into the SCC.
Link: http://www.hotchips.org/archives/hc17/2_Mon/HC17.S1/HC17.S1T3.pdf - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5
I should also add that the reason why the SDK was recently updated with scaler support is because Sony did rush the firmware and the SDK. The Toshiba Super Companion chip has very little SDK and firmware support. It's essentially a chip that has the majority of its functions untapped for now. Make no mistake about it, though, the SCC is an audio and video monster. As its name implies, it's purpose is to help the Cell with audio and video tasks. If you would like to know more about the SCC, check out the above PDF presentation file above. - aegis9975, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8This has gotta be taken with a grain of salt, since its a blog from Microsoft Xbox team employee. Also, after reading it sounds like he's only speculating.
http://ozymandias.com/about.aspx - PurpleTentacle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Widescreen support: that's the first thing I thought of. Why else would you have a horizontal scaler and not a vertical one (seriously, if anybody knows)? Granted it would be a terrible idea to stretch 4:3 to 16:9, but maybe there would be some tricks where you could render less and stretch it to fill the screen so people didn't know. Or maybe old games could be streched a bit. Seems stupid, but sometimes stupid things like this are what the masses want.
- apoc06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3it wasnt enabled at the beginning for the very same reason microsoft didnt enable their scaler to do 1080p in the beginning. heaven only knows.
also, most of the speculation on this article assumes that the ps3 hardware does NOT do vertical scaling. if you read the actual article, all thats mentioned is the fact that although developers knew of the scaler abilities of the ps3 but were under NDA not to mention it before, now horizontal scaling is at least available to be used with the dev-kit. the ps3 hardware may or may not be able to perform vertical scaling as well, but all we know is that the official TRC and the SDK do not allow it yet. - 0olong, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4No one shoved Blue Ray down anyone's throat. You are free to NOT buy a PS3 and go add a HD-DVD to your XBox360.
- jacksons98, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@Crimsonblur I think you are giving more credit to the hardware scaler in these consoles than is really due. Infact I remember seeing a writeup about it here on Digg a few weeks ago. Supposedly this was the big X360 big advantage that the PS3 probably didn't have. In the same article the Microsoft rep was talking about how Sony probably forgot a $10 part, here it is here is "Ana". Remember that one?
- CrimsonBlur, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about, that article. They were comparing Resistance: Fall of Man and Gears of War on the same Sony 1080p set. From what I remember, even though both games were running at 720p, Gears looked significantly better because of the hardware scaling chip in the 360, which has that code name "Anna" or whatever it was. I couldn't find the article. Anyway, the point is, when your HDTV doesn't support the resolution a game is running at on the 360, it uses this chip to scale the output to the native resolution you selected in the setup options. As far as I know (and according to that article), the PS3 does not do this. So despite what the other scaling problems are with the older HDTV's (which is admittedly not a very big problem in my opinion) you have this other factor here. If this scaling capability exists, it would be very good for Sony and the PS3, but I wonder why it wasn't enabled from the beginning. And I wonder if it works as well as the solution in the 360.
- gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If the scaler is there and it works, why don't they use it then?
I think there's more they aren't telling us, as usual. - DAVIBE, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7interesting....
People were complaining almost everything about the ps3 (everybody saying Sony is so stupid for not an upscaler & other stuff)
I guess everybody under-estimated Sony too much. Maybe they got other stuff under their Sleeves. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Well, it would be nice for them to show their cards because their profit is tanking and the bad press on the PS3 is racking up. If Sony has something amazing to show us in the PS3, now is about as good a great time as any to reveal the big secrets. Should Sony wait a year to give us something impressive when the market has ignored it totally?
It would be nice if the PS3 had some decent features and a great set of release titles, and then Sony hints at new stuff in the future to increase further hype, but even those I know that have the PS3 are bored of it, bored of waiting for all the good games to come out, and bored of stupid problems like having to wait for a download to finish before doing anything else.
Sony should put it all on the table now rather then keeping it up their sleeves because the PS3 ain't doing too well by any measuring stick. - gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Perhaps it's broken in some technical sense and they already know it will cause problems.
- DarkJC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There was an article dugg yesterday or two days ago that got all technical and explained this. Along with the horizontal access to the scaler, they added resolutions for games, including something like 960x1080. Obviously, if you look at the resolution, it can be horizontally stretched to 1920x1080, and it takes up about the same memory footprint as a 1280x720 game res.
And to those who are claiming there is no hardware scaler, or that it's very limited in implementation, I'm pretty sure that's wrong. Someone also posted a quote from a game dev in the previous digg, saying that they've known of a hardware scaler from the start, but were told they were not allowed to use it or their game would not pass QA. The newest SDK allows them to use it, but with very limited restrictions. He could not elaborate any further, NDA etc. Sorry I don't have the source offhand, but check the previous digg article, I think it was titled "Ripping off the veil: the PS3's mysterious hardware scaler" - sacherjj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Microsoft stated that there is no support for HD-DVD GAMES. This makes developers supporting it a moot point. It is strictly for HD-DVD playback. But, I only own a Wii and XBox 1, 'cause I can't really justify the price of either of the other two.
- chojin808, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2so when you play a dvd movie on the 360 on a 1080p tv does it upscale too? all the way?
- CrimsonBlur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It does, yes. But from my understanding this only works when using the VGA cable.
- alx242, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4A lot of talk about vertical and horizontal scaling and the PS3 not supporting horizontal scaling. There is no reason to create a scaler which only supports one of them therefore I say that this supports both. The reason people are only talking about horizontal scaling is because that is what has been enabled in the SDK.
Without going out of line I believe this is a technological reveal done by Sony due to the reveal of the 360 scalar not long ago and MS proudly saying that this is something the PS3 would never be able to do and why the 360 is superior. But I also believe that Sony doesn't want it's developers to take advantage of it as of yet both due to the fact that the developers should not revert to scaling of games vs. real 1080 resolution in games and also that they want to finalize the SDK before allowing it to the developers.
There is not much of reason to use a horizontal scaler as I see it other then telling people that it is there (the scalar that is). - CrimsonBlur, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I know native 1080p is better than upscaled 720p content. I'm saying that the scaler in the 360 can upscale 720p content so well that it's hard to tell the difference, not that they look exactly the same. This still doesn't answer my questions about hardware scaling on the PS3 though. If the PS3 has no hardware scaler, how does it upscale games locked in at 720p native resolution if you have a 1080p set? And how does it downscale content from 1080p for your 720p set? It doesn't, correct? So your HDTV has to do it for you instead, which probably has a very crappy scaler. In the case of the 360, it does this with a much better hardware scaler.
Now these recent reports are saying that the PS3 has a hardware scaler capable of horizontal scaling only, and as far as we know, it is not nearly as advanced as the one in the 360. So what does this news really even mean? - hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Quailty is in the eye of the beholder and in this case the beholder we are talking about is Sony, and Sony figured that developers might decide to render less pixels than try to figure out how to make the ps3 hardware do the extra work to render 1080 at full quality, all outputted pixels addressed.
- jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Because Sony prefers the following formula...
Step 1: ...
Step 2: ...
Step 3: $Profit$ - inajeep, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6Of course he's speculating aegis9975. He doesn't have any inside knowledge, he however has more expereince than I do in the field and properly dumbed it down for me to understand. Why horizontal and not vertical is as confusing to him as it will be to anyone else besides Sony.
- ahatter, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@ethergnat
i am in the same boat :/ - brombie, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@andydumi:
How does it contradictory?
You said that the developer can develop at any resolutions he want and the hardware will scale it. Please read the articles again. There's no vertical upscaler in PS2 that we know of so it has to be done through software.
Folks, I know the headline says "PS3 Hardware Scaler", but it's not the same as 360's scaler. PS3's is much more limited and my best guess why Sony didn't want developers to use it? Because it's not good enough to be used for games. Maybe it's there just for regular dvd playback or HDTV since that's where you usually find this type of scaler. - sacherjj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I thought that was:
Step 1: ...
Step 2: ...
Step 3: $Loss$ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1
Really? I think that post reflects the thoughts of a 360 fanbot that cannot accept the presence of a hardware scaler in the PS3. - CanadianGeese, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6@jacksons98
Blu-Ray itself is kinda cool. The problem is how Sony took a very popular brand name and shoved Blu-Ray down the throats of its fans. To you, the PS3 was only $100 more than a 360 (assuming you are comparing the premium 360 to the core PS3), but that's still $100 more than some people prefer to pay. Instead of making it an option, they forced it on you, and in turn forced a higher price on you.
Sure, Blu-Ray movies look great and it holds a lot of data, but Sony didn't put Blu-Ray in the PS3 to make you happy but rather so they could make money. It's a trojan horse and most people aren't too happy about being used like that.
Sony fanboys don't seem to mind much, though. In the end, people who actually spent the money on a PS3 use the Blu-Ray "experience" to justify their purchase. "I'm glad it has Blu-Ray now, cuz otherwise I would have wasted $500-$600 bucks."
But, you are probably already trying to think of how you can counter my argument. You probably want to compare the price of a PS3 to a standalone Blu-Ray player, and how it is hundreds of dollars more. What no one probably told you was that a standalone HD-DVD player is only $379 (and if you get the pc/360 add-on it's only $199).
http://www2.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx?omid=113&ref=dealtime&utm_id=9&utm_source=Dealtime&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TBHDA2&sku=TBHDA2
Still feel all warm and fuzzy with Blu-Ray, knowing that every cent you spend on a Blu-Ray disc/movie supports Sony's decision to completely stick it to the consumer? I don't like Blu-Ray because of what it stands for, not the experience I do/don't receive when watching movies/playing games. - ZeroMP, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5Yeah but all of you Sony detractors are forgetting one thing: Blu-Ray.
/sarcasm - therodersabides, on 10/12/2007, -9/+6This is nothing more than a new and exciting feature of the PS3, just like the broken square buttons on the PSP.
- tr1dent, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I think Sony (like Microsoft) wants to discourage developers from having to worry about scaling. The 360's story is "write your game at any resolution, and let the hardware make all the decisions about how to draw it to the screen." Sony, I'm sure, wants to deliver the same message. It would be a nightmare for developers if they had to write the code to handle various scaling scenarios depending on the TV. You'd also end up with inconsistency between games who implement this differently, which would agitate customers. If Sony has the hardware to do it, they'll no doubt release a patch for the system, rather than release functionality in their SDK and push all of this work onto the game developers.
- miketuck3r, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1performance it may be gimped or in fact a software implementation
- CrimsonBlur, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2That was only part of my question/statement, it was really just two sentences out of the whole thing there. I assume it does support 720p natively but I don't actually own a PS3 so just want to make sure that's correct. Even if it does, it doesn't mean much to the people that own a 1080p HDTV, and it doesn't mean much to the people that own a 720p set playing games designed to run in 1080p.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1The super powerful cell processor won`t allow developers to use it...yeah right.
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