If it was an SDTV, wouldn't it be limited to 480i, as progressive scan can only be enabled on digital sets. Unless there are SDTVs capable of accepting and displaying 480p signals?

It's even a problem on 480i TV sets, I played my ps2 games on the ps3 on our plasma and the games looked shit (didnt expect it to look better), I played it on my ps2 games on he ps3 on a 480i TV set and it still looks like shit.

Hmmmmm... I'm not sure. You could be right. It might just be 480i. That should still be better than s-video and composite though.

I kind of find the whole situation kind of amusing though since the PS3 should really be played on a better display anyway. That's just me though.

Well, right -- I agree with you entirely, Acer. And owning a PS3 is my primary reason for looking into getting an HDTV. I....just can't afford a good one at the moment. When I buy one, I wanna make sure it's something akin to top shelf.

Living: Of course it's going to look like shit, 480i is standard def, and you're running it on a plasma which doesn't help anything if you're just running in 480i.

I have my TV and settings at 720p and while I notice some extra jaggieness at times, it's limited to a few games it seems (or at least the major jaggies are) however the games look like shit compared to what's coming out now anyway so I don't really care. Once I beat FFXII and Tekken 5 comes out on the PSNetwork I probably won't be playing many other PS2 games other then Guilty Gear and KOF which I know run perfectly and look fine.

It'll be leaps and bounds better than composite. The difference between s-video and component, while noticeable, aren't as dramatic. You get improved color saturation and definition, and the picture often looks brighter and a tad sharper.

Of course. Why would you buy a machine whose main strength lies in displaying high defintion images, without either owning an HDTV or getting one soon after?

You could get an HDTV that was top tier a year ago and save some money, and get something that's been proven to work well. Getting mine was a hassle, since I stuck it out for a long time looking for a set that was a champ with SD material, HD material and had no problem with gaming.

Edit: Slayer, ironic you pick plasma to illustrate the point that 480i looks terrible, when they're often the best HDTV class when handling standard definition feeds.

Metal Sphere, I'm curious. What HDTV set did you end up buying that's great for both SD and HD? I myself got a nice 32 inch Samsung.

This one to be specific...

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/L...S3296DXXAA.asp


It only goes up to 1080i but it does have HDMI in the back and does 720p most excellently. It also handles SD very well unlike most LCD TVs.

Metal: I actually didn't know that, however more my point is that anything run in 480i looks comparatively bad to higher resolutions with more lines. I didn't mean to say that SD looks bad on plasma, sorry for my misguided wording.

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-KDFE50A10-Rear-Projection-Television/dp/B000A2K3Y6

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-KDF-50E2000-Grand-Projection-Television/dp/B000G5WGYW

The KDF-E50A10, got it for $1500 about a year ago. There was a revision soon after I got it that replaced the RGB input (the one I use to display the PC on my monitor and TV) with a second HDMI input. Other than that, the E50A10 and 50E2000 are essentially the same set.

I had a Sammy DLP before, but it had some serious lag with anything that wasn't at its native resolution. So I sent it back and started trolling AVS for a well rounded set and came up with the above model. Served me me well, but I need to get a bulb for it soon. That's the downside.


Seems like we both ended up with LCDs with great SD performance. I like this sets zoom modes more than most of the others I've tried. The Wide Zoom is probably the least noticeable, so it really helps in those games that don't have 16:9 support or do it by cutting off the image.

Oh, yeah. Anything stretched to cover an image larger than the source is providing is going to look worse than it's not. It's just that it depends on the type of display device and the scalers in said TV to determine how bad it turns out on the screen.

Right, and that's why things like 720p and 1080p matter more with larger displays then smaller ones. When something is larger it of course looks worse then smaller, however when upping the source resolution and that of the TV (ie going from 480i -> 720p) you get more detail sharpness in the same space, while it doesn't put anything there that wasn't already there, it does however make what was already there look better. Hence why something like running 1080p on a 27" display looks pratically the same as 720p on the same display. However if you up the size to something like 62" then there's a noticible difference between resolutions. Not so much in comparitive quality, but in the quality of that same TV's picture. Hope that makes sense.

In short a 720p 27" display's picture quality is quite similar to that of a 62" in 1080p, it's just that now with HD you can make a picture larger without losing picture quality like it always used to be. While 1080p on a 27" display is technically a better picture, the screen is too small to notice that much detail in a small space, which is why 720p almost looks the same in quality.

The reason 1080p exists in the first place is twofold:

• 720p on a larger set, while still an HD resolution, doesn't look too hot.
• Because of this, a higher resolution is needed to provide a similar (actually, better) experience. This higher resolution is optimal for larger televisions because you have more screen present for your eyes to take in, along with those details that would've been lost to you.

Not really. 1080p on a larger set is superior to 720p on a smaller one. Pixel does not equal a higher quality image. A higher resolution on a larger television is simply that much more impressive than squinting at a small screen on a smaller HDTV. Making the picture smaller only makes the imperfections harder to see, it doesn't mean the IQ is better.

That's what I said man, you just said it differently and less complicated. lol At least we're on the same page.

Oh...damn. Sorry, I'm out of it right now. It took me forever just to pick out the typos that I made while typing that up.

Yea I know that, I didnt expect the PS2 games to look great on an HDTV but it just looks worse than what it does on the PS2. I'm just hoping this is somet thing they can fix in a firmware upgrade. I wonder if Sony is even aware of this issue, cause I'm just bothered about the Square Enix games I have, I want to play them and see the same gfx the way it was.

Eh well, I tried hooking up the component cables, but I guess my TV's just not able to make it look right or whatever. When I adjusted the PS3's settings to component cables, it made the screen look squished. It asked me what resolution I wanted to display at, and I couldn't get anything above standard -- setting it to anything else (480i and up, although 480p wasn't an option for me for some reason) just made the screen black.

So I suppose I'm stuck with composite in, for now. I could try S-video though.

Just run the component cables and don't change anything, that's default 480i, it may not be HD, however it is the best picture you can get on SDTV because the colour seperation and things of that sort are improved well over that of composit.

That's the thing -- 480i made my screen's image get all..."squished" so I switched back. I played the GTHD demo, and everything was gigantic and fairly unappealing to look at. :(

Is it a wide screen? Cause if so there's many zoom and aspect ratio settings on wide screen TVs that might just need to be played around with a bit. Though Metal would oribable know more then I if that is the case.

Squished as in "squat" or "thin"? The former would mean that the PS3 is outputting a 4:3 and your set is simply applying the "Wide" or normal 16:9 aspect ratio it has. The latter (which I believe is the case, since you mentioned you didn't have an HDTV) is what happens when you give a 4:3 television a 16:9 resolution.

GTHD, eh? Make sure you set the aspect ratio to 4:3 along with setting the resolution along with it (480i is a 4:3 res, 640x480 IIRC). If you want a comparable change, raise your resolution to 1600x1200 and then drop it to 800x600. Everything suddenly balloons in size and becomes... unappealing to look at.

What resolution were you running at with the S-video cables anyway?

It was vertically squished -- everything looking taller and thinner. In GTHD, it made everything zoomed in, which was weird. The menu that opens up for the player to select manual or automatic transmission, change the tires and start the race was gigantic; almost took up the whole screen.

I'll go back and try again, but I'm fairly certain I set the aspect ratio to 4:3, as I don't have a widescreen monitor, obviously.

Yeah, set the aspect ratio to 4:3, resolution to 480i and see what happens. Either the PS3 or the game itself is forcing the demo to display in 16:9 (hence, the "thinner" look).

It's possible the huge menus and so on are related to the aspect ratio being out of whack.

Okay, I tried it again. So now I have a question -- the PS3 gives me two options, both of which work. One is to select the connection type, being either AV Multi Out using the component inputs, and the other option was component cables in the component inputs. I know it sounds weird and confusing, and it kinda is.

Anyway, the former option doesn't give me the choice for 480p, so I went with the latter option. But when I try it, my screen goes fuzzy and scrolls up and down rapidly, denoting an obvious distaste for a 480p resolution.

Does my TV suck?

No, it's just not a digital television, that's all. Stick with the first one, as the second one seems like it's trying to display/force 480p when your TV doesn't support it. So, the other option fixed things up?

Well now I've got it working, and it appears to be displaying in 480p.

The final problem is this: when I select 480p in the display menu under the Component Cable connection, it still gives me a fuzzy screen. If I leave it at the Standard NTSC selection, it's cool. So it's like it's displaying 480p without the PS3 recognizing/forcing/whatevering. So sup? I'm going to leave it as it is though, because it's clearly better than standard. Text is easier to read and the MotorStorm demo looks much nicer, as does the GTHD demo. So...s'all good, regardless.

If your television is a regular CRT set, it's display 480i. If you've ever tried to a game @ 480p on a normal set, it simply doesn't show it/gets all mangled.


Standard NTSC = 480i. Those improvements are due to the cables, as we'd mentioned before, there would be a noticeable improvement in the image in various ways. So, everything's all good?