Sony retracts 1080i fix statement, leaving customers in lurch

All you owners of HDTVs that can only do 1080i, we've got some bad news for you. Sony Computer Entertainment America's head honcho of Corporate communications, David Karraker, apparently retracted -- or at least backtracked -- on Sony's previous statements about the increasingly infamous 1080i issue (the one that won't let PS3s play games at 1080i on HDTVs that don't support 720p). According to GameDaily, Sony cannot actually confirm this issue can be fixed via a firmware patch (although they're not denying it, either), and that they are "looking into the issue and haven't stated any actions that will be taken regarding it."

[Thanks, Matt]

[John Doe @ Nov 25th 2006 4:15PM]

I have a nice 1080i 64" projection widescreen. Good thing I couldn't give less of a shit about the PS3. I'll stick with my first gen PS2 thank you very much. Sony can take the SP3 and shove it up their ass.

[John Doe @ Nov 25th 2006 4:16PM]

PS3 even. :-\

[Reginald @ Nov 25th 2006 4:14PM]

Well, easy enough just go out an buy another HDTV for $3000+

Sony will gladly sell you another one!

[Josh Warner @ Nov 25th 2006 4:15PM]

Sony: Screwing customers worldwide!

[Odd TSi @ Nov 25th 2006 4:16PM]

Does this include the downscaling of Blu-Ray movies issue as well? You know the one Ars discovered in their review where basically if you try to output a Blu-Ray movie in 720p it knocks it down to 480p.

[NoobSauce @ Nov 25th 2006 4:34PM]

Wish I would have known this before I bought my TV.
It does support 720p, but I bought it for the PS3 hoping that 1080i would easily be supported.
I have no intention of getting a 1080p set, they cost a thousand dollars more, easily.

[morgyn @ Nov 27th 2006 10:08AM]

1080i is supported tard, read the article.

The issue is that if the TV doesn't do 720, then the ps3 assumes the TV can't do any higher...

THIS IS IN THE HDMI SPEC.

damn people are idiots.

[Njoli @ Nov 25th 2006 4:39PM]

Gosh, i didn't think anyone could screw up system launch worse than M$ but Sony is realy giving it there all. And to think people laughed at M$ after the anouncement of the original Xbox now its starting to look like they have a legitimate shot at wining the next gen concel wars, makes you wonder what the future hold for the Zune.

[number40one @ Nov 27th 2006 7:59PM]

not too much... The ZUNE is a broken piece of shit. The Xbox and the 360 are competent, complete products.

[Serious Sam @ Nov 25th 2006 5:16PM]

Yeah this is lame. Sony can't even get a simple scaler done correctly. Screw the PS3. It's an overpriced console that really doesnt offer much over the competition. Save your money and get the obvious choice for a better gaming system ;)

[Shaymus22 @ Nov 25th 2006 4:47PM]

Wow...and the PS3 doesn't even support VGA to let people who don't want to pay thousands of dollars on a 1080p set play in HD for $40 like the Xbox360 does...they don't even come close!

[Yuki @ Nov 25th 2006 4:45PM]

This is a non-issue in Europe where the HD Ready initiative states that only HD TVs supporting both 1080i *AND* 720p (or Full HD sets) can be sold to customers. Why didn't the US create a similar regulation to protect consumers and ban the sale of those lousy TV sets?

[John @ Nov 25th 2006 9:03PM]

because America is the place where stuff regularly banned in other nations is sold formaldehyde in wood for example is perfectly legal in America but is banned almost everywhere else because when it comes to big business no sacrifice of life is too big.

[flamer\\\'s grill @ Nov 25th 2006 11:35PM]

Because in America, it's a free economy. You aren't forced to pay more for a feature you don't care about/may never use.

Like the PS3, where you have a choice between Blu-ray and non-blu-ray.... er... wait...

[Brian @ Nov 26th 2006 4:44AM]

I think there is a misunderstanding here. HDTVs in the US must support 720p and 1080i - but only on ATSC sources. The TV itself doesn't have to actually display 720p, just the (possibly integrated) receiver.

Most CRT HDTVs produced will only sync to 1080i or 480p - it's up to the integrated tuner to scale the picture to the correct format. That doesn't mean that the component inputs have to accept 720p, and on many older HDTVs (like my 38" RCA direct-view CRT HDTV), they don't! There are probably many European HDTVs that are exactly the same - their tuner accepts 720p but the component inputs do not.

This is not a problem for almost all devices. Almost all devices (upscaling DVD players, ATSC tuners, satellite/cable boxes) support multiple output formats and have scaling built into their hardware. The XBOX 360 works this way too - the hardware automatically scales games to the proper resolution, whether you are using 1080p, 1080i, or 720p.

Of course, those of us with LCD TVs don't have to worry about this - my cheapshit Olevia HDTV will sync to just about anything (PAL, NTSC, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) over component or DVI/HDCP.

[TheCash @ Nov 25th 2006 4:52PM]

Well Sony can kiss my curvy ass. I don't care how high tech and uber this thing is, if this is how they are going to play and treat their customers then they can cram that big black brick right up their tight asses. I can remember people jumping all over Microsoft for not releasing an HDMI cable for the 360, but this is just inexcusable.

[SickNic @ Nov 25th 2006 4:55PM]

If you read the article, it sounds like Sony is saying this is an issue with older TVs, like it's the TV's fault that they don't do 720p, not the PS3's...

[floridarocs @ Nov 25th 2006 5:06PM]

come on..everyone in unison...M$ is evil. they won't let sony fix this.

[Bennett @ Nov 25th 2006 5:13PM]

I guess the HD Era doesn't start even after Sony says it does.

Seriously though, if the RSX can't interlace a 1920x1080 image (even a scaled 720p image), then someone at Sony and/or nVidia should be losing their job right about now. This is like teh Dead Rising text issue, only on a larger scale; developers were so keen to capitalize on new tech that they neglected to make sure their product works for the masses (read: almost every TV out there).

[solareon @ Nov 25th 2006 6:21PM]

bennet i agree with you 100%

is it that hard to be like "oh okay, tv only takes 1080i. lets scale to 1080i and do it"

[Zamboni Schwartz @ Dec 3rd 2006 12:01PM]

I think Sony really shot themselves in the foot this year.

With a howitzer.

[Yuki @ Nov 25th 2006 5:58PM]

SickNic wrote:
If you read the article, it sounds like Sony is saying this is an issue with older TVs, like it's the TV's fault that they don't do 720p, not the PS3's...

That's exactly the case. Why do you think those TVs were banned in Europe?

[Josh Warner @ Nov 25th 2006 6:04PM]

Wrong. Europe can set their standards however they like, but their standards have no effect on the rest of the world. Sony should support appropriate resolutions for all televisions... oh wait, it says they do!

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/About/TechnicalSpecifications

Where is the class action suit for false advertising? Their official site STILL claims they support 1080i output so this should be cut and dried!

I'd be _reluctantly_ OK with this IFF they had never stated support for 1080i in the first place. But since it's there, Sony is lying and should be taken to the cleaners for it.

[RogueStorm @ Nov 25th 2006 6:00PM]

@floridarocs

Please tell me my sarcasm detector is broken and you're not serious. Sony is in many ways not only as bad as Microsoft, but possibly worse in how they handle customer relations issues.

As far as Dead Rising, at least they were able to patch that and fix it for free. I don't see this issue being fixed with new firmware. I do see Sony creating some kind of inline scaler that they will charge (ie.-punish) their customers for. Hell, a $40 adapter is money in the bank on this matter, not to mention the people that are too stupid to realize they don't need it on their SDTV and buy it anyway thinking it will do something great for them.

[mike @ Nov 26th 2006 4:48AM]

Wee ... America can set it's standards but no reason why the rest of the world has to follow :) Just because US consumer protection is worth nothing, don't bitch that the EU got it right.

[RogueStorm @ Nov 25th 2006 6:05PM]

How long will it take for someone to make a real Wii60 and shove the two consoles into a single case. Talk about killer app!

[evilfixx @ Nov 25th 2006 11:39PM]

Before you people bash bash bash to hell, why don't we look at how many TVs this is affecting
... Ooh ooh wait, stop bitching, don't buy a PS3, and leave the complaints for people who will buy the system.... and an HDTV!!

[Castle @ Nov 25th 2006 6:19PM]

Actually this whole article is pointless . . .

There really isn't news in this. . .

From the link. . .
Nothing confirmed, nothing denied.

However, even most old TVs that don't support 720p have scalers in them to receive 720p signals and output them as 1080i, and that ones that don't are stupid anyway because there are a lot of HD programming that broadcast in 720p.

Also, in Europe and the US for a TV to be called a "HDTV" it has to support 720p AND 1080i as well as have a HD tuner. TVs that are having this problem are "HD monitors" or "HD-ready TV"s and not really HDTV sets.

[Nick Gold @ Nov 25th 2006 6:21PM]

The USA did pass laws regarding what can be deemed an "HDTV" -- and that has to include the ability to display (and convert if need be) both 720p and 1080i. As for European laws, well, I guess here in the USA we are less prone to assume "Big Brother" will take care of us 100% of the time, so if people wanna spend their money on premature HD TV sets, well, let 'em.

[LJKelley @ Nov 25th 2006 6:24PM]

Another reason why I bought the 360. I have a 2006 Model Samsung PDP TV, it does 720p and 1080i. Obviously on the PS3, I can only choose 720p and not 1080i, but to think of the millions of HDTV Ready sets (sold as such, and advertised by such including by Sony) that only do 1080i and 480i, its a real shame. You would think that Sony would TEST their console with each format (480i,480p,720p,1080i,1080p) before releasing in the US. It would take less than 30 minutes to test all modes... Go Figure!!!

[silentbob343 @ Nov 25th 2006 6:30PM]

Some interesting things said over at AVS.
"There is hardware scaling. It's just not allowed to be used right now"

"I know for a fact there is one there. I know for a fact it's not allowed to be used. I know this the same way that I knew a month ago that games would independently decide on scaling and output resolutions like I linked up above."

"I don't know why Sony is being so stupid about it. There could be issues with the hardware scale or a visual quality issue with the hardware scaler that made it so Sony required all developers to not use it. Therefore what would need to be done is a software scaler, or some sort of post processing effect in order for it to work properly. Given the launch and what a pain in the ass it was, you can understand why developers didn't put effort for it. It was a pain to begin with to support all the different resolution modes. Games scale if the developers support it on their end, not on the hardware end. It's easy enough to change resolutions if you're downscaling, but to upscale, it becomes a much bigger issue. The scenario I portrayed is definitely fact and is true. It sucks, and it didn't make sense to me either but it's certainly the case for now."

"There are many ways to do it depending on the game and where you can afford to allow a scaling pass in the rendering. The problem is with time and really any resolution that wasn't 720p was an afterthought in the dev process and you get a situation where developers just opted to not support 1080i. It's a combination of time, and Sony's restriction on using the hardware scaler."

"Like I said before, it will take a combination of two things to make this go away easily. First, Sony has to allow developers to use the internal hardware scaler. Second developers will have to release a patch for each game that doesn't support 1080i. That will be the easiest way for this to work. If not then each developer would have to patch the game with their own solution on how they handle the scaling as a rendering pass in the game and that will be more complicated cuz then you have to start worrying about a performance hit for the rendering pass. I'm not talking about rendering the game initially at 1080, but a rendering pass that will scale the output image after the core rendering is done.

Again, I've been saying this from the beginning yet people still continue to not read what has been said. A simple firmware patch from Sony is IMPOSSIBLE. It won't happen and there's nothing that can be done about it. It will have to come from the developers side in order for this to get fixed."

[xVariable @ Nov 25th 2006 6:51PM]

What's up with your graphic? 720p is NOT that much wider than XGA...

[Nathaniel @ Nov 26th 2006 5:03AM]

Ehm... Yes it is?

768 to 1024 is about as wide as 1024 to 1280 in the picture.

1024 - 768 = 256
1280 - 1024 = 256

Where's the problem?

[David @ Nov 25th 2006 7:07PM]

xVariable, sure it is. 1280 is 25% more than 1024.

[Slakkadorth @ Nov 25th 2006 7:05PM]

Amusingly enough, I have one of the TVs they are talking about. It accepts 480p and 1080i video, but not 720p. It's a 52" (diagonal) TV.

And...IT IS A SONY.

[RogueStorm @ Nov 25th 2006 7:13PM]

Again, and honestly, I don't know how scaling works, but if the PS3 sees 1080i and then outputs the game at 480p, doesn't having a scaler in the TV just mean it takes the 480p input and "stretches" it to 1080i? I mean, a scaler can't add information that's not given to it in the first place, right?

[Russell @ Nov 25th 2006 8:23PM]

Yes but the issue then is you are losing the 720p detail going down to 480p then back to 1080i in the TV...

It will look much better if the 720p content is upsampled once to 1080i vs being downsampled (losing data irreversably) then being upsampled again.

Try it in photoshop. :)

[Copperhead @ Nov 25th 2006 8:09PM]

I am so never buying another Sony product again, ever.

PS2 and Minidisc, the last time Sony got my money.

[par @ Nov 25th 2006 8:28PM]

How many of you who have posted a comment actually own a PS3 and a 1080i TV to care about this fact at this moment?

I personally neither have a PS3 nor a 1080i/p TV.

[KineticOnline @ Nov 25th 2006 10:08PM]

This along with many other reasons is why the biggest european retailer of electronics has stopped selling sony products

[Tim Robertson @ Nov 25th 2006 10:07PM]

Wow, does Sony get the stupidity award for the last twelve months or what? This company is run by incompetence of an unprecedented scale. I was thinking of getting a PS3 (I have 360 and Wii) but after reading this, well... I don't think so. Sony does NOT care about consumers one bit. They have NO CLUE what made the PS2 a huge success. M$ does, however, and the 360 seems to be doing pretty much everything right over the last six months. Sony has already lost...

[riggs @ Nov 25th 2006 11:34PM]

i have a mitsubish 1080p 62" dlp, i could care less :D

[Hasan @ Nov 26th 2006 12:59AM]

Stop complaining people. You should be grateful that PS3 supports anything lower than 1080p. It was meant for TrueHD only. All Hail SONY

[Todd @ Nov 26th 2006 2:46AM]

Seriously this is a total non issue. It affects all of 10 people that bought crappy HD TVs that can't support 720p. Even the article states that it's a small number of older HDTVs that are affected. 1080i shouldn't even be an HD standard resolution.

[Jerry @ Nov 26th 2006 5:21AM]

To all the Sony lovers who are blaming the TV owners, or saying its not a big deal, or that it doesn't affect a lot of people are full of shit.

In 2005 & 2006 most HDTV are fixed panel displays (i.e LCD, Plasma, DLP, lcos, etc).
However HDTV started a long time ago. In 2002 the most common HDTV (other than some $7K Plasmas) was a CRT projection TV. Also most of this cost cutting System on a
Chip design had not come around yet. Most HDTV supported either 1080i (common for CRT) or 720P common for plasmas. Very very few supported both. Those that did were much more expensive.

However the FCC required that all Set Top Boxes output both 720p and 1080i so it wasnt that big of a deal. If u had a 1080i set u set your cable box to 1080i and it outputed all content (720p & 1080i) at 1080i. If you had a plasma then u set the STB to 720p.

Now almost all CRT HDTV supported 1080i over 720p. Why? well u can upconvert 720p to 1080i but if u had HDTV in 1080i to downconvert to 720p means a loss of resolution. The cheapest way to downconvert 1080i to 720p is to take 1080i and downconvert to 540p then scale up to 720p.

Those saying that the people who bought 1080i CRT HDTV (made by Sony among others) are stupid are foolish themselves. If nobody had bought those early $4K, $5K, $7K+ HDTV do u honestly think u would have a nice 1080P LCOS HDTV for less than two grand today.

The early adopters paved the way for mass market, better features and lower prices.

[thomas @ Dec 10th 2006 10:12AM]

Somehow I find it hard to believe that all of the people bitching above actually own a PS3 and the HDTV set in question. If you want something to bitch about, check this out:

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/10/11/muslim-community-offended-by-apples-fifth-avenue-nyc-cube/

That bigot is still blogging for TUAW.

[MumbleyJoe @ Nov 27th 2006 4:08PM]

Brian wrote:

"I think there is a misunderstanding here. HDTVs in the US must support 720p and 1080i - but only on ATSC sources. The TV itself doesn't have to actually display 720p, just the (possibly integrated) receiver.

Most CRT HDTVs produced will only sync to 1080i or 480p - it's up to the integrated tuner to scale the picture to the correct format. That doesn't mean that the component inputs have to accept 720p, and on many older HDTVs (like my 38" RCA direct-view CRT HDTV), they don't! There are probably many European HDTVs that are exactly the same - their tuner accepts 720p but the component inputs do not.

This is not a problem for almost all devices. Almost all devices (upscaling DVD players, ATSC tuners, satellite/cable boxes) support multiple output formats and have scaling built into their hardware. The XBOX 360 works this way too - the hardware automatically scales games to the proper resolution, whether you are using 1080p, 1080i, or 720p.

Of course, those of us with LCD TVs don't have to worry about this - my cheapshit Olevia HDTV will sync to just about anything (PAL, NTSC, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) over component or DVI/HDCP."

And this is completely correct and being overlooked by many trying to make arguments here. I've got a Mitsubishi CRT TV that's about 3.5 years old that fits the description. Everything that comes in over the ATSC tuner in either 720p or 1080i gets displayed as 1080i. My newer DLP set converts either signal to 720p because that's what it displays natively. However the conversion is being done to the native digital ATSC signal.

When I connect an analog source to my Mitsubishi the TV could display 1080i, 480p, or 480i signals no problem. But an analog 720p signal would have to be digitized, scaled, and sent as an analog signal to the CRT guns. The bottom lines is that it adds another piece of Analog-to-digtal hardware under the hood and who knows what else, but that means added cost. And for how freakin' expensive that TV was in retrospect I'm glad it didn't cost anymore. And as for the reason these CRT sets cannot display 720p natively I believe again it's mostly a matter of hardware cost. A 480p signal requires the CRT beam to be deflected 480 times per cycle, at 1080i it's 540 times. For a 720p analog signal the beam has to sweep across the screen 720/cycle and that just means things like bigger power supplies and more costly components. I'm not an expert here, but more functionality means greater cost and in the earlier (but not so distant) days of HDTV that was a bigger issue than it is now.

So these sets are fully functional HDTVs in that they accept any HDTV signal through the ATSC tuner, they're not fully functional monitors capable of displaying any resolution.

Just before the 360 launched it was unclear whether or not games that didn't render in 1080i would be scaled from 720p or not. There was plenty of discussion on their official (though generally terrible) forums... they responded, clarified, and modified their official game pages to reflect the fact that any game will be scaled to display in any resolution (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i at the tiem). Having had a year to learn from those kinds of experiences it's very surprising to me that Sony let this slip (though now I'm editorializing, which I shouldn't bother to do).

[Ian @ Nov 26th 2006 4:56AM]

Sigh.

Who gives a rats ass if 1080i/480p only TVs were "banned in Europe." We had HD here in the states years before Europe. Sony sold an a$$load of 1080i/480p only sets along with Pioneer and others. Pretty much every early adopter who has yet to upgrade is screwed, or needs to invest in an outboard scaler.

But not me. I have a 360. Lols.

[gaz @ Nov 26th 2006 7:53AM]

My mate has a LG LCD which can display 480p, 576i and 768i. While it can accept a PC input to display 1024x768, it will only display the 360 at 480p, which is a bummer. Its a shame that LCD TV sets that could display a higher resolution was beig sold before this HD Ready initiative as someone stated above.

If Sony can't resolve this as a firmware update then I imagine Sony will add it into the hardware for the next shipments of PS3, meaning the very small number of people with this issue will have to put up with it. Unless Sony sets up a program to allow people to send thier PS3's back to be fixed.
Its still a minor issue that 360 fans like to blow out of proportion. Even though the 360 has had the worst launch ever. 360's blowing up everywhere, IGN had 20 360's and 17 off them blew up. Its a year later and the 360 is still having issues. And not to mention that sales are way short off expectations. The original xbox sold more in its first year than the 360 has in its first year and everyone was wary of the xbox. Now that Microsoft has established itself in the console market and now they're xbox fans, you would think the 360 would do better.

Even the Wii has their share of problems. The update that is required to use those Wii channels that are blocked has bricked peoples systems. Reports of the motion not being detected and the Wii not recognising that a game has been put into the drive.
It seems when its Sony, its big news but when Microsoft or Nintendo has even bigger problems, nothing is said. Especialy about the motion not being detected on the Wii. To me that is a major problem. Is this problem due to it being a new console, or is it a problem with the technology itself? If it the technology then bye, bye Wii. So far the new Wii-mote hasn't really added anything to the experience. Red Steel has bad reviews everywhere, and its better to play Call of Duty 3 on 360. ANd soon there will be a new controller from 3rd party that has been tested and works perfectly with games just like the Wii-mote, meaning that 3rd party exclusive games on the Wii can now be ported to 360, PS3 and even PC, as this new controller will plug into USB.

[Molly C @ Nov 27th 2006 2:16AM]

gaz, how long have you been a member of SDF?