Sony releases PS3 firmware 1.3, ignores 1080i woes [Updated]
By Paul Miller 
posted Dec 6th 2006 9:27AM
posted Dec 6th 2006 9:27AM
[Via Impress; thanks Caleb C.]
Update: Well, we don't have a 1080i set to test it on, but from what it sounds like, perhaps this 1080i bug could be fixed after all. We received an email this afternoon from Sony, (pasted in full after the break) about firmware 1.3, and while it does not specifically address the bug, it does sound like it's been fixed. Check it out.
[Quoted]
Sony Computer Entertainment America today introduced new features and settings to the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system as part of the latest firmware update, version 1.30. Among the key updates is support for a Blu-ray Disc™ (BD) remote control and the ability to select the output format for BD/DVD video through an HDMI cable.
In addition to offering developers the ability to create more immersive games, the Blu-ray format delivers the ultimate in high-definition video through the highest resolution available today (1080p). Now PS3 owners can register a remote control for easier playback of movies on BD discs. The Bluetooth®-enabled remote control will be available at retail later this month for $24.99. Also, to suit your TV's specification, you can now select the video output format (automatic, RGB, or Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr) for Blu-ray disc playback using an HDMI cable.
In addition to the updates related to the Blu-ray player, firmware 1.30 includes the following.
- Selecting video output resolution has changed, allowing you to choose all the resolutions supported by the TV. The video will automatically be displayed at the maximum resolution possible, according to the following order: 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p, Standard (NTSC).
- Backup utility has been added as a feature under System Settings, enabling you to back up your PS3's hard disk data to storage media or restore data from storage media to the hard disk.
- USB peripherals designed for PlayStation®2 titles, including steering wheels and flight sticks, can now be used when playing PlayStation 2 games on the PS3 system.
As has been stated before, the problem really lies in the fact that there are so many cheaply made HDTV sets, and the fix can really only come with the game developer's help.
I don't expect a fix to this problem for a while.
Nonsense. HDTV have only been around for about 6 years. Sony for some reason has chosen not to support many of those TV's. The fact that the Xbox 360 handles 1080i, 720p and 1080p sets well is a clear indication that Sony has screwed up big time.
Can someone explain the benefit of the HDMI -> RGB or Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr option and how that would affect the vid quality?
ARRGH stop whining about the 1080i issue. If you purchased a TV that doesn't support all the HD broadcast standard resolutions then you were an early adopter. Rejoice in the fact that you have been enjoying HD for "years now." If you don't wanna go buy a new tv then go buy a new receiver or scaler that will give you your crappy tearing 1080i you so covet :)
So not only do you have to spend $150-200 more over the 360 which can do all resolutions perfectly, but you also have to buy a $1000+ HDTV because Sony were too lazy to incorporate a proper scaler, BRILLIANT!!!!
There are still 1080i and 720p only sets Sold today...so it's not just early adopters that are getting screwed by Sony here. The Xbox 360 supports all of these formats just fine. Sony does not get a free pass here.
1080i is an awesome rez and has never once torn on my set. You may have offended 10s of 1000s of people with your rude comment. Think before you type. Your point of early adoption is is null in this case because the PS3 is really the 1st unit I have seen in which you cannot not choose your own resolution. i.e. If you were to buy a car thinking you could traverse across multiple types of terrain but find out later that this certain car does not work on gravel roads and you happen to live on a gravel road. Now what? Buy a new car or take it back to the dealership and have them add a gravel road package(1080i scaler via firmware update). I am a Sony fan but thumbs up to MS for making the 360 user friendly.
The 50 engineers ARE chained to their desks, but Sony has tasked them to come up with dozens of new ways to cripple the public with DRM technology.
Technology within technology that restricts what the host technology can do - now there's progress for the world!
KultiVator
Sad to have to watch that counter creep up to 54%, only for it to be fairly useless fixes. and 1.11-1.30? Lets forget about x.2x, it's cursed.
lol, I just got my PS3 last night, and damn if PS2 games dont look horrific. Not much else can really be expected, but Katamari Damacy was pixellated and weird enough, now it looks like it was made to cram onto a psp screen, or some format of 320:240 or something. Framerate and sound is fine though. FFX, Kingdom Hearts, and a couple others have the same uglyness.
(And resistance? crap. crap crap. very scripted action, terrible controls... though the amount of on-screen objects and textures look nice compared to what I can do on my xbox (original) and x800 AGP, I'm glad I only rented it. What I'm really looking forward to, atm, is Lemmings 2. I'm not even lying.)
Whether or not Sony is able to scale 720p to 1080i remains to be seen. However, if its that important to you then I suggest you examine upgrading your obsolete equipment :) Why do scalers exist in the first place? Because of obsolete equipment. I waited 3 years for the 1080p sets to come out specifically because I wanted to avoid these types of issues.
I'll tell you this much I have a feeling that this issue can't be resolved for existing games but will be addressed in anything that hasn't gone gold yet. lol :) Or maybe via updates to the game itself. There really won't be that many games released between now and march and I'm sure they will all support 1080i.
As far as the whole Microsoft argument. If you like your Xbox 360 that is great. You'll never convince me to support Microsoft though. They won't be happy until they make money off every action you take throughout your daily life. They have a strangle hold on the PC market and they want the same for every type of media/industry they can buy their way into.
The native colour space on BDs is Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr... which has a wider gamut than when resampled and outputed as RGB. This is a good thing.
To be really detailed:
YCbCr is based off DVI colorspace, which only uses ranges 16-235 for color details, where RGB colorspace uses the full 0-255 range. Why this becomes an issue is if you calibrate your TV to the YCbCr colorspace, then all the low end and high end details that come from an RGB colorspace (so, all shadows and bright areas) will be cut-off since they fall below 16 or above 235. Giving you the choice of colorspaces lets you only have to calibrate your input to one colorspace and get all the details. If you calibrate based off RGB and feed it with a YCrCb colorspace, you don't get the full spectrum as well.
So, there's a pretty complex answer to that question. I can not tell you for sure which colorspace BluRay uses, or which games are based off, but I will trust the original poster is correct with their RGB statement.
now that i know they aren't comming to the the party this is my official rsvp stating that i will be there with two guess
I too detest Microsoft's general MO but I've come to realize in the past few years that Sony's no better. Their approach is a little different but maybe worse in the end. Blueray, CD-A Rootkits(MOTHERF*(
I thankfully don't have the scaling issue with my tv. Oh, and Resistance is a damn fine game, and loads of fun (especially with 30-40 ppl). Anyone saying it's crap is full of said material.
@Matthew Lenz
Since you are buying a PS3, you are an early adopter of that technology. Early adopters are the very people you are scoffing at. And HDTVs have been on sale far longer than 3 years. I hope they don't release some new technology next week that has a better picture than your TV for 1/3 the price because I don't want to see you become a hypocrite. I just hope the PS3 starts cranking out more games so a lot of people don't get NEO*GEOs (Buying 2 games they like to play that end up costing roughly over $300 apiece).
dude I'm not scoffing. I promise. I feel peoples pain, but I don't sympathize. As I posted earlier. 10 minutes of research would have raised flags when determining that the set that was being purchased didn't support 720p. And as far as my set goes yes its 1080p and yes you can buy it for like 500-600 bucks cheaper than I paid for it 2 months ago :)
Geez people, give them some time. The Xbox 360 didn't exactly fix their problems overnight!
In fact,
MS is notorious for being very slow getting fixes out the door. Have a little patience.
Just to let you know, moving 720p below 1080i in preferences will basically fix the 1080i issue for almost anyone. Because before, when 1080i was below in preference, and you selected 1080i as your maximum resolution, it would only select 480p and 1080i. Now that 1080i is above 720p, it will select 480p 720p and 1080i, therefore fixing the problem for probably over 95% of the people having that problem.
Can you support this? I don't think moving the menu around = fixing a resolution problem with the system that may have to do with its fundamental ability to upscale to certain resolutions. Please let us know!
An HDTV made just two years ago is hardly "obsolete". People generally don't replace TVs for well over a decade or more. Sony knows this, Sony even sold HDTVs that didn't support 720p. The problem is not having to spend an extra $1000 for a new TV, it is for Sony to be able to support what is on the market like everyone else does. The PS3 is about the ONLY HD device out there that doesn't let you select a native resolution and just convert for you. HD Cable boxes do it, HD Tivos do it, 360 does it, everything does it. Except the PS3.
It needs to be fixed. Period.
If they simply cheaped out and never put a scaler into the PS3 to begin with, then they ought to redesign the system and allow trade ins for the newer design. THIS ISSUE WILL NOT GO AWAY. Expecting people to pay $1600+ for a console is mind numbingly stupid.
It will go away in that there are only like 15 games available for the ps3 currently. If all the march+ titles include 1080i support and existing games are patched to support it, it won't be an issue in the long run. Maybe Sony can fix it in firmware, I just doubt it highly.
This firmware does fix the problem, AS LONG AS THE GAME SUPPORTS 1080i. Currently, Resistance doesn't support anything except 720p, so you're out of luck until they release a patch for the game. The other games that support 1080i as well as 720p will now play in 1080i. I don't know why so many people try to act like this problem affects them personally. Only early adopters have sets that don't support 720p and these are the same people that paid $8,000-$10,000 on their TVs in 2001. It's getting old that people are trying to find reasons to hate on Sony when they've resolved this issue quickly and its now up to the individual developers to release a patch for their respective games.
Oh yea, there is some risk to being an early adopter and you knew that when you purchased your television that lacked support for the new formats.
I agree. My set doesn't support 1080p and you don't hear me crying. Also the days when a set will last you decades is gone in this society. I have a Panasonic which is still used after 15 years but it's not a primary set and it is definitely not where I want to play any games on.
When the console is widely available I will get one and if the system/game can't handle 1080i then my TV scaler will deal with it. As far as the delays when scaling that many seem to mention I haven't seen it. I play games on my MythTV box which is outputting to 720p (480p for Videos) and I get instant response.
For people who are married with families it is tough to be an early adopter and overpay for technology because it is new, for that reason I waited until last year to but my rear projection HDTV that only supports 1080i. I think Sony really needs to address the scaling issue sooner than later because they are not only alienating a portion of the market that will purchase their product, they are also hurting their developers. Think about someone in my situation, would I pay an extra $10 to purchase an HD game that is downscaled to 480p? Since the majority of Sony's launch titles only supports 720p alot of people, like me, may not purchase the game and will instead rent games which will not benefit the developers. Also alot of launch titles are also available on the xbox 360 which automatically upscaled its games. Lastly I just learned that the remote play between the PSP/PS3 that Sony has been bragging about is only available with the 60 GB model not the 20 GB. Although I would have preferred the 60 GB model the 20 GB model was all that was available on launch day. It appears that Sony is already segmenting the limited install base of initial PS3's, which from a business standpoint does not make any sense.
No it doesn't upscale, but the thing I'm saying is it doesn't need to upscale. Almost every TV has 720p even the 1080i CRTs. The problem was, if you picked 1080i on the ps3 before, it wouldn't enable the 720p output, and now it does. So now some people think it is upscaling, when it is simply running at a resolution they didn't know their TV supported. It is likely that the 1080i CRTs are upscaling the 720p signal to 1080i anyways, so the ps3 doesn't need to upscale.
Pppleeeaseee...... why does Sony get a pass for everything, and Microsoft, when they finally get it right, still get critized? I mean every company that has an HDTV product knows these issues with no early standardization in HD resolutions and dont leave the early adopters out in the cold. I brought my HD set in 2002 and guess what? It's a Sony. It accepts all the resolutions, but through the brilliance that is Sony, it doesn't upconvert 720p it downconverts it to 480p. So Sony itself is leaving it's own early adopters out in the cold.
If you're set supports 720p and 1080i (all the resolutions as you put it) and you were having problems with it down converting to 480p then the most recent fireware was released to fix that problem for you from what I understand of the release notes.
(sorry for the partial mispost above)
I too detest Microsoft's general MO but I've come to realize in the past few years that Sony's no better. Their approach is a little different but maybe worse in the end. Blueray, CD-A Rootkits(MOTHERF*(*ERS!!!!!), Memorystick, Minidisk, and even Betamax are key examples of their motives. They want to be the Microsoft of the consumer electronics and entertainment industry.
On top of that their product quality has clearly declined in the past 10+ years (I've been buying Sony TV sets for two decades and they've steadily eroded whatever leadership position they may have had - ) and they seem every bit as willing to stick it to the consumer (gee, you mean my Grand Wega 1080i-only HDTV that I paid $2500 for several years ago isn't even compatible with their HD game console?) as the evil empire itself.
The PS3 is the latest example of Sony's supreme arrogance and they are all too willing to exploit the false cloud of hype they've built around their console. Despite Sony's bullshit claims, there is currently no discernible advantage in gameplay over the Xbox360 (and many would argue the 360 has a slight edge in that respect) and whether or not the PS3 will ever be able to flex its supposed advantage in muscle is at best unknown. The 360 itself wasn't all that impressive when it launched over a year ago (though with some better games and firmware updates it is a lot more compelling now), and here Sony brings a system a full year later (after breaking several promised launch dates) that costs more and performs similarly but is behind on the software. Again, Microsoft is nowhere on my list of favorite companies, but to imply that Sony is somehow more honorable or above all that is laughable.
Ahh finally someone else that can see these companies for what they are and what they want to do .... MAKE MONEY.
My Atari 2600 never scaled properly on my 2001 Sony 42" 1080i TV set, either. Sony is the devil. Ok, I'm only half-kidding. That DRM/Rootkit debacle, along with flooding the world with laptop-bombs, THAT makes them the devil.
@ Matthew Lenz
Okay, I'm sorry if I had pegged you wrong. The problem is when the HD standard was being developed, the networks decided to parcel up the bandwith and use different picture resolutions than originally announced. I completely agree with you if we are talking about people who made the decision to buy their set KNOWING it wasn't 720P compatible, but what about those people who bought their sets before those resolutions were available? Although these people may have considerable resources, that doesn't mean they should have to use them.
I have a 1080i CRT made in 2004. This TV most of you people would obviously say it only "does" 480p ad 1080i. That is only partially true as it only outputs those resolutions. It will accept 480i,480p,720p and 1080i and upscale all of those resolutions to the next highest output setting. I am sure most of the TVs you say that only do 720p or only do 1080i are actually capable of accepting 720p and 1080i, and then up/downscaling that resolution appropriately.
I don't see why Sony can't do it like the 360 does. Just display everything at the resolution you selected. I quality is all still good from what I've seen.
No. What happens with HDTVs that don't support 720p will show a black screen, or say it is an invalid signal.
For the last time, IT IS UP TO SONY TO DO THE UPCONVERSION LIKE ANY SANE HD-CAPABLE DEVICE ON THE MARKET.
When people bought their sets, 720p was an oft used mode. Almost everything in HD was being, and STILL IS being filmed in 1080. Sony themselves were rah-rahing how all the games would be 1080 out the door, and none of this 720p BS.
Sony does not get a free pass. They MUST allow for setting a single resolution and doing all the scaling themselves. Until then, the PS3 is just a broken piece of technology in my book. A $600 doorstop.
Ok, I think I get it. The game has 720p content, but your TV will only accept 480p or 1080i signals. Since the PS3 doesn't upscale, and your TV doesn't either, you get the only resolution supported by both ends of the cable: 480p.
Sony's position is that the PS3 doesn't upscale. It's 2006 and your TV should have a scaler built in. That makes sense to me. If the TV supports 1080i natively - and can upscale from 480p - then why wouldn't it also be able to upscale from 720p?
If the TV is deficient, buy an outboard upscalar and be done with it.
This whole thing is fairly unsurprising. Microsoft - a US company - launches in 2005 and supports the older televisions in the US consumer market. Sony - a Japanese company - launches a year later and aims at the leading edge. It was always going to be that way. The 360 doesn't even have HDMI.
People want to compare the 360 to the PS3 but they are very different. The PS3 is for HDTV enthusiasts - digital output, next-gen optical format, high price. That doesn't make it better. Just different.
First I agree with everyone that Sony must fix this issue. Period end of story. However, to all the people saying "Microsoft supports all the resolutions......etc." I call b#llsh*t!
The number of televisions that support 1080P on component is very small. The number that will do so going into the future is going to remain very small. I have two 1080P sets in my house and neither will accept a 1080P signal from an XBox 360. This sucks - but this is a limitation of my TV not of the 360.
My HDTV doesn't support 1080p, but it does support 1080i and 720p. It natively shows 1080i, so anything 720p actually looks worse than 1080i.
My problem was that it interpreted 720p as a higher resolution than 1080i.
While it is true that in one pass you get more lines of resolution, 1080i still looks sharper on my TV (well duh, 1920x1080i is a higher 'effective resolution' if you will).
Anyway, this new update solves my problems completely.
Opps, that last Josh is me. The previous Josh is someone else.
I've never seen a computer that would 'upscale' it's games to a higher resolution. I'm not sure why people expect the PS3 to. I think people who made the mistake of buying HDTV's prematurely should just suck it up. Sony made a design decision, just like Microsoft did by not including HDMI support. Sure it sucks that you can't play 720p games on your old ass TV, but then neither can all the people who bought SD big screen TVs before you. You don't hear them complaining, do you? Play the game at 480p and STFU. I don't want useful feature updates being delayed because PS3 developers have to work on a fix to support your lame ass TVs, which will only most likely impair performance. It's not like upscaling takes zero gpu/cpu resources.
This is not a bug, it's a design decision. Get over it already.
My computer upscales games to LCD resolution.
It's an option in the driver. "Use Nvidia scaling" or "Use display scaling".
I just tried it, works great. Playing HL2 Ep1 at 800x600 or 1024x768 and letting the driver upscale it to LCD res 1280x1024 - no slowdowns at all.
This is on a GF7800GT 256mb which is nearly identical to the RSX GPU in the PS3.
No reason they couldn't scale games to 1920x1080 without performance issues. Give it some time, more fixes will come.
ALL computers "upscale" games...Thats why you can select your resolution... I have a tv that only supports 480p and 1080i and I've only had it for about 2 years. I also have a 360 which plays just fine in 1080i and looks great. I'll have my PS3 monday and Im really concerned that I wont be able to play games in high def from the system that was touted to be the de facto HD gaming expirience. This is a mistake on Sony's part plain and simple. If you expect your system to be called a High Definition experience, it should work on ALL televisions that are HD. If the 360 does it why shouldn't we expect the PS3 to do it? MS was able to throw out a 1080p upscale option out, I just hope it doesn't take Sony a year to fix this.
Seems only US consumers have got caught out by this, in Europe, we have a standard called "HD Ready", and to get this HD Logo, you have to:
Support at least 720p
Have HDMI
Support HDCP
Anything that does not do these 3 things, does not get the logo, consumers buy something else, it's worked really well, there no HD sets that aren't "HD Ready", as the consumers were never falsely sold them as being HD.
Don't blame Sony in this, blame the dodgy manufacturters and retails who knew they were selling you soon to be obsolete kit...
It's nice to see however, that Sony have moved so quickly on this, to keep those mis-sold consumers happy, it will ofcourse however enrage the rabid xbox fanboys, who will always find some way of mud flinging from any positive Sony news...
Is it me or do all these firmware updates make you feel like they shipped the console without finishing the software for it?
The 360 wasnt half as bad as the PS3 in this regards and anything that Microsoft has recently pushed over Live has more been akin to new features (HDDVD, Video) than, say, lets get 1080i working nowand while were at it lets add support for the remote control too! The PS3 was badly delayed because of the BluRay diode they had extra time for programming and there is no excuse for not shipping with all the features one would expect the PS3 (or any console) to have out of the box!
My two cents.
I call bulls**t, the 360 has been worse. Remember the Fall update THAT BRICKED CONSOLES? I do.
Firmware updates are here to say and frankly I am stoked. If not for firmware we'd either wait 20 years for a CE product til it was "perfect" or be stuck with out dated crap.
It's thanks to firmware updates that something isn't obsolete the moment you open the box. Now it can be up to date tech every day.
I like firmware updates. Everybody talks about what SHOULD have been done because hind sight is 20/20. I'm happy that the system is capable of being updated. NO system is perfect when launched (what if 360 never got 1080P like they initially said it didn't need?), and I think people should appreciate that Sony is paying attention to what people are griping about and fixing things. At the end of the day, YOU'RE the one that spent $600 on a video game system that is not essential for you to continue breathing. It's a luxury item, if it's not worth the risk stop buying things.
Your telling me a super high end machine, the "CELL" can't upscale. yet the wimpy 360 can?
I have a cable box that can upscale.
Why can't the super CELL do it.
Capatalization!!! We will sell you the world now and screw you later when we tell you that you bought crap. The 360 to 720, p3 to ps4. 1080i to 720p to 1080p whats next 2060SPMFDsuperprogressivemicrofinedots. If the industry knew that it was crap and going to cause problems why build (capatalize)? Because the early adopter wanted it? So, average Jo went into Best Buy to get a HD TV not knowing 1080i from 720p or where the industry is now and where it is going, to know that a 1080i is bad? Then buys the PS3 2 years later for his kid and it doen't work with all it glory. But of course this is the average family and may not care, except for the kid. And that is where corparation will capatalize on the average user and sell them the world now and give them crap later. Buyer Beware!!!
Wow kids. How far along into the launches are we? And we still debate the Xbox > PS3 or PS3 > Xbox woes. Get over it.
PS3 is having 1080i issues with early 1080i sets. Great. Get over it. It's an issue that'll be fixed, but crying about it until the cows come home is the largest waste of time ever.
The system is new, your TVs are rather dated. Upgrade or deal with it. And besides, it'll be fixed eventually, if anything, MS isn't the best fixer of issues either. They've had XP out for ages and never fixed it (however, the best way to fix Windows is to trash it and get a MacBook.
Chris
Chris Merchant you where pretty consistent with the point you where trying to make until you decided to add this to your scripture.
They've had XP out for ages and never fixed it (however, the best way to fix Windows is to trash it and get a MacBook.
thats like saying the best way to fix current ps3 issues is to get an xbxo 360. Just completely trashed everythign you where trying to say.
If HD standards change so rapidly to put a tv that is barely 2 years old in the obsolete status then the industry has a serious problem. I think it's pretty obsurd that some people actually suggest buying another TV to fix the problem with the PS3. If that isn't brand loyalty then I don't know what is. This isn't a problem with the televisions, it's a problem with the PS3 which I'm sure will be fixed soon, but it shouldn't have even been released with problems like these. This really accentuates the problem with the new standard that the gaming industry is succumbing to: rush out flawed hardware and software now, fix it later with updates and recalls.