You know those complaints about the ugly, old-school looking
interlacing lines that many (ourselves included) have reported seeing on the new
PSP-3000? The specific issue has been uncovered -- but not by Sony. A group of concerned French gamers with a 40x microscope think it all comes down to that most mellow of colors: blue. LCDs are comprised of RGB pixels that, combined, form all the rainbow of hues in between. As you can see in the picture above, the PSP-2000's LCD (left) used pixels in a vertical orientation, and the blue pixels were fairly light in color. On the PSP-3000 (right), the pixels are now arranged horizontally, and the blue ones are far darker than before. The dark horizontal lines result in the heinous interlacing, an effect that any
Command & Conquer player will tell you wasn't even cool in the 90's. Sony's already called this a "feature" and not a flaw, so if you absolutely must buy a PSP this holiday season the folks at
Logic-Sunrise who took the above pics recommend you buy an older 2000-series -- while you still can.
[Thanks Pierce]
posted October 31st 2008 10:24AM
No need for an apostrophe.
Apostrophe's are overrated
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How soon we forget the original PSP 1000s.
My very first PSP, circa 2005 is still alive and kicking, no issues or glitches. :)
Here, here! My neatly hacked 5.00 M33-3 PSP-1000 eats 3000s for breakfast! :)
Same here, no dead pixels, no problems whatsoever (even dropped it a few times). I just bought a 2000 because it's so much lighter (and thinner), but I might buy a 3000 anyways and give the 2000 to my wife.
I only do gaming on the PSP when I go on a trip, but I CONSTANTLY use it for streaming RSS audio feeds and Skype.
can't play umd's, can't play iso's...
no purchase here!
Really FanGirl? No apostrophe? Is this a tech blog or english class?
I suspect your questions are rhetorical, therefore your question marks are redundant.
Another reason why it is safer to purchase the FIRST generation of a gadget. These days when a company sees a demand for a newly released product the first thing they do is figure out how to cut material costs by 50% instead of maintaining quality... for shame!
I guess batteries are not the only thing SONY has cheapened out with...
Unless it's an Apple first-gen product :)
ehh, you both have good points. The PSP and the DS were better 2nd gen IMO, but it's not always true. I have a 1st gen iPhone and I'm glad I didn't wait for 2nd gen- the new one has some 3g issues, and the data isn't really that much faster. Considering they dropped texts from the cheapest data plan AND upped the price/mo, I think I got a pretty good deal.
Back to Sony, though, I had high hopes for the 3000, but that interlacing "feature" would ruin it for me. I'll stick with my 1000.
like the iphone 3G?
I always heard to never buy a first-gen Microsoft product.
They might have had the 2 displays showing the same picture so we could at least see an exact comparison.
French.
here ya go!
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/21/sony-looking-into-psp-3000-interlacing-problems
I read somewhere about a Sony montior (I belive it was Sony, not a 100 % sure though) which has a blue outer frame (or is it rim? I dunno the right word in English..). They said it is good for your eyes, so they won't get so tired. Maybe this is what this is all about and why the call it a feature.
They never called it a feature. They said it was an issue created because of a feature.
"By improving LCD response time to reduce ghosting, the horizontal-line phenomenon becomes more visible." Turns out, phenomenon means "no fix in sight." According to Sony, "Since this phenomenon is caused by hardware characteristics, there is no plan to fix it with system software update."
I guess they have to make headlines somehow.
Gee, thanks Sony!
I am always wondering why big companies let these things happen. These issues are of the kind you immediately see after switching on a device. Are testers blind? (no aim of offense)
I don't think the tester is at fault, it's just not obvious when used on certain games. I play Final Fantasy Crisis Core and couldn't tell it at all and also tried it on Patapon, no obvious interlacing... but oh my god it was very horrid when I tried the movie that came with the PSP3000 bundle, National Treasure 2.
I recall that someone analyzed the problem and gave the same explanation for the problem a couple of weeks ago (as in vertical vs horizontally oriented pixels), but he didn't have microscope evidence to prove it. Can't recall if it was a reply here in or in joystiq, but you've got to hand it to him for his ability to correct assess the problem without actually owning both the 2000 and 3000.
It was mentioned on 1up Yours a week ago, maybe two.
A "feature"?
Hey, Sony! Wondering why profits are down? want them to continue that way?
Well, keep treating your customers like saps...
re: dervheid
Sony's profits have nothing to do with treating us like saps. If you read the financial news, you'd see that their profits are dwindling due to a rising yen.
For companies that [do] treat their customers like saps, google/wiki: Microsoft RRoD
put it on iphones, apple fans will swallow this feature.
Yeah, they're practically dancing in the streets over lack of copy & paste...
Sony ain't got nern sense.
This side-by-side is misrepresentative on so many levels:
The photos are not taken with comparable exposure and are certainly not of the same projected image. Nor are they of the same focus or zoom level. I highly doubt if they were even taken with the same camera.
The photo on the left shows mostly unlit pixels with a band of lit ones through the middle. But while the unlit reds at the top of the photo are visible, they are not visible in the bottom. This could be for a number of reasons, but may also be attributed to camera angle.
Too bad this comparison is so poor and too bad Engadget gave it any credence at all.
Sacrebleu!
Who cares about esposure levels or focus, that's not the purpose of the photos.
One photo shows a horizontal arrangement, the other shows a vertical arrangement. How the f*ck is that misreprentative? Its a perfect illustration of the articles technical conclusions.
@voodoo:
You're kidding, right? If you are going to compare units, then everything needs to be photographed the same. Same camera, settings, frame, focus, lighting, etc.
The vertical/horizontal alignment issue very well could be causing an issue. But this report by logic-sunrise is so flawed that for all we know, they could have simply turned the camera or PSP sideways. Certainly, their poor setup does nothing to lend them credibility. Simply stating that the alignment of the pixels is the problem is too simplistic.
I'll be interested to see what someone legitimate has to say. In the meantime, I stand by my OP.
@voodoo:
To compare something, you must leave all other variables the same so that you can see what's different. For all you know, they could have taken the picture, turn the psp 90degree and snap the other picture. I know it's not the case...but it's possible.
I agree that they should have used the same circumstances, the greens on the picture above this article are also much brighter, even the red is in the center part, so it might not be the blue that's causing it per se, but it most certainly shows that the horizontal layout of the RGB is an issue, which once you are aware of it is also apparent in the older article picture:
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/10/10-21-08-psp-screen-comaro.jpg
Except there it seems to be an issue of every second line of 3 colors, not every line, it really looks like the redraw is done interlaced on that older picture, and the horizontal layout of the pixels just enhances the effect.
NHAnimator is probably right. Look at this comparison picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Psp_subpixels.png
The colors of the subpixels seem to be the same between the two screens, though the PSP-3000 one is more uniform, probably due to a better viewing angle/contrast ratio/brightness/backlight/something.
The strange thing in the picture I linked to, however, is that the edges and the top of the black object appear different between the two screens. Can anyone explain this?
Shut the hell up about the "interlacing issue" already! I have a PSP-3000 and the display is fine!
+1
Well said mate!
Ok, are you implying that you have a psp 3000 WITHOUT interlacing issues, or you saying you have the issue but it doesn't bother you while using your psp? If not all psp 3000s are affected by this, then at least there is still a chance I can get one without said problem. It would be my first psp, so I really don't want the experience to be ruined. If all psp brites have the problem though, but it is not that bad as others make it out to be, I'll still buy a 3000.
I think he meant fine as in acceptable. I too find it acceptable since I use it on games where this problem doesn't even show up. I just don't watch movies on it as the interlace is very obvious (mostly on fast moving videos). Probably th best thing to do would be like Nintendo's plan with DS and DSi, keep your old one with the new one, one for camera function, one for GBA cartridge compatibility.
Can somebody explain the Command and Conquer reference? I played the games but don't get it... :(
All the video sequences in the original games were interlaced, with black lines comprising every other row of pixels. It made the vids smaller and made it easier for crummy 486's to play them back.
In the original CnC, the mission briefing videos had interlacing superimposed on them. I think it was to make them look more "authentic" but they came across as a little cheesy. It was mostly to hide the plasticy quality of the rendering in the CG scenes.
The problem may be due to the games manufactures taking the color pixel layout into account when rendering the graphics in their games. You can get slightly improved movement and object shape (in the horizontal direction) if you take the physical layout of the individual pixel elements into account when drawing objects. If the pixel layout changes the such as it has in the new 3000 this creates the kind of effect people are seeing.
Future games can be made to utilize this in the vertical on the 3000 or maybe adapt based on the version of hardware.
It is somewhat like how "Cleartype" works on the PC and I think the Mac has something similar.
I don't thinkg changing the RGB element direction would cause this problem. However, it is quite possible (I would say even likely) that this also changed the display update order. Instead of updating across and then down, it updates down and then across now.
BTW, they certainly change the RGB element direction to save money. This is happens because this reduces the number of driving lines to the display. Before, the display had 272 driving lines in the vertical direction and 1,440 (480R, 480G and 480B) in the horizontal direction, for a total of 1712 driving lines (between the display controller and display).
Now it has 480 driving lines in the horizontal direction and 816 (272R, 272G and 272B) in the vertical direction, for a total of 1296 driving lines, a reduction of 33%. That could save them quite a bit (relatively) on the display controller cost and thus the overall unit cost.
Hey look LS2LS7, this isn't Slashdot, take your well-informed comment elsewhere. (insert winking eye emoticon here)
I agree with the comments from "why not the LS2LS7" and "Grambo". I also don't see how this has anything to do with interlacing. Orientation of pixels does not constitute or drive interlacing. Interlacing comes from how the image fills the screen.
There have been other methods of pixel orientation and geometry including BGR (which really messes ClearType up), diamond-shaped pixels, chevrons, et al. In the end, this may very well be just a way to trim cost or reduce driver load. I don't see any reason why this would degrade picture quality over the PSP-2000 I have as long as the rasterizing is done correctly, which would be easy to tell with just a few frames.
If you have a BGR screen you should really just tweak cleartype with the cleartype tuner.
Back to the point: couldn't Sony include some software patch that gives an option to "reduce" the intensity of the blue or something along those lines - at least it would make the display look a little better for those who have a problem with it. Or maybe some basic deinterlacer or something.
I do find the horizontally-arranged pixels quite unusual though (most displays are vertical RGB right?)
For big displays, like on computers, they have typically been horizontal RGB, even though that means they cost more.
Any device which has a custom screen inevitably runs the RGB sub-pixels the short direction (which would be vertical for a landscape screen, horizontal on a portrait screen like an iPhone) because it is cheaper. It's odd that Sony didn't do this from the start.
One more thing. If you look at the images (on a earlier story) it looks like the game developers have purposely ghosted previous images of the objects. Like a mouse trail on your PC. It creates a more fluid movement of the object. These ghost images (with the color pixel arrangement enhancements that are not appropriate on the 3000) may very well explain the effect.
The ghosting might be 'shutter' delay of the camera making the picture though, done to highlight the issue.
All this great...but how does this look when playing movies ? Also are all games effected by this?