Positive Playstation 3 Talk and Q/A

[titan]

The latest update today broke my Internet connection! The wireless adapter can't seem to find my router. The laptop finds it just fine, so it isn't my network that's the issue.

Well, that was easy. I had to reboot the PS3. That's a first: three reboots for an update.

[Vrock]

Am I the only guy who has never had a problem with a firmware update?

[tanker27]

Am I the only guy who has never had a problem with a firmware update?

I have never had a problem. /Knock on wood

[derFunkenstein]

Am I the only guy who has never had a problem with a firmware update?

no, i've never had an issue with a firmware update on any of the 3 consoles available now (though I haven't had a 360 or a Wii in quite a while to try out)

[MrBojangles]

Am I the only guy who has never had a problem with a firmware update?

I've had trouble downloading and installing the updates before, but I'm fairly sure that was a network issue and had very little to do with the update itself.As for actual problems as a result of the update, i've had zero.Well unless you want to count the latest one, removing other os support from my older 60gb model.A bit annoying but no biggie. Never used it other than playing around with ps3 Linux, when i first got it.That got old after only a few days. Then i just went back to my pc and occasionally the ps3's web browser.

[JustAnEngineer]

Firmware updates seem to go smoothly for me.

[MrBojangles]

Does anyone know if the playstation classics games available on psn are enhanced or not??I'm mean i'm not expecting them to be like 1080p or anything,but does anyone know if they've at least been upscaled and smoothed out to look descent on a hdtv?Or if there still as pixelated and ugly as they would be playing them straight form an original PlayStation via the aux video connection?

[Ryu Connor]

The PS3 has options to upscale and apply some AA to them.

It's something, but it's not awesome. PS1/PS2 PC emulators do a better job of cleaning them up.

[MrBojangles]

Yeah a good emulator can do wonders for the older games.

[PerfectCr]

Firmware updates seem to go smoothly for me.

Same here except for the fact they take forever to download from Sony.

[Vinceant]

The PS3 has options to upscale and apply some AA to them.

It's something, but it's not awesome. PS1/PS2 PC emulators do a better job of cleaning them up.

Unless it's different per game, as far as I was aware AA is not an option on PSX games. There are scaling options (for aspect ratio), and a "smoothing" option which just blurs the whole screen. The PSX emulation on the PS2 is far superior, because it at least smoothed textures (and the cd speed increase is nice, but the PS3 possibly does this automatically without me knowing). Bleemcast was better than both combined, though, oddly enough.

I haven't played many of the 3D games, but what little I have seen it's just like playing it on PSX hardware (except slightly sharper, because of the better cabling options), for better or for worse. It even still has the perspective correction problems the original hardware has, which was not present on the PS2 hardware.

All in all, it's a more "authentic" PS1 experience than the PS2 was, but that may not be what a lot of people are looking for. I wonder if it works well with games that didn't on the PS2; time to pull out my copy of FFV, I guess.

[Vrock]

Firmware updates seem to go smoothly for me.

Same here except for the fact they take forever to download from Sony.

Mine go pretty quick. 3.30 took a while, though.

[derFunkenstein]

Yeah, all I've ever seen for the PS3 playing PS1 games is the "smoothing" effect. It does no resolution changing or anything like that - only stretching the image but it has the same pixelated look of the originals. Not sure about PS2 games, maybe it upscales those.

[Vinceant]

Yeah, all I've ever seen for the PS3 playing PS1 games is the "smoothing" effect. It does no resolution changing or anything like that - only stretching the image but it has the same pixelated look of the originals. Not sure about PS2 games, maybe it upscales those.

I have a slim, so I don't have the ability to try it. Supposedly, it upscales PS2 games to 1080p; I could be completely wrong about that, though.

[Ryu Connor]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/god-o ... on-article

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/793/793775p1.html

http://roushimsx.livejournal.com/68814.html

The visible improvment provided varies per title. Hell, IGN in their testing of the upscale and smoothing got different results than DigitalFoundry did on God of War 2.

http://media.ps3.ign.com/articles/793/7 ... 94602.html - This picture probably does the best job of showing precisely what the features can do. Take a look at the windows in the background. The fact it blurs in the screen in the process of cleaning up the jaggies leads me to think that Quincunx AA is being applied. It is just as likely some custom AA done by one of the SPU.

I dropped in a copy of the PS1 title Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain into my 60GB PS3. Through the XMB you can cut the smoothing effect on and off during gameplay. On Soul Reaver enabling or disabling smoothing seemed focuses more on texture filtering to remove all those nasty pixels. There was a subtle difference in jaggies at 480p with Smoothing on. Didn't seem to make much difference upscaled at 1080p.

The Upscaling effect must be chosen in GameOS before launching the game and you may choose between maintaining the proper aspect ratio or anamorphically stretching the image. I have my TV set to adhere to the defined resolution and confirmed that with Upscaling disabled in GameOS I was at 480p and with Upscaling enabled I was at 1080p.

http://media.ps3.ign.com/articles/793/7 ... 94608.html - This is a decent example of an upscale and smoothed PS1 title. They didn't list smoothed, but they must have turned it on otherwise the pixelation you see in the normal image would be just as pervasive in the upscaled image based on my testing of Soul Reaver.

[derFunkenstein]

Oh, on my 40GB all I have for PSOne scaling is "stretched" and "normal". Is there a third option on your machine that will render 3D images at a higher resolution? On my system the jaggy-ness is very pronounced even displaying 1080p on my 1920x1080 monitor connected by HDCP-protected DVI using an HDMI->DVI cable.

[Ryu Connor]

Oh, on my 40GB all I have for PSOne scaling is "stretched" and "normal". Is there a third option on your machine that will render 3D images at a higher resolution?

If we're on the same page here - I am unsure that we are - you are interpeting Sony's values of Normal and Full Screen too literally. I will attempt to explain the settings again more concisely.

PS3 Manual on Game Settings

I've added some notes that Sony neglected to mention.

In GameOS browse to Settings > Game Settings:

PS/PS2 Upscaler > Off (480i/p) > Normal (1080p Default Aspect Ratio) > Full Screen (1080p Anamorphic)

Notes:

•Off or Normal/Full Screen must be selected PRIOR to launching your PS/PS2 title.
•If Normal/Full Screen is selected PRIOR to launching your PS/PS2 title you can change between Normal and Full Screen in game via the XMB.
•To use this feature, a TV that is compatible with HD input and output must be connected using an HDMI or component AV cable. Also, the video output setting of the PS3™ system must be set to output video at 1080p, 1080i, or 720p.
•If image quality is reduced or the image does not look right when upscaled, set this option to [Off].
•This item is displayed as [PS Upscaler] on some models.

PS/PS2 Smoothing > Off > On

Notes:

•This setting may be adjusted in game via the XMB.
•With some software, the smoothing effect may not be noticeable or image quality may be reduced even if this option is set to [On]. In this case, set to [Off].
•This item is displayed as [PS Smoothing] on some models.

If this is unique to my CECHAxx (NTSC 60GB) model I am certainly curious to hear about that. The linked manual above states everyone should have this.

I believed the Smoothing solution always did the same thing. After looking through the pictures of the linked articles above that is apparently not true. It appears to have different results per title, a tid bit Sony even notes in the manual.

[JustAnEngineer]

I have the same options with the 80 GB (CECHE01) model. Smoothing is a noticeable improvement with my PS2 Ratchet & Clank titles.

[MrBojangles]

I also have a 60gb model (technically mine has 160gb but that's do to an upgrade) and the upscale on ps2 games is pretty sweet.The ps1 games seems to be kinda meh but it does improve it some.It also greatly depends on the game being played.For instance in my experience dragon quest 8 and ff10 looked fantastic when upscaled.Shadows of colossus however looked almost exactly as it did being played off a ps2 .Most ps1 games i tried were either ok or almost unplayable due to pixalation on my hd screen.These games still looked fine on older sdtv's imho (and by "fine" i of course just mean playable).My main question/concern was the downloadable virtual copies from psn.Do they get the sorta wii virtual consul treatment were there not really enhanced or upscaled but there at least adjusted to play nice with hd tv/cables(ie not look like a unidentifiable blob of pixels due to a much sharper image).Or if they were just simply left as a straight copy of the original ps1 game with the only "upgrades" being those from the built in ps1/2 upscale.

[idchafee]

2 weeks later and I'm still waiting for my HDMI cable.

[Ryu Connor]

Or if they were just simply left as a straight copy of the original ps1 game with the only "upgrades" being those from the built in ps1/2 upscale.

Bingo.

[Vinceant]

Oh, I see what you're talking about. The upscaler effectively does....nothing. Apparently why I never noticed this is because it seems to render the game in it's native resolution, and just upscale the resulting image. It just lets you see the jaggies more clearly. I turned it off, and didn't see a change except my monitor scaled the image better than the PS3 does natively. I actually thought it looked better with it turned off, due to the way my monitor scales SD resolutions. Mine is probably a unique case, though, as I'm using a 16:10 monitor. So when the PS3 upscales it to 1080p, there are black lines at the top and bottom (to maintain aspect ratio while scaling the image to the screen) and the 4:3 image is made smaller on my monitor than if it hadn't upscaled it at all. The effective rendering clarity between scaled and unscaled is not noticeable to me, but there may be a slight difference.

The scaler is more about image scaling than the 1080p being sharper though, I'd wager, as some HDTV's don't have proper scaling options (some cheap ones just stretch the image, others just display them 1:1). Thus the PS3 itself would need to do the work that any decent TV should do anyway.

"Smoothing" doesn't affect textures at all. It just blurs the screen. Don't believe me? Find a game where you can stare at a wall flat, and not move. Turn it on and off, and you'll barely see a difference except in the UI elements. Like I said before, the PS2 actually smoothed textures, not the final rendered image.

[Ryu Connor]

Apparently why I never noticed this is because it seems to render the game in it's native resolution, and just upscale the resulting image.

I'm a little surprised there was confusion over this. It is even called Upscaling.

Find a game where you can stare at a wall flat, and not move. Turn it on and off, and you'll barely see a difference except in the UI elements.

I did. I even wrote about it. Before I posted earlier I dropped in my PS1 CD of Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain. Smoothing results in a cleaning of the pixelation of the output. Not unlike this.

I gotta start writing shorter posts or something. I get the distinct impression people don't actually read what I write.

[Vinceant]

Apparently why I never noticed this is because it seems to render the game in it's native resolution, and just upscale the resulting image.

I'm a little surprised there was confusion over this. It is even called Upscaling.

Find a game where you can stare at a wall flat, and not move. Turn it on and off, and you'll barely see a difference except in the UI elements.

I did. I even wrote about it. Before I posted earlier I dropped in my PS1 CD of Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain. Smoothing results in a cleaning of the pixelation of the output. Not unlike this.

I gotta start writing shorter posts or something. I get the distinct impression people don't actually read what I write.

Maybe I should've worded that differently... >.<; What I mean by "upscale" isn't "increase the amount of pixels on screen", so much as just stretch the image while maintaning aspect ratio. I (stupidly, I'm sure) assumed as this was being touted as a "feature" that it was supposed to do...something.

As for your writeup concerning "Smoothing", you proved my initial point. It does not affect the actual rendering of the textures themselves, but simply "smooths" the whole screen by slightly blurring it. Yes, it decreases the appearance of pixelation, but it does not clean it at all. Also, smoothing two pixels against each other is not nearly the same as AA. In most cases it looks horrid, and I would rather have the sharp, crisp images on the PSX. It does, however, work fairly well for sprite based games, so points for that. I did read your post, and was trying to clarify what the smoothing option actually does, because your terminology is sort of confusing there.

[titan]

2 weeks later and I'm still waiting for my HDMI cable.

Did you order from monoprice?

[idchafee]

2 weeks later and I'm still waiting for my HDMI cable.

Did you order from monoprice?

LPX Auto Accessories through Amazon.

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[derFunkenstein]

Oh, I see what you're talking about. The upscaler effectively does....nothing. Apparently why I never noticed this is because it seems to render the game in it's native resolution, and just upscale the resulting image. It just lets you see the jaggies more clearly.

That's what I've been trying to say about PS1 games, but you said it so much more clearly. I don't care about PS2 games since I don't have a PS2-compatible machine.

[idchafee]

I think I may be in love with Netflix streaming on this thing.

[titan]

I think I may be in love with Netflix streaming on this thing.

Yeah, it's almost perfect. Too bad you can't search for things on it. Would avoid the need for going to the computer and saving something to the instant queue.

[Obsidian]

Isn't it possible to add movies through the PS3's browser?