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Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

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Old 07-09-2009, 9:46 PM   #1
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Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

The reason I ask is because in one thread I checked out people were pointing out that FIFA 09 actually looks better if you disable the option to upscale to 1080p and leave it in its native 720p. Since the vast majority of games for the PS3—even exclusives—are 720p does it make sense for me to limit my PS3's picture quality range to 720p or is it only true of FIFA 09 that 720p looks better than 1080p?

Hope my question isn't too hard to understand, I've basically just been thinking out loud!
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Old 07-09-2009, 10:09 PM   #2
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

Id leave it set at 720p yeah, let the TV do the job of scaling. Will depend tho on TV try a few games back and forth from 720 and 1080 and see what seems best for you.
Reckon the odd jaggie may be minimized if set to 720p but again setup dependednt, Experiment.
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Old 07-09-2009, 10:21 PM   #3
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

The only problem is that if you use your PS3 to play Blu-rays they would best best at their native 1080p.
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Old 08-09-2009, 9:51 AM   #4
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

I don't use my PS3 for Bluray (Bluray movies are too expensive and I have a DVD Home Theatre System that gives me 5.1 surround) so I'm going to try limiting the picture quality to 720p and see how a few games look. I'll report back with my thoughts.

Thanks guys.
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Old 08-09-2009, 10:51 AM   #5
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

The majority of games will revert to their 'native' output resolution whatever you have selected as your output on the XMB. I have mine checked at 1080p (XMB looks loads better + I do watch the odd Blu ray on it) and it's only Fifa that seems to want to output 1080p when it's not that natively, all the other games I have will output 720p.

If you play a lot of Fifa it probably makes sense to deselect 1080i/p otherwise I'd leave it, personally
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Old 08-09-2009, 11:10 AM   #6
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hodg100 View Post
The majority of games will revert to their 'native' output resolution whatever you have selected as your output on the XMB. I have mine checked at 1080p (XMB looks loads better + I do watch the odd Blu ray on it) and it's only Fifa that seems to want to output 1080p when it's not that natively, all the other games I have will output 720p.

If you play a lot of Fifa it probably makes sense to deselect 1080i/p otherwise I'd leave it, personally
I just tried limiting output to 720p and to be honest I didn't notice a whole lot of difference while playing FIFA so I've reverted to maximum output.
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Old 08-09-2009, 11:37 AM   #7
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

If your TV has a native resolution of 1920x1080 then you don't have an option to not upscale - all you're doing if you disable it on the PS3 is letting the TV do the upscaling instead. If people notice it's better that way then all it means is their TV is a better upscaler than their PS3.
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Old 08-09-2009, 11:48 AM   #8
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Munkey Boy View Post
If your TV has a native resolution of 1920x1080 then you don't have an option to not upscale - all you're doing if you disable it on the PS3 is letting the TV do the upscaling instead. If people notice it's better that way then all it means is their TV is a better upscaler than their PS3.
I don't think that's true in Fifa'a case. The PS hardware isn't actually doing the scaling, AFAIK, it's a quick and dirty coding job within the game with noticeably inferior results.

In almost all cases the TV will be a better scaler than the PS3 as it's hardware is limited to horizontal scaling of certain resolutions
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Old 08-09-2009, 2:19 PM   #9
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

But if the video output from the PS3 is 1080p and the game's res is 720p, then to all intents and purposes, it's an upscaling job by the PS3. Not a very good one judging by your description, but that's a technical limitation. It's a shame there isn't an option to set resolutions by BD playback and games separately.
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Old 08-09-2009, 2:55 PM   #10
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Re: Do most games look better not upscaled to 1080p?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Munkey Boy View Post
But if the video output from the PS3 is 1080p and the game's res is 720p, then to all intents and purposes, it's an upscaling job by the PS3. Not a very good one judging by your description, but that's a technical limitation. It's a shame there isn't an option to set resolutions by BD playback and games separately.
I guess we're discussing the same thing form a different angle. I'm saying it's not the PS3 that is upscaling Fifa, it's part of the game code to output 1080p even though it's not that natively. The scaling isn't done by the PS3 hardware but rather 'in-game' and badly at that. The PS3 isn't actually hardware capable of scaling Fifa's native resolution

Fifa is an unusual case in that it will choose 1080p over 720p whereas most games will output at their native res regardless of what you have set in the XMB.

Wrt to your last sentence, god yeah!

EDIT: I knew I had a point

My point is, it's generally OK to have all resolutions checked as the game will normally pick the best but in some cases, Fifa being one, it doesn't

Last edited by Mark Hodgkinson; 08-09-2009 at 3:03 PM.
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