Sony releases PS3 firmware 1.3, ignores 1080i woes

[wraggster]

Well whaddaya know. Sony just rolled out a global update for the PS3 this morning, fixing some of the smaller gripes with the console, and completely ignoring the only one we care about. Naturally, most people have been a bit anxious about that 1080i bug, especially since Sony retracted its initial statement about a fix being on the way, so instead of calming our fears with soothing PR statements or, perish the thought, actually fixing the problem, Sony is teasing us all with a re-org of display resolution hierarchy, moving 720p to below 1080i in preferences. Sony also added a BD/DVD image output option, for switching between automatic, RGB and Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr over HDMI. Slightly less exciting -- but still welcome -- are the additions of a utility to backup your SD cards, compact flash cards and USB memory sticks to the hard drive, and a HDD formatting option, to bring your PS3 back to spankin' new status. All that's great and all, but if Sony doesn't currently have 50 engineers chained to desks in Tokyo, feverishly working out a fix for this bug, we're not inviting Sony to our birthday party. So there!

via engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/06/sony-releases-ps3-firmware-1-3-ignores-1080i-woes/)

[mavsman4457]

I want the ability to play music while playing a game and the ability to play PS3 games through my PSP anywhere in the world with the internet.

[DCergo]

This upgrade *does* address the downscaling problem. If *you* have a tv that doesn't support 720p, then the option exists to give 1080i a *higher* priority, instead of naturally dropping to 480p, thus solving the problem maybe 5% or less of hdtv owners might have.

Engadget obviously didn't do their research at all. But I guess it's chic to trample on Sony these days, and that's more important than being factual.

[freitax]

This upgrade *does* address the downscaling problem. If *you* have a tv that doesn't support 720p, then the option exists to give 1080i a *higher* priority, instead of naturally dropping to 480p, thus solving the problem maybe 5% or less of hdtv owners might have.

Engadget obviously didn't do their research at all. But I guess it's chic to trample on Sony these days, and that's more important than being factual.

yeah exactly I thought the firmware had that covered, guess I wasn't wrong then, I think even microsoft said that it was probably impossible to fix the bug, oh well people just like to bash sony....


"GameSpot editors tested an updated console and found that the console will now output the highest resolution a gamers' monitor supports, regardless of what resolution the gamer prefers. For example, games that output natively at 1080p running on a monitor that supports a maximum of 1080i will be automatically be displayed at 1080i, not 720p as the gamer may prefer. Before updating to v1.30, the PS3 gave preference to 720p over 1080i.

In the previous example, disabling 1080i support to get native 1080p games to play at 720p works fine, but has an unwanted side effect. Disabling 1080i results in Blu-ray movies downscaling to 480p, as the PS3 does not yet support Blu-ray playback in 720p. While this isn't a problem for gamers with 1080p monitors, it does cause a bit of a predicament for those with HDTVs that don't support the high resolution. " Gamespot