PS3 having issues with Blu-ray playback in 720p

news via ars

We've posted about the issues the PS3 has with sets that don't support 720p as an available resolution, but it looks like you may have issues with Blu-ray movies if your set doesn't support 1080p resolutions. While most HDTVs support 720p—making that a limited problem—there are a ton of televisions that don't support 1080p, including mine. IGN.com weighs in on the subject:

While IGN has previously reported about the 1080i-only problem, we are receiving word of a problem with 720p-only sets as well, as the Blu-Ray player does not seem to be set to kick up to 1080i or kick down to 480p when set to play in 720p. IGN had previously listed 720p amongst the formats playable in BD Video settings since our test TVs did not run into this problem (and also, because we didn't think thrice that Sony would mess something as basic as 720p video playback up since lack of 1080i is made clear on game boxes, and also, we wanted the internet to be even more mad at us...) and we are currently investigating the situation. We are hearing conflicting reports from readers about the situation -- some that have not had troubles (but whose sets may be auto-upscaling where the PS3 fails it), some that have configured the system as usual and have been clearly been limited to only 480p Blu-Ray playback...

My set runs at 720p native, but can upscale to 1080i. I have all resolutions except 1080p selected as available with the PS3. While the Blu-ray image looks pretty nice on my display, I do suffer from an annoying amount of grain on the screen. I'm not sure what's happening here—it's possible that the PS3 is scaling the image down only to have my television scale the image up—but it's very annoying. I thought it was just an issue with my set or something wrong with the disc until I read about other people having issues with grain on 720p sets.

Offered as more evidence that something is wrong with the playback, here is a snippet from a review of the Talladega Nights Blu-Ray disc:

It doesn't seem like there is anything wrong with the source material, which looks as clean as a whistle. Grain is almost absent from the transfer, with solid blacks and consistent color saturation.

The disc is noted for not having grain and a solid transfer. There is something wrong with how it's showing the image on my television. Isn't beta testing new hardware fun?