PS3 may upscale DVDs soon

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 5th March 2007
Comments (14) Stumble
"More than just a pretty hamburger cooker" - The PS3 may soon make your DVDs as pretty as it (thinks it) is.

"More than just a pretty hamburger cooker" - The PS3 may soon make your DVDs as pretty as it (thinks it) is.

The PS3 has been wave upon wave of bad press for Sony. Let's be realistic - the launch didn't go well, we all know it and there's no hiding the fact that Europe is now really getting the shaft. So, here's something that you PS3 pre-buyers (or owners in the US and elsewhere) may like to hear - the PS3 may soon upscale DVDs for you. Maybe.

Yep, some actual good news. Sony has dropped some hints that an upcoming firmware upgrade might make that Cell processor do a lot more than just knock out the fat and empty your wallet. There is more than enough power to use software upscaling for video that is DVD or lower quality, which would make the PS3 a much better deal than you may have bargained for.

Most players out on the market that play high-definition content will play the HD stuff at its resolution and DVD at its native resolution. The PS3 will now allow you to be playing BD at its resolution or DVD at nearly the same resolution - meaning you don't have to be tired of watching "standard def" for all of your current movie collection.

Of course, the news arises from an interview with Phil Harrison of Sony Worldwide Studios and may unfortunately be being a little to literally translated. The direct quote, which dealt largely with consumer confidence, was this:

"There is a cultural thing about our approach in Japan that has to change. Our approach in Japan is, 'Once it's perfect, we'll share it with everybody else.' Whereas I think in order to engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect, but are ready to give you an indication of what's coming. So we could say, 'You know, we're not sure when it's coming, but we're going to have DVD upscaling on Playstation 3.' There you go. There's a scoop for you.”

Nobody is totally sure whether Harrison is being serious, but if so it would likely greatly increase the PS3 sales potential. A huge part of the cost of the unit has been attributed to it being a Blu-Ray disc player, and Sony has pitched it as a focal point of the high-def living room. Upscaling DVDs would certainly be more than a "little" move toward this, since currently only Home Theatre PCs perform this function well. Though upscaling players are avaliable commercially, most are either very expensive or do a poor job.

If the company isn't just blowing smoke, would it be enough to interest you? What if it is just another Sony fairy-tale, an idea picked from Harrison's mind at random? Let us know your thoughts in our forums.
Quote landi_uk 5th March 2007, 10:18
Sounds like another "Sony Story"

After Europe getting the shaft from Sony repeatedly over the PS3, I don't care if this gets up and makes the tea in the morning, I won't be getting one out of principle
Quote Da_Rude_Baboon 5th March 2007, 10:35
Quote:
Upscaling DVDs would certainly be more than a "little" move toward this, since currently only Home Theatre PCs perform this function.


Upscaling DVD players have been widely available here for a while.
Quote Darkened 5th March 2007, 10:45
I'll have to agree with the baboon, even here in Finland you can buy upscaling DVD/media players.

Some have done it right (expensive) and some have not (the cheaper ones), but the bottom line is that they are available.

I've never been a console kind of guy and even if PS3 could upscale DVDs, it does the upscaling with software based algorithms and not with a decent hardware based solution (which I'd like to have), so even if the price of the damn thing was right, there is not much sense to buy it (for me anyways).

I'll keep my PCs running and my TV for other purposes :)

Just my 0,02$...

Janne
Quote Flibblebot 5th March 2007, 11:39
Yeah, kind of a "so what" moment. You have to remember that all of the current batch of hi-def players are distinctly consumer-level. None of the high end manufacturers have even announced a hi-def players, most are content to stay with upscaling DVD. You can be sure, however, that as soon as one of the top tier players jumps into the hi-def water, then those players will upscale non-HD content from the get go.
Quote DarkLord7854 5th March 2007, 12:58
Might be a case of "too little, too late" methinks. So it'll upscale DVDs.. yay. Wait, doesn't my DVD player that cost me less then 600$ do that already?
Quote Djpuk 5th March 2007, 13:03
Not enough to make me want to buy one again.
Quote mikeuk2004 5th March 2007, 13:35
I dont get all this upscalling business. I have seen alot of HDMI DVD players that upscale but why would you want that?? Trying to blow up a picture surely distorts the picture.

Its not like in the movies where they can blow up a grainy black and white picture form a security camera in an off licence to a resolution higher than what my PC can out put with a sharp clear picture.

It seems pointless. My TV card outputs 640 x 480 and if I maximise the picture to my screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 then its grainy and distorted.

When are they going to sell HMDI VHS players that can upscale to 1080p :) Thats gotta be nasty.
Quote DarkLord7854 5th March 2007, 13:37
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeuk2004
When are they going to sell HMDI VHS players that can upscale to 1080p :) Thats gotta be nasty.

Perfect for watching those old home video tapes :)
Quote Da Dego 5th March 2007, 14:00
Quote:
Originally Posted by Da_Rude_Baboon
Upscaling DVD players have been widely available here for a while.
I have to throw a little amendment in here - as darkened said right below baboon, the few upscalers that have done a halfway decent job were always very expensive - reading over my article, I completely left out a key part of my sentence. I will edit now :)
Quote Flibblebot 5th March 2007, 14:02
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeuk2004
I dont get all this upscalling business. I have seen alot of HDMI DVD players that upscale but why would you want that?? Trying to blow up a picture surely distorts the picture.

Its not like in the movies where they can blow up a grainy black and white picture form a security camera in an off licence to a resolution higher than what my PC can out put with a sharp clear picture.

It seems pointless. My TV card outputs 640 x 480 and if I maximise the picture to my screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 then its grainy and distorted.

When are they going to sell HMDI VHS players that can upscale to 1080p :) Thats gotta be nasty.
Upscaling is more than just enalrging an image (at least it is on the higher end upscaling players). There's a lot of clever (i.e. variable angle) interpolation going on, smoothing to remove jaggies and processing to avoid pixellation.
Quote randosome 5th March 2007, 16:57
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeuk2004
I don't get all this upscalling business. I have seen a lot of HDMI DVD players that upscale but why would you want that?? Trying to blow up a picture surely distorts the picture.
it depends on the algorithms used, if you just plain upscale it - yes

however, Bit tech did mention before how you could practically upscale your DVD movies to look as good/better then HD/BD discs (which BTW - a lot are actually up scaled Dvds anyway cos Hollywood is too lazy to do it right, and they cheap out on it and do a bad job, so you can actually do it better)
Quote mctigger 5th March 2007, 20:55
If it can up scale, it will def be a big help to the sales, but probably is a little late now, but i remember one the sony bravia tv's that up scaled the picture, to near high def quality, it did a very good job of it, but i think that was hardware based, but if the up-scale is software based, if they do it right, which they will need to or ps3 will die on its feet, it would make the machine in my opinion a slightly better buy!
Quote arcanes 5th March 2007, 21:47
Good for sony but. toshiba already have two upscaling HD-DVD.
the HD-A2 can do 720p/1080I and the HD-XA2 can do 480p/720p/1080i/1080p. the HD-XA2 is powered by Silicon Optix Reon HQV, so I don't think the PS3 can do better video processing than that :D .
Quote friskies 7th March 2007, 11:34
All hdtv`s upscale sd-material, so this really isn`t needed unless ps3 can do it better. And btw, the oppo upscaling dvd players are said to be awesome and they`re cheap.
Log in

You are not logged in, please login with your forum account below. If you don't already have an account please register to start contributing.





Stats: 0.116 seconds