Should be quite interesting tomorrow. Too bad I'll be out most of the day, but at least when I get home I'll be able to get online and read what happened before dragging my gear upstairs for an update.
I was watching a movie and when it was done, the system came up and said "You need to update" 1.8 popped up and so I DL'ed it and read what it said - PS1, PS2 and DVD upscaling. I threw in Pan's Labyrinth which I recently watched on my Denon 2900 and I was quite surprised at how much detail and color was added to the picture with the upscaling. The image isn't quite as clean as Blu-Ray, (well it is as good as the wost ones I've seen) but it is absolutely an improvement over 480p and my venerable 2900. I am impressed.
My Sony Bravia TV is looks far better with a 720p feed on Blu-Ray playback from my PS3 than it did with 1080i (the TV not being capable of receiving a 1080p feed).
I feel that my PS3 has gone from being a merely good BR player to an excellent one. Tremendous work Sony, much obliged!
Also, I had NO IDEA how freaking good upscaled DVDs can look.
Star Wars III looks phenomenal.
BTW - You can flip back and forth during a DVD to see the difference by hitting the TRIANGLE button and choosing the option in there. What a difference.
Can someone explain to me what "Super White" is though?
Read in the other thread that apparently there is still no scaling of PS3 720p games to 1080i. Also it looks like the majority of the upscaling benefits are available only through HDMI.
So it looks like those of us with the older HDTVs, with no HDMI inputs, and unable to accept 720p signals are still out in the cold.
Upscaling of games will work just fine (EDIT: PS1 AND PS2--no downscaling of 1080p to 720p for PS3 games yet or 720p to 1080i/p I suppose). Also, you should be able to get 720p over component for BDs.
Just to clarify, my TV set does not accept 720p, only 480p and 1080i. A lot of HD sets made in the early 2000s have this flaw. The 360 can scale its native 720p games to 1080i, but the PS3 downscales it to 480p. So Resistance and other 720p games are shown in 480p to people in my position.
So while all the other stuff this update does is wonderful news, the original flaw that brought up al the bruhaha about the PS3 not scaling properly (what I described above) still isn't addressed.
What gives me a little hope though is that the PS3 can clearly do scaling, so it should eventually be doable. What worries me is that the PS3 may be doing the scaling not with a scaling chip (a la the 360) but with the CPU and software. In order to play PS1, PS2 and DVDs, the PS3 is hardly taxing itself so it can dedicate some CPU power to software scaling, and maybe that's why it can't with PS3 games because those are made to use up a lot more of the PS3's system resources.
Who knows. I'm happy that this fix helps a lot of people. Just bummed that it doesn't help me. :frowning: