Absolutely. Final Fantasy 12 looks worse on the ps3. I'm hoping that a patch will add some upscaling, but as it is, it looks worse. Bad enough to stop playing? No, just less refined. I was a little disappointed.

I played Guitar Hero 2 on my friend's 50-something inch LCD and it looked like crap. Yet it looks fine on my 20 inch LCD. I second the notion that it's more the TV size than it is the PS3.

When will you guys learn that huge doesn't always = pleasurable? :)

He used the same TV for both the PS2 and the PS3 in that video. Unless that's a lie, it's not a TV size issue.

Playstation 2 games look AWFUL on high definition TVs. I don't know why, maybe it has to do with upscaling or something.

@Chgu

Milk just shoot out of my girlfriends noise as she read that .. LOLZ!

From what i'm reading on the forums, it seems to be title specific. More BC issues *groan*

These issues should go away once sony completes full software emulation. At the moment they are re-using ps2 components in the ps3 to provide backwards compatibility, they've been talking about the full software emulator for a few months. (also the ps3 will go down in price once they stop using ps2 technology)

I think the side by side on the same tv part of the video should confirm that it is a problem. Hell, Wii sports on my 94" projector doesn't have as many jaggies as that.

...at least it plays the games...

It's not that big of a deal IMO.

Well I'm sure for some games, it may just be that they look like shit no matter what. But I think TV size/brand is also a factor. Just like how standard def TV broadcasts look like crap on a lot of the larger HD sets.

it can't be tv-tv issue, because if you use the pure source of the video, you can see that the quality is degraded alot.

My theory is most HDTVs upscale 480i/p slowly, but with good quality. The PS3 in this case does the "upscaling" and just stretches it with horrible results, the TV just sees a 1080/720 signal and thinks it needs no upscaling...

The system said it failed to post my comment, apologies if this is a double post!

I can't comment on using the PS3's backwards compatibility because we're not allowed them in Europe yet.

But for ages now I've been hating the PS2's blurry, messy video output. Blow it up on any large screen and it looks pretty terrible. Speaking anecdotally I'm certain the PS2 isn't rendering at 720x480, I'm sure it's closer to 500x300 or thereabouts, and they add lots of blur to hide this because it doesn't do AA in hardware. I actually find the Dreamcast's 640x480 VGA output much nicer to look at compared to the PS2's output, which is why I think the PS2 is rendering at a lower res.

One thing I have noticed is you seem to get a much sharper picture from RGB output vs Y/Pb/Pr, I'm not sure what they're doing to the signal but anything via component does look worse than RGB SCART to me. Of course the other problem on HDTVs is that it's de-interlacing the picture so you get a reduction of image quality from that too.

That's why I'm quite disappointed that the BC on the PS3 isn't doing any upscaling (I was disappointed the PS2 didn't do any decent smoothing for the PS1 too!). The 360's BC is really lame in terms of compatibility but at least what it does run it tries to upscale. Ninja Gaiden actually looks almost next gen when it's upscaled, it really looks awesome. I'd love to see Shadow of the Colossus or MGS3 get that sort of treatment. I suppose the best we can hope for is paid downloads of games like Tekken 5 HD...

It's called crappy pixel doubling. Have you ever walked into a TV store where they are demo-ing Hi-def TVs with Low-def broadcast signal? They all upscale in different ways (LG I recall always ended up with a funny mask on any outlines).

My bet is that it's his TV. If it is the PS3, it's the pixel doubling.

Not a huge issue, but it could be annoying. Anyway, at least they have a good lineup for BC games, unlike my damn 360. I'm dying to play silent hill 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on my 360, dammit. But then again, I play Gears and FEAR so much I doubt I'd have time. I'll be waiting a long time to get the PS3 because of these issues, just as I did with the 360

Guitar Hero 2 looks fine on my 55 in HDTV on the PS2 component cables. I could see it was an issue of standard def looking crappy on some tv's but they are claiming these to be on the same tv so being a tv issue doesnt quite work in this paticular case less you are saying that his tv is discriminating between the PS3 and the PS2. Maybe they should try both on Component to be 100% fair.

I dont have a PS3 yet myself and probably wont till the sort the 1080i thing out as I dont want to play in standard def.

This is not a tv to tv issue, I can confirm that ps2 games look like crap on my ps3, the only fix I found for this is if the game supports progressive scan, thoguh the problem with this is not many games for the ps2 did except for a few ie. god of war, shadow of the collosus etc.

But when I first loaded in SotC it looked horrible until I switched on progressive mode, which helped out quite a bit, so looks like we'll be waiting for that firmware update from sony to fix this.

I see the difference with the PS2 and PS3 hooked up to the same television, with the same video cables - the image looks slightly stretched/pixellated, it is especially noticable around text. So in this case, it isn't my TV displaying it differently - so it's the PS3 definately not outputting "quite" right, and I am hoping it gets fixed.

I did call Sony about this 3 weeks ago - they said to use the composite cable included with the PS3.. ugh.

@REgula

Can a firmware update fix this? (Going off of the blind knowledge of another commentor, so forgive my ignorance). I read a comment saying that a firmware update could not fix hardware that has upscaling issues (such as the 1080i/720p fiasco). Is this true, or can this actually be remedied with a firmware update?

Don't worry... those fanboy tears will sort the jaggies out. =P

I've been playing Gran Turismo 4 and the game looks hidious, but when you go in the settings menu in GT4 you can change the resolution to 1080i and it looks beautiful. But havent tried it on another game yet.

The only games I've played on my PS3 in BC mode are MGS2: Substance and Castlevania: SotN and both games looked fine. In fact, it output both games at 480p via HDMI and I personally prefer the unfiltered look. I thought SotN looked less blurry than playing it directly out of my PS1 via S-Video and letting my 1080p LCoS do the upconversion, whereas I couldn't discern much of a difference with Substance. The major annoyance in that category for me is that PS1 games get output in the proper 4:3 aspect ratio, but PS2 games require me to manually adjust my display to 4:3.

A weird note though, that I haven't read elsewhere on the net: in games like Substance that have AC-3 for certain cutscenes, the audio simply cuts out if you are using HDMI when the AC-3 plays back. Since you can't use the HDMI and optical output at the same time, I ended up testing out using the optical output for audio and the HDMI for video to see if that would work and after much hair pulling and cable rerouting to make that physical connection happen, the AC-3 work properly over the optical.

Annoying as hell IMHO, but since so few games supported that on the PS2 and I'd rather not buy the memory card adapter, its kind of a non-issue to me.

I would be interested if games like Rez support the USB vibrator, though. I have a Japanese copy of Rez, but the PS3 region-coding doesn't let me play it.

usedtabe, although I never trust sonys word, they have said they will, at a future time, start using emulation to do some of the BC.... so there is a good chance they left their backwards compatibility open for improvment, so we can only hope that using software they can scale it. However, sony has far too many other "problems" on their plate that will be fixed in future firmware updates before they start working on comforts...

Scazza you hit the nail right on the head.

This can be confirmed by anyone with a PS3 and a decent monitor. Ask the monitor what the video signal is while running a PS2 title. If your monitor says 720 or 1080, then the PS3 is doing the worlds worst upscale (smells like nearest neighbor pixel doubling to me.)

Unless it's going to a sweet job, or perhaps render the scenes at the higher resolutions, there is no good reason for the PS2 emulation to output at anything "better" than 480p, thus preserving the PS2 image quality.

While there are plenty of HDTV's with piss-poor SD upscaling, his clearly knows how to do so properly, as the PS2 as source looks fine. The other thing I notice is the massive color shift there, in all likelyhood he didn't take time to white balance his camera, but is that cool-shift to the color something the PS3 does all the time?

How could it be a TV issue? Let's think about this. The video shows the same games being played on the same television using both the PS3 and the PS2. The PS3 portions clearly have more jaggies than the PS2 ones. This means that the problem is with the PS3 making it a hopefully temporary backwards compatability problem. Sure the PS3 might run PS2 games better on certain TVs but it is still the PS3 making the images poor, not the TV.

I don't know much about how firmware effects this sort of thing but i hope some sort of update will correct the problem

gettin jaggy wit it! nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah!

Looks like the PS3 is outputting the games at their original resolution, his TV's native resolution is a non-integer multiple of that original resolution, and his TV's scaler is cheap as hell.

So is there no dialogue in FFX?

I should really get around to playing that game. Or any FF, for that matter.

I've been playing FFXII on the PS3. With the standard cables it does look like crap. Shadow of the Colossus looked better on the PS3 than on my 5 year old PS2.

I recently got a HDMI cable and the visual quality on FFXII improved. My TV is only 27'' but it is HDTV, maybe smaller TV's are not affected that much as suggested...

He dicho.

Actually scratch it, if it was just his scaler than it wouldn't be a problem. However the PS3 doesn't even deinterlace its output, so it's not a PS3 scaling problem. It's going wrong in the actual video output itself.

There is a difference in FFX that is noticeable. I tried that and MGS2 on my PS3. I couldn't see much of a difference for MGS2.

It's NOT a TV thing. (Although the TV can exacerbate the issue)

I actually sold my ps2 in preperation of the ps3 and have regretted it tremendously. The PS3 makes PS2 games look WORSE.

PS3 FTJ (for teh jaggies)

I consider this a big problem for Sony, since the only good games the PS3 has are PS2 titles.

If it's not a TV issue then what is it, because so far my PS3 if anything makes FFXII look better (sharper, in a good way), although I do have this problem with MGS2. (MGS3 looks fine)

From what I've gathered this affects only about 5-6 games, and has already been acknowledged by Sony. (Aren't these problems mentioned on the backwards compatability site?)

It will likely be fixed, although preemptively selling your PS2 in preparation was probably a mistake.

Again, this doesn't happen to everyone so it's kind of up in the air as to what is actually causing it.

Double posting to backpedal a bit here, I just checked the BC checker and it says even MGS2 has no significant problems. Of course, this isn't exactly a game breaking glitch, but I wanted to admit I was mistaken.

it's a 480i on hd display issue. i actually got rid of my gamecube because it looks just that bad on my hdtv, and i'm not going to pay a hundred dollars on ebay for component cables i'm not sure actually work on my system. analog signals that aren't at or very near a display's native resolution (for digital displays, such as the lcd flatpanel i have) generally look horrible. you're less likely to have as many problems on a crt or plasma display. and it really isn't something that can be fixed with a firmware update; it's a combination of the lack of a working hardware scaler in the ps3 combined with backwards compatibility's reliance on what is essentially a ps2 inside the console. i guess you can't have everything when it comes to backwards compatibility.

I just played the original PS1 Ridge Racer last night on my PS3... it looked like crap! Yes, even worse than it used to. The resolution was terrible. It was literally almost unplayable.

What's the big deal? You bought a PS3 to play your old PS2 games? Here's a zany idea. If the urge arises, use your PS2 to play your *gasp* PS2 games.

@Earthslide: LOL

@usedtabe: Yes a firmware update should be able to fix this, and I wouldnt consider this a comfort but a problem that sony is probably already working on for a while, Because by next year all PS3's should be playing Ps1 and Ps2 games under emulation and this problem should dissapear, and I'll take an educated guess that when sony releases the firmware to play the downloadable Ps1 titles on the Ps3 that can only be played on the psp at the moment, is when this issue will also be fixed.

@General: Even when playing my ps2 thru component cables most games on my hi-def tv didnt look too great to begin with, but on a standard tube tv look nice. So even when sony does update the Ps3 with a firmware the games will probably, probably still look bad without all the jaggies though. We dont have the convience the xbox had because alot of those games were already in hi def (480p and 720p) so its easier to manipulate them when they're emulated to the 360 but most ps2 games were in 480i unless they had the progressive mode option enabling them to 480p.

I think this was done purposely so that Sony fanboys who play PS3 and PS2 games on their PS3 will say something like:

"ZOMG!!one Look how GOOD the PS3 looks!!!eleventy!11!1"

"Wayyy better than PS2!@at1!seventyfour!"

"I'm glad I spent all that extra money for these super graphics(you get the point)"

notice the scary trailer font and music? when did fox get into sensationalistic overblowen BS bloging? news flash folks, emulation always has problems attached weather it be grahpical audiotory or sheer FPS based.

Guys, you all obviously have no idea what's going on here, so let me clue you in.













The PLAYSTATION3 is capturing and processing the CG video, and re-rendering it in REAL-TIME! But since it's only using 20% of its power as we heard from EA yesterday, naturally it's going to look less than perfect... But, just wait... soon you'll have perfect real-time CG renderings on screen while it cooks you baby blood tear and crow egg omelettes and solves a rubic's cube!

like i said... sensationalistic overblowen BS

I've noticed this on only a few games as well. Though, If i input the component cables to my LCD tv and not the HDMI, the games look better than they do in HDMI.(stupid upscaling stuff!) I just did it as a test really, and dont plan to do it very often. Its a display issue as said above it seems.

@ Evirus:

"notice the scary trailer font and music? when did fox get into sensationalistic overblowen BS bloging? news flash folks, emulation always has problems attached weather it be grahpical audiotory or sheer FPS based."

Except they're not using emulation yet. There's actually a PS2 and PS1 inside the PS3. So... try again...

Big deal, this is why you keep your PS2 and not sell it on ebay.

I sold FFXII because of the SAME problem.

my point still stands miniboss, this is compleatly over blowen