What does PS3/XBOX 360 upscaling do?

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Nick Blouin

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May 25, 2013
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Hi, guys. So I've been searching all over the internet for a definitive answer to this, but no such luck. So I was hoping somebody on here could help. I have a few questions.

Firstly, to my knowledge, almost every PS3/XBOX 360 game runs at native 720p due to their hardware limitations. But I remember seeing on the back of PS3 and XBOX 360 game boxes that they can run at 720p, 1080i and 1080p. I wondered what the meant, so I looked it up. I found out it meant that those game can be upscaled to those higher resolutions. But what exactly does that mean?

Secondly, does upscaling look any better than running it at its native 720p resolution. Is it a substantial increase in game quality to upscale from 720p to 1080p.

Thirdly, I run all my PC games at 1080p. I just wanted to know if a console game upscaled to 1080p on a 1080p HDTV comes anywhere close to the quality of native 1080p on PC games via a 1920 x 1080 monitor.

Thanks for the help!
 
Solution
chriscornell
In short - no I won't come anywhere close to a pc running 1080p natively.
Upscaling is like blowing up a baloon with print on it - the print might get bigger but it's colors and sharpness will worsen the bigger the baloon gets.

Most new HDTVs are far better at upscaling than your average console, and making the console do the upscaling could affect it's already horrible performance even further.

You're better of with a progressive signal than an interlaced one since the picture is updated frame by frame instead of ½ the image lines at a time - so going for a 720p signal from the console and letting the TV upscale will be your best option.

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chriscornell

chriscornell

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Jul 27, 2009
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In short - no I won't come anywhere close to a pc running 1080p natively.
Upscaling is like blowing up a baloon with print on it - the print might get bigger but it's colors and sharpness will worsen the bigger the baloon gets.

Most new HDTVs are far better at upscaling than your average console, and making the console do the upscaling could affect it's already horrible performance even further.

You're better of with a progressive signal than an interlaced one since the picture is updated frame by frame instead of ½ the image lines at a time - so going for a 720p signal from the console and letting the TV upscale will be your best option.

 
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Nick Blouin

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May 25, 2013
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10,530
Ok thanks, so just to be clear, upscaling doesn't improve image quality at all, it just allows it to fit your HDTV?

And I also heard that the XBOX 360 had an auto-upscaler to 1080p installed in its hardware. Does that change anything? Does that, in particular, improve quality?
 
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