PS3 can now play Blu-Ray movies at 720p, thanks to 1.8 (it’s official)
May 24, 2007 Carl Nelson
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Naturally, this 1.8 system update just keeps getting better and better. We told you about the 1.8 features that everyone knows about, we told you about the feature that nobody expected. We told you about some wacky workarounds that the 1.8 update introduces, allowing streaming media from your PC to your PSP.
We were getting reports from some people that the 1.8 update was allowing people to play Blu-Ray Disc movie content in 720p. I tried it, and it looked like it worked (my TV doesn’t display current resolution; it’s a native 720p screen), but I wanted to get the official word on this from Sony before reporting it as truth.
As it turns out, yes, the Playstayion 3 now downsamples Blu-Ray content to 720p, and it is official. Why is this a good thing? For people (like me) with a smaller LCD TV (mine is 32″) which has a native resolution of 720p (well, 1366×768), we can now have the PS3 downsample the movie to 720p, keeping it as a progressive stream (60 fps). This is preferable to having the TV downsample a 1080i image, and also deinterlace it. Along with new Blacker Than Black support and Whiter Than White, the PS3 just became an even better Blu-Ray player.
So there you have it; +1 to Sony for adding another unexpected bonus in the 1.8 update.
Now, if they could only do the same for PS3 games…
Filed under: Video Game Hardware
Tags: Blu-Ray, Firmware Updates, HDTV, Movies, Playstation 3, Sony
Matt
Posted on May 25th, 2007
no mention to the fact that ps3 fans in dvd/bd up/down-scaling mode now are much noisier