CORBIE'S GAME BLOG

If you've gotten the 1.30 or 1.31 firmware updates for your Playstation 3 and you own a 720p LCD HDTV, you've likely encountered the problem already. In 1.30, Sony has given priority to 1080i over 720p. What this means is that if you select 1080i as an output yout TV accepts, it will play all Blu-Ray discs and all PS3 games at that output even though 720p is a better resolution for your TV. In order to play a game at 720p, the user has to go into the DISPLAY menu and de-select 1080i. While this does make your games play in 720p, if you pop in a Blu-Ray movie, which will only output on the PS3 in 1080p or 1080i, it will downscale that movie to 480p which is a shade above a regular old DVD. So to prevent this, you have to go into the DISPLAY menu again and re-select 1080i in order to watch a Blu-Ray movie. Now this becomes a pain very quickly and I only hope that Sony releases a fix that allows the user to give priority back to 720p again. If not, I may be selling this PS3 and just sticking with my Xbox 360 which can output HD-DVD movies at 720p, something the PS3's Blu-Ray player cannot do. It's becoming more clear that Sony was just not ready to launch this console when they did.