Another PS3 fail
by Rabit on May.08, 2011, under Gamer Rages
Playstation and the Sony network as a whole has been going through a lot of problems over the past few weeks, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about you must be a hermit and live under a rock with no TV or internet. If this is that case I’m not sure exactly how you’re reading this, but my little point here isn’t about the PSN and SOE getting hacked and taken down by Sony, it’s another issue I’ve just discovered with the PS3 outputs.
In a recent thunderstorm a lightening bolt hit my house and shorted pretty much everything. As I was gaming on my XBox at the time, this somehow blew all the HDMI inputs on my TV which is a right pain in the arse as the TV is only about 6 months old. It also means I’m back on low-def output for a while until I can get my hands on a new TV. This was fine for my Sky box, which still works through a scart connection and I have two scart inputs on my TV so I hooked my XBox up to the other one and I can carry on gaming. Not an issue, just a lack for high quality video which I can cope with.
The PS3 however didn’t allow me to solve this problem so easily. I couldn’t work out why the PS3 wouldn’t output anything to the TVs scart socket like the XBox could. The PS3 wasn’t even on at the time of the lightening strike so there’s no way it could have blown anything. Plus, when I turn the PS3 on I can detect it on the network so it’s definitely working. So I turned to my wife (it’s her PS3 and she set it up on the new HD TV we bought) and she informed me that when she plugged it into the HDMI for the first time she had to set up the output of the PS3 OS to allow it to output to HD quality (1080-whatever-takes-your-fancy).
As some of you may know I love my XBox but I hate Microsoft almost as much as I hate Hitler, and I’m never one to praise Microsoft, but for all their faults at least the XBox auto detects which output you have plugged in and alters the output definition appropriately. Not so with the PS3. So my wife explains that she had to physically setup the Playstation to output at 1080p and only then could she use the HDMI port on the TV to its full potential. Now this may all sound fine, but as the old AV/scart output (which outputs at somewhere around 560) is much less than 1080, and therefore the AV/scart output would display on the HDMI input fine, however the 1080 HD output will not display on an AV/scart input.
This means that when plugged into the AV/scart input on the TV, unless I know the exact combination of button presses that takes me through the Playstation menu to reset the output from HD to AV/scart, then I can’t see anything on the screen, and as my HDMI inputs aren’t working, I can’t use those so there’s no way of me using the PS3.
So in the end I had to wait a week and then dismantle my wiring to unplug and the PS3, take the console down to a friends house where I could re plug it all in and set it up on their HD TV, reset the ouput through the Playstation menu to AV/scart, take the console back to my house and re plug it into my TV.
This is an absolute fail on Sony’s part, as someone in my position who’s HD TV or HDMI ports suddenly stop working and who has to resort to using a low-def input on their TV simply can’t. When the PS3 is set to output at 1080 resolution, this for some reason won’t scale down to a low-def input, and therefore nothing displays on the screen. The only way to fix this is to buy a new HD TV or take the damn console round to someone’s house who does have an HD TV. Poor form Sony, up until the last few weeks I’ve not had a lot of bad things to say about Sony, other than the relatively small selection of games the Playstation has compared to other consoles, but now they’ve really dropped down in my estimation.
So if you are trying to switch a PS3 from high definition to low definition, you must switch the output from 1080 to a lower option (scart or AV) before you plug it into the low definition input port or you won’t see a damn thing!
May 9th, 2011 on 9:38 pm
It has to be said that that’s pretty poor. You’d think that by today’s technology something as advanced as a PS3 would actually detect or be remotely compatible enough to recognise a change of output. Even my SEGA Mega Drive can differentiate between outputs whether you use the coaxial or the S-Video output. If the PS network was down was enough of a fail, this is even bigger! Here was I thinking that the PS3 would possibly finally overtake the Xbox and look, Sony have plunged back into the middle ages.
May 29th, 2011 on 2:07 am
Noted!
I remember trying to play some XBox games that told me that I had to change output setttings in order to play. That I find quite gash, why should I change my TV output settings depending on what game I play?
May 29th, 2011 on 3:21 pm
Yeah, a while back I seem to remember Graves said ‘The Outfit’ wouldn’t play on high def settings on his XBox and he had to plug the composite cables in and switch to low def to play it… very strange!
My old TV had some software in it that worked out if it was a high def or low def input, and if it was low def it automatically scaled the definition up to 1080. Very clever! Not that I can use it now lol
May 31st, 2011 on 1:49 am
Do you know the dumb thing about the Outfit, one day I played it without changing the settings and it worked! How stupid is that!
June 8th, 2011 on 3:45 am
Well, it looks as though all of your Playstation 3 TV worries will all go away, with the NEW Playstation TV! http://www.pcworld.com/article/229669/e3_sony_introduces_lowcost_3d_tv_bundle.html
Having said that, knowing Sony, they’ll start taking features OUT as time goes by, while others start giving their users new features to play with. Nice one!