Any TV can only display resolution up to what the output device is capable of generating. That’s why regular DVDs look horrible on a HDTV because a regular DVD player ’s highest resolution is 480i, same as SD programming via Cable looking bad compared to HD broadcast via Direct TV/satelite dish. Upconverting is a cheap solution that gives you near-HD instead of the expensive true 1080p Blu-ray or HD DVD. But in order to get that, you still need 3 things, a upconvert DVD player (or PS3), component/HDMI cable, and a HDTV, not just the TV itself. The TV can’t magically make stuff from an old system look good. When you’re playing games on PS2 or the Wii, it’s indeed only stretching the a 720×480 image to fill the screen.

Wrong, every HDTV does upscaling, ones better than others but still, just the act of scretching while filtering it to fullscreen is upscaling, otherwise you’d have 640×480 content only using that out of your 1920×1080p TV; so really, PS3 does nothing that a HDTV shouldn’t do; it’s working with the same framebuffer image even. And deinterlacing is also done by lots of TV’s.

What we have is HDTV’s cutting on those chips. Like I said, it’s a nice addiction for PS3, but if I have a real “top” HDTV with top upscaling (and I’m not saying Sony Bravia as they use Samsung technology)… it’s pretty much useless.

Also… PS2 can do 480p (and output DVD’s at that), not often used, but still. There’s even rare games supporting 720p (path of Neo and some Hulk game) and 1080i (GT4).

I got the 46″ Samsung , there are basically two types for this size, 4661 & 4665, mine’s the former w/ the matte screen like a LCD monitor that prevents glare, the latter is slightly more expensive and supposedly gives a better picture but has a shiny surface, it’s like a mirror reflecting yourself next to the windows, so not practical unless in a dark room. I think they’re coming out w/ a new model soon, you should go check out the actual TVs from stores like Best Buy, but getting it on Amazon is much cheaper, plus w/o a hefty tax. I got mine for $1,950 w/ no shipping (in Best Buy it’s like $2,300 w/ tax).

I’ve been waiting for price to go down and saving money for a while and finally got the Samsung after reading reviews on all kinds of models. The “clouding” problem is the grey areas on part of the screen that wouldn’t go away, a complaint from many Sony owners, so I didn’t want to take that chance since I’m putting down so much money, plus I want to get something else other than Sony since I alrdy had one.

The good thing is it has 2 component and 3 HDMIs, most other TVs only have two and it’s not enough, you’ll definitely need all the them sooner or later. All the HD stuffs run on 360 and PS3 look real sweet on it. I had my eyes on the 40″ originally, but read that it’s good for up to 9 feet viewing distance, and my living room is ~12 ft, so I plunged down an extra $400-500 so I wouldn’t regret it being small in the next couple of years. And boy, am I satisfied w/ my TV now :)

I wasn’t too up-to-date w/ this stuff either but read up a lot on the net on AV forums or actual owners’ review, it’s extremely helpful, good luck TV hunting.

What Samsung TV do you have? I’m looking to purchase a TV in the coming months. How do your ps3 games look on it? And what’s the clouding issue?

Mine’s the latest Samsung 46″ model (w/ matte screen) at the time I bought it, I’ve done two months of research prior to getting my TV, Samsung and Sony are indeed the best out there right now, and Samsung might even be superior because of the clouding issue that Sony refused to admit. My budget was originally $1,500 for a 40″, but then I thought it’s not big enough for my living room and I started looking at 46″ in the range of $2,000. I could’ve gotten the XBR from Sony, but I didn’t like the glass panel because it feels fragile, plus Sony has only 2 HDMI inputs compared to 3 from Samsung, and I love it’s sleek black design. My previous TV was a 23″ Sony Wega HD LCD (1080i), and I find it too small to play the next gen games, running out of iputs too since it just has one component.

What I’m saying is you’re getting a bang for your buck w/ a PS3, w/ built-in Blu-ray, wi-fi, wireless controller, backward compatibility/upscaling, a more than spacious 60 Gb hard drive to d/l multimedia, free onine service, etc, and w/ the recent $100 price drop plus five free movies, what more could you ask for. The 360 Core might be cheaper, but after you buy everything separately, it comes out to be even more than a PS3, the 360 wireless adapter is $100 right there (got it for 50 on sale), 20Gb HD another $100 (120 gb almost $200), not to mention 360 cannot play DVD movies w/o a separate HD DVD player add-on which is almost $200.

At the end of the day, I think all the 3 systems are worth what they are now, the Wii cost $300 because it’s technically the most inferior among the bunch.

All HDTV’s must have upscale, but good ones must have good upscale; there’s a difference though, upscaling chips is one of the first things they cut in a cheaper TV.

So yeah, they should upscale PS2 games, just like PS3 does, the point is… a lot of them do the upscale badly and it ends up looking worse, but… good upscale is no different than PS3 upscale (even if PS3 does the de-interlacing and all) but… they’re both working out of the original image, and enhancing it from that; meaning a external equipment can do the same job as well.

I don’t know the model of your TV, but I know that Samsung is not even close to be the best TV manufacters in the market, they’re the best when it comes to price/quality, and they’re TV’s are not bad… but there’s a a load better out there, hence why I’d never buy a Samsung. (and the price of those TV’s is the reason I don’t have a HDTV)

As for Wi-Fi… if they had to sacrifice anything more… that would be best compared to Backwards compatibility; sure wireless is cool and all, but… X360 doesn’t have it either. Taking Backwards Compatibility is too soon, the console still doesn’t have games to fill that gap.

Mine’s a Samsung LNT4661, just got it 2 months ago and it’s pretty much one of the best out there along w/ Sony (most expensive piece of electronic I’ve plunged down money for so far, got a good deal from Amazon too). I haven’t played too much PS2 games on it though as all the inputs are full, 2 components for Wii and 360, the 3 HDMI are taken by upconvert DVD, PS3, and Direct TV. Most of the PS2 games that I haven’t finished are imports, that’s why I hate the fact it’s not region free for the old games, and I need to have my PS2 hooked up to a small TV now.

I don’t get why Sony’s putting out this 40Gb now, before they discontinued 20 Gb because a small hard drive is just not practical. Backward compatibility is important too since you don’t want to have a PS2 hooked up once you got PS3. I would say Wi-Fi is pretty important if your system is really far from your router. I tried running a ethernet cable once and the d/l speed goes down dramatically for some reason. I know lots of people are wary of the high price tag, but I would never forgo those features just to save a little money.. It’s like you’re getting a stick shift intead of automatic for a car, or manual instead of power windows, both of which are almost mandatory.

Kinda, they recently removed the Emotion Engine from it and put the cell CPU emulating it… but now they took the Graphics Synthetizer, the GPU.

Seems like a desperate way to respond since this is technically the second Sony attempt this year to put PS3 on the right track (first the “60 GB sellout/pricedrop” and the bundles in Europe and now another pricedrop) I also feel they could benefit more from dropping the price next month, not in october as the effect might fade away before christmas.

That said it’s still too expensive; and I can’t understand why taking the Backwards compatibility, taking out Wi-Fi would be wiser for example; GS-GPU costs at most $20 I’d say.

“PS2 games look horrible w/o upscaling.”

That’s a misconception, if you buy a good TV, with good upscaling the effect will be equal to what PS3 does since upscale won’t gain any quality, it’s just that, good upscale won’t loose quality. PS3 is not rendering the game in HD internally, it’s just upscaling it like a TV would.

It’s still a good bonus what PS3 does make, but still, it’s the TV fault if the quality without it is bad.