Thursday, February 15, 2007

High-Def Gaming

My PS 3 component cable has arrived, and I spent last night playing around with high-def. While doing this I learned the following.

  1. My Dell 24" LCD doesn't support 1080P over component.
  2. High-Def Harry Potter trailers are cool.
  3. High-Def games look really nice.
  4. PS 2 games look really crappy in comparison.
I tested my one PS 3 game Resistance: The Fall of Man first. This game looks great in high-def. The graphics are crisp, with no noticeable slowdown. While playing online matches it's much easier to pick out your targets compared to on a normal SD TV. Only negatives is that I could actually notice some poor mipmapping on some chain bridges in one of the maps. The quality of the standard def TV makes this completely unnoticeable.

I also gave GTHD a spin. The cars and track all look great. They're all very crisp and the detail amazing. Especially as I fired up GT 4 right afterwards. Comparing GT4 to GTHD in HD makes GT 4 look like complete crap. Doesn't help that the 1080i output setting for GT4 seems busted. Setting it to 1080i makes some stuff look crisper but really does some weird stuff to the graphics. I'm not sure if this a PS 3 bug or just something with GT4. The 480p setting does look ok, but is super chunky and doesn't compare to GTHD. I'm not sure if I can stand the graphics of the game now that I've seen a high def version.

I'll post a few comparison pictures of the what the various games look like in high def later today.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

So, do you have any blu-ray movies yet?

Jon said...

No, blu-ray yet Craig. There aren't to many movies out on the format I don't have on DVD that I feel would be better in hi-def. Oddly enough I find more Universal Films like Serenity would be cool in hi-def but they only do HD-DVD.

That said, once Warner get's Batman Begins out on Blu-Ray that's a definite buy. Plus I might get The Prestige, and Casino Royal. Both would probably look pretty cool in hi-def.

Jon said...

I forgot the mention the primary reason I don't have any blu-ray is that I lack the proper home theater setup to really make it work.

Sitting in my computer chair or on my bed watching Hi-Def movies on a 24" LCD just doesn't cut it. Once I start making some money and can get myself a 60" HDTV then I'll look into replacing my DVDs and getting new videos.