VideogameVagabond.com

Can a 45-year-old man maintain a marriage and a videogame habit? Let's find out!

Tag Archives: Sony Bravia

Wondering why Sony has to be so difficult

Sony’s PlayStation3 is an advanced piece of hardware, no doubt about it, but sometimes they are too brainy for their own good. Take the HD/1080p thing as an example.

We recently bought a Sony Bravia 1080p HDTV to complement our PS3, as well as everything else we own on our entertainment stand. That includes an Xbox 360.

The Xbox 360 was easy to move to 1080p resolution; you just click it in a video preferences box and, if the source goes that high, so does the picture. Simple, right? Don’t even need an HDMI cable for it.

The PS3 wasn’t so easy. We bought an HDMI cable for it, but for some reason our 1080p games like Prince of Persia were displaying in 720p only. It’s like expecting to go to Valley Fair and all you get is a trip to a neighbor’s back yard swing sets.

So I read the Prince of Persia box. The text clarified the matter… kinda. “Full 1080p display,” the box read, “is possible only when your PS3 is connected with an HDMI cable to a display with HDCP.”

What?

Turns out HDCP is some copy-protection scheme for high-def. OK, whatever, but the Bravia should fit that bill, right? Certainly! It’s made by the PS3 makers, after all… Sony!

So I called Sony’s Bravia customer service. They blamed the PS3. I contacted Sony’s PS3 customer service. They tried to blame the Bravia and the HDMI cables. Finally they admitted they weren’t sure why it wasn’t working.

After many hours of email exchanges, a Sony rep’s misunderstanding of my problem gave me the clue to solving it. “Don’t turn off 720p,” he advised, and then went on to some useless blather.

Turn off 720p? I scoured my Cross Media Bar and found the display control for my HDMI cable. Sure enough, if I chose “Custom,” I was able to turn off 720p. I popped in Prince of Persia. Voila! 1080p Prince of Persia began to display flawlessly!

So, now, that’s my adventure in PS3′s maze of “high tech high def” adventures. Now I know that to get 1080p to display… using all Sony equipment, no less… all I need to do is turn off 720p as an option and all those games that are 1080p via HDMI with an HDCP monitor will indeed display in true 1080p glory on my Bravia.

Nice to know.

Of course, if I want to pop in a PS3 game that doesn’t support 1080p, I have to go back in and re-check 720p, or the game will only display 480p.

Yeesh. Ever heard of plug-n-play as a concept, Sony?

Clearly not.

Yet to enjoy full PS3 1080p

I thought for sure when I got my PS3, then recently acquired a 1080p Sony Bravia, that I’d finally enjoy some PS3 games in full 1080p. Not so fast, though.

Turns out, a lot of early PS3 games were made in 720p only. That’s sad enough, but when I finally popped in Prince of Persia, I was expecting 1080p greatness until it read “720p.” I was confused and then read the fine print on Prince of Persia’s cover.

Turns out, 1080p on Prince of Persia is only possible with an HDMI cable and a TV whose HDMI outputs support something called HDCP. What? Ripoff! My PS3 is a Sony product; my TV is a Sony product; and still no 1080p? Total ripoff. I’ve come away far more satisfied from experiences with online storage.

(Not that 720p isn’t pretty… but it’s not 1080p pretty.)

Finally have my new HDTV!

After two years of denying ourselves, my wife and I finally got ourselves what we’ve been wanting for a while as part of our videogame habit: a top-of-the-line Sony Bravia 32-inch 1080p HDTV with a 120MHz refresh rate. It has the Bravia 2 engine and, wow, the PS3 and Blu-Ray movies have never ever looked better.

Sure, some will say that 32-inches isn’t that big a set; but it’s the perfect size and at $772, it was definitely the right price! Everything looks better, the set works like a dream and it weighs about a third of the weight of my old Sony Wega 26-inch.

If someone offered me a handful of loose diamonds, I’m not sure which I’d rather have, I’m so happy with this set! While I’ll always have a soft spot for my decade-old Wega, we’ll be donating that to charity now; the age of HDTV has finally reached the Hansen household, and I think we bought exactly the right set for us, at exactly the right price and time.