I’ve spent the last few days gettinbg used to the US PS3 app 2.4.19 and have now started to notice a few little things that could make the overall experience better.
IMO, the most major issue is that full hd content does not appear to be displaying correctly, I noticed that some of my hd content was not as sharp as it should be, I think the problem is that Plex is using too high a pixel ratio resulting in the output being slightly smaller than the original size. I tested this with a test clip set up on my server, making sure everything was set to direct play with no transcoding happening to skew the results. I used this clip https://www.dropbox.com/s/ugley7gdagxoe7k/5-Sharpness%20%26%20Overscan.mp4?dl=0 and sure enough there was some tell tale phasing in the panels above and below the AVS HD 709 checkers.
I also tried some test card images, which also displayed significant phasing in the 1080 lines boxes, viewing these images in Plex looked as if they were being upscaled from 720. the images used are linked below.
You can use these files to test this for yourself, if you stick the files on a USB stick and connect that to the playstation you can do a direct comparison between native PS3 and Plex. It is important to make sure that your tv is set to display the full image with no overscan, sometimes there will be a setting on your tv called Just Scan or something similar, otherwise the test cards might not display correctly even natively.
Due to the lack of any overscan settings in the PS3 app this is unfixable on an end user level, is it possible to include the possibility of displaying the full resolution in a future update?
Streaming via dlna works correctly with a 1:1 pixel ratio, is there a reason the plex app can’t display properly?
Hi Stewie, you’re running the US PS3 app right?
Those are really nice test assets. I’ve saved them. Thanks for sharing!
So, you’re absolutely right, those cards go through some funny scaling. First the 1920x1080 image is scaled down to a 1280x720 layout space then the entire layout is scaled up to 1920x1080. The PS3 is locked to a 720p layout.
The video is rendered separately of the application. The layout container holding display the video is in a 1280x720 layout but, my understanding is, that the platform does some magic to avoid scaling the video into the layouts coordinate space.
The video spec we work from states that we should be able to set the window to its maximum dimensions, 1280x720 in this case, then the video playback components fit the video within this space while maintaining the aspect ratio. Theoretically this would allow your Sharpness & Overscan clip to render 1:1 on a 1080p display.
I’ll keep your assets in my test library and use them when getting our next PSN update tested together. I’m not sure about the possibility of getting video closer to 1:1 but I appreciate your test assets to look into it.
Hey Matt,
Yes I am using the US PS3 app, I have abandoned the EU app until it gets it’s output issues fixed.
If the PS3 app is locked to a 720p layout (which seems crazy given the PS3’s abilities) then those test assets will never display correctly until the app gets upgraded to output 1080. Has Sony forced this inferior player on you for a reason? Is this likely to change in the future?
Seeing as DLNA seems to display 1080 with no issues I’ve been wondering if it would be better to have the PS3 app functioning as a fancy front end for the DLNA. Combining the playback ability of the DLNA service with the elegance of the Plex interface seems like it would be a winning combination.
Feel free to use those test assets as you please, glad they are useful to you, I’ve got loads more but those are some of the best ones I have for resolution testing.
