Ok, I hope some people here might know something about this.. I have the PS3, love it, yadda yadda yadda. One of my primary rationalizations for buying it was that it also happens to be the best bang for the buck as a Blu-Ray player, above and beyond everything else. And one of the nicest features is the upscaling it brings to standard DVDs. Now I am not some kind of crazy movie buyer, but I have wound up with a lot more movies than is practical to keep in their boxes on a shelf, or in one of those large portfolio-things (currently have a couple of those full with discs still lying around all over the place too). So it occurs to me, especially with the ability to replace the hard disk inside it with a bigger one, and also the ability to use an external hard drive storage unit, that I may as well begin the slow, torturous process of converting my DVDs into .avi's or somesuch, and just store them on the hard drive, and just watch them that way. I am figuring maybe starting up with a 500gb external drive, and then just go from there. Now I know I can create .avi's with the same exact resolution as the original DVD's, but the question I have is this: Will the PS3 do the same upscaling process using such a stored movie file as it does when viewing the actual DVD in the drive? Is there any reason why this wouldn't work the way I am hoping? I just figured I ought to find out for sure about this for sure before I actually jump in and start doing it.. Thanks guys
Does the PS3 have a DVD upconverter feature? When I put my regular DVDs in there, they are not in HD/16:9 ratio. Is there something I have to do to turn this on?
PS3 is one of the best upscaling DVD players out there there's an option in one of the menus, don't have it in front of me right now though
mlwoo, What does the manual say? Have you read it? http://www.us.playstation.com/Support/PS3/Manuals Look at Page 21 of the MANUAL, and page 6 of the QUICK REFERENCE manual. It might have to do with your TV, though.
I don't know. I didn't read it. I have only used it once and it was to watch a home video, so it didn't matter. Thanks for the link. What would we ever do without Swoly DEEZ NUTZ?
Awwww... geez, man... don't mention it. It's MAY, be kind to animals month. I thought I'd help you out.
I'm pretty sure it upscales everything as well. My concern is whether the upscaling is as good as the DVD upscaling. When the PS3 is playing a movie via the HDD, it seems to be in a different "mode" than when it is playing a video via a DVD (DVD playback kicks you off the network IIRC, limits XMB access, stops downloads, etc.). This may not affect upscaling, but it does make me wonder. The best way to find out is probably to test it yourself. I guess if the upscaling is different, you could at least tell whether the quality is still good enough not to bother you. I thought he was just asking if the PS3 could upscale DVDs, not whether it could output in HD resolution. Considering that DVD upscaling wasn't available at launch, not all manuals have instructions on how to enable it (mine doesn't AFAIK).
Well, I'll try it with some different quality settings for a few movies and go from there. I made a mistake earlier and used 'The Crow', which is a dark and colorless movie under the best of circumstances. I'll try Return of the King or Sith or Narnia or something like that with more color and brightness to allow for a better judgment. I can say, however, that the .avi of The Crow seemed darker than normal, so I'll have to fiddle with settings as well I imagine. I'll try to post results if I am able to determine any. I would imagine that this may be something other people are going to want to start doing pretty soon.
