Wow... gamers are dumb.

Okay, and this is going to sound stupid to the tech guys, but I just haven't looked into television signals to this degree.

When the PS2 uses 240 line mode it is progressive, all the time? I guess I misread the way the 224-240 line resolutions in the Saturn and PS1 worked before. It has been a long time since I've looked for documentation on any 3D console though, so all of this is possibly out of date as well. All the same, these are all of the possible resolutions I was informed of for the Saturn and PS1.

Saturn:
Non-interlaced NTSC: 320X224, 320X240, 352X224, 352X240, 352X256, 640X224, 640X240, 640X256, 704X224, 704X240, 704X256

Interlaced: 320X448, 320X480, 352X448, 352X480, 640X448, 640X480, 704X448, 704X480

PS1:
non-interlaced 256X240, 320X240, 512X240, 640X240, 384X240

Interlaced 256X480, 320X480, 512X480 640X480 384X480

So, we are saying the odds are for the Playstation 2 games that don't support 480p are still progressive but are running in a 240 line mode?

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Originally Posted by OldSchool

It all boils down to Sony and Microsoft rushing their consoles with the wrong video cards. They should have waited another 6-12 months and put 88GTs in there and we wouldn't have ANY of this bullshit that we're seeing in todays "next generation" Consoles. But nooooooooooooo, they just had to have something out by Q4 of '06.... nothing would do them, so what did they do... they go with 7800 equivalents which was RETARDED because the 88GT was the first Video Card milestone in regard to amazing speed/reliability/and price.

Even knowing that ^, I still don't care... they shouldn't be trying to put games out on their aging hardware if they can't ensure 100% working V-Sync.

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The 360 came out in 2005, when the 8800GT didn't even exist. Still, you have to consider that these consoles were in the design stages a solid year or 2 before they were released. They just can't drop their design specs, everytime a new technology is released. The PS3 and 360 had processors that were more advanced than anything the PCs had, when those consoles were released.

The original Xbox had a revised version of the Geforce 3 on a $400 console. The Geforce 3 for the PC, at the time, was just as expensive as buying a Xbox, and the CPU was top of the line as well.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

It's not that they don't offer progressive, it's that they don't offer 480p. Most games are probably 240p by default. You can do 16:9 with 240p just as easy as with 480p.

It doesn't say what games are 480i... that would be interesting to know, but I can't see a game supporting 480i and NOT supporting 480p. So I assume that when they say they support 16:9 but NOT 480p, they mean the game is 16: and 240p instead.

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240 as in a resolution step below 480? Both of my SD tvs are in 480i natively as far as I can tell. I didn't know 240 was a supported resolution for anything PS1 and greater.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

The 360 came out in 2005, when the 8800GT didn't even exist. Still, you have to consider that these consoles were in the design stages a solid year or 2 before they were released. They just can't drop their design specs, everytime a new technology is released. The PS3 and 360 had processors that were more advanced than anything the PCs had, when those consoles were released.

The original Xbox had a revised version of the Geforce 3 on a $400 console. The Geforce 3 for the PC, at the time, was just as expensive as buying a Xbox, and the CPU was top of the line as well.

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Very interesting. I just read up on the 360... I had no idea it was released mid '05. :huh: Not sure why I thought both it and the P3 came about the same time. Well, I'll eat my humble pie on the time issue.


I guess the answer is for them to make a design that can be upgraded as they make newer versions of their proprietary pieces (CPUs, GPUs, Memory, etc)... that way they can stay current. If the prices were competitive... and they (S.&M.) ensured the games released on their systems met basic standards, I think everyone would be happy. :)


thks for the sobering post

Most PS1 games were 240p. In fact I'd say probably 98% of them were. Some PS2 games were 240p, most notably ICO. The PS2 supports 240p for most of the SEGA AGES compilations (user selectable). I don't think the 360 or PS3 even have the ability to do 240p (never tried ICO in a PS3 to find out). The Wii supports 240p for the Virtual Console. I can't stand playing 240p-native games in non-240p resolution. It just looks... wrong.

240p is similar in timing to 480i, but without the interlace and each field is really a distinct frame. All consoles are capable of outputting 240p, and virtually all consoles other than the PS3 and XBox 360 default to 240p as the main display mode. All older CRT TVs support 240 p just fine, but it's an issue with newer LCD TVs... some do, but many don't. A lot of HDTVs in particular assume that your only modes are 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. 240p gets processed as if it were 480i, making the display look "odd" for many games, and introducing a frame delay due to the processing to de-interlace the progressive display. There are threads here at SEGA-16 about this issue, with folks asking for recommendations on new LCD HDTVs that can properly show 240p displays from things like the Genesis and PS1 and GameCube and SNES, etc.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Okay, and this is going to sound stupid to the tech guys, but I just haven't looked into television signals to this degree.

When the PS2 uses 240 line mode it is progressive, all the time? I guess I misread the way the 224-240 line resolutions in the Saturn and PS1 worked before. It has been a long time since I've looked for documentation on any 3D console though, so all of this is possibly out of date as well. All the same, these are all of the possible resolutions I was informed of for the Saturn and PS1.

Saturn:
Non-interlaced NTSC: 320X224, 320X240, 352X224, 352X240, 352X256, 640X224, 640X240, 640X256, 704X224, 704X240, 704X256

Interlaced: 320X448, 320X480, 352X448, 352X480, 640X448, 640X480, 704X448, 704X480

PS1:
non-interlaced 256X240, 320X240, 512X240, 640X240, 384X240

Interlaced 256X480, 320X480, 512X480 640X480 384X480

So, we are saying the odds are for the Playstation 2 games that don't support 480p are still progressive but are running in a 240 line mode?

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Note 224, 240, and 256 lines are all the same screen resolution, but just clipped differently by the console/software to have more blank boarder: NTSC SDTVs are almost always calibrated to only show 224(or 448i) lines though technically should show 240/480 while PAL tends to show more ~270/540 though it should show 288/576, so you get a noticeable boarder even with 256p/512i. PAL and NTSC use the same vsync rates (or almost the same) but the Hsync is 60 and 50 Hz, thus for PAL you get fewer frames but more lines per frame so you can imagine what 256x192 SMS games look like ;). (that also means the aspect ratios are totally different and games not corrected for PAL will look squished, though in the case of the MD's 320 wide mode the pixels are about 10% off from square for both NTSC and PAL so as long as the game isn't optimized for either they'll be pretty close with NTSC having too tall pixels and PAL too wide but more skewed in PAL if optimzed for NTSC... 256 wide mode/SNES/NES/etc results in ~13% too wide pixels in NTSC and much too wide in PAL, but not as bad in PAL if optimized for NTSC -also intersting that the 320 wide modes on the Atari 8-bit, C64, Amiga, ST, and PCE are much too tall in NTSC but almost perfectly square in PAL)

The horizontal resolution of all analog CRT displays is fully variable with no hard limit at all (practical limits of beam precision, dot pitch, and video transmission method though), but at SDTV sync rates you could easily have 1280 pixels across, but vertical res is fixed. (horizontal res is controlled by the dot clock of the input signal which controls how fast the beam changes its color/intensity thus drawing more or fewer pixels for a given time)

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

Most PS1 games were 240p. In fact I'd say probably 98% of them were. Some PS2 games were 240p, most notably ICO. The PS2 supports 240p for most of the SEGA AGES compilations (user selectable). I don't think the 360 or PS3 even have the ability to do 240p (never tried ICO in a PS3 to find out). The Wii supports 240p for the Virtual Console. I can't stand playing 240p-native games in non-240p resolution. It just looks... wrong.

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Most N64 games are 240p too (a handful are 480i, more with the expansion pak), and some compilations support it too: Mega Man Collecion on the GC doesn't, but Mega Man X collection is pure 240p. (including the streaming video from MMX4/5)

Playing 240p games in 480p is OK, but it looks off in 480i with the visible combing particularly.

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Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

240p is similar in timing to 480i, but without the interlace and each field is really a distinct frame. All consoles are capable of outputting 240p, and virtually all consoles other than the PS3 and XBox 360 default to 240p as the main display mode. All older CRT TVs support 240 p just fine, but it's an issue with newer LCD TVs... some do, but many don't. A lot of HDTVs in particular assume that your only modes are 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. 240p gets processed as if it were 480i, making the display look "odd" for many games, and introducing a frame delay due to the processing to de-interlace the progressive display. There are threads here at SEGA-16 about this issue, with folks asking for recommendations on new LCD HDTVs that can properly show 240p displays from things like the Genesis and PS1 and GameCube and SNES, etc.

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240p basically stopped at the N64, a few PS2 games used it, but all Dreamcast, Xbox, and GC games were 480i or 480p native (Xbox sometimes went higher) with the exception of some retro compilations (often they were 480i though).

The DC and Xbox rendered everything in 480p internally and thus all games could be displayed in 480p with VGA/component, not all GC games rendered in 480p though.

I think the first console game to use interlacing may have been Sonic 2, though RPM Racing came out the same year. It wasn't commonplace until the 6th gen though.

you switched around H and V sync rates :P

PAL : 15.5KHz Hsync, 50Hz Vsync, ~313 lines per fleld which of ~288 are visible (one field has one line less than other)
NTSC : 15.7KHz Hsync, 59.96Hz Vsync, 262 lines which of 240 are visible

and there's plenty of DC games that are in 240p

My LCD SDTV shows about 216 lines, but my Spectre LCD monitor (which also has an NTSC composite input) shows all 240-ish lines. OLD TVs were really bad about overscan; I've got an old 11" Color Sony that shows maybe 194 lines, and clips the sides several pixels as well (showing maybe 290 of 320 pixels).

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Originally Posted by OldSchool

I guess the answer is for them to make a design that can be upgraded as they make newer versions of their proprietary pieces (CPUs, GPUs, Memory, etc)... that way they can stay current. If the prices were competitive... and they (S.&M.) ensured the games released on their systems met basic standards, I think everyone would be happy. :)


thks for the sobering post

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It sounds like a great idea, but it doesn't work so well for console gaming. Think of the 32X as a hardware upgrade for the Genesis; it didn't go over so well, and the software made to take advantage of it didn't do publishers any favors.

Then you had RAM carts for the Saturn and N64. The only games on the Saturn that took advantage of the RAM cart were Capcom and SNK fighters. The N64 RAM Pack only had a small handfull of games that used it as well.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Most N64 games are 240p too

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That's right! I try not to think about the N64 too much.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

The DC and Xbox rendered everything in 480p internally and thus all games could be displayed in 480p with VGA/component

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Actually a few of the Capcom and a couple other fighting games were output in 240p on the Dreamcast. I don't recall ever seeing the Xbox run in 240p.

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Originally Posted by TmEE

and there's plenty of DC games that are in 240p

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Can they all output scaled in VGA mode?

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It sounds like a great idea, but it doesn't work so well for console gaming. Think of the 32X as a hardware upgrade for the Genesis; it didn't go over so well, and the software made to take advantage of it didn't do publishers any favors.

Then you had RAM carts for the Saturn and N64. The only games on the Saturn that took advantage of the RAM cart were Capcom and SNK fighters. The N64 RAM Pack only had a small handfull of games that used it as well.

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It really depends on the timing and the context and none of those examples disprove add-ons being a good idea, just that managing them successfully can be a sensitive matter.

Do you think if the PSX introduced a RAM expansion (or even an affordable RAM+coprosessor expansion) ~1998 that it might have been a good deal more popular than most/all other add-ons at the time sheerly due to Sony's market position?
The Saturn was too weak to take advantage of that and even in Japan it was pretty short lived after the RAM carts came out. (especially the 4 Meg one) And also note that the Saturn's RAM expansion is far weaker than the N64 as it's stuck with a slow speed 16-bit width bus (so significantly lower than even the slow DRAM bank in main RAM) while the N64 directly expands its 500 MHz RDRAM and due to the unified system memory, the full 8 MB is shared while the Saturn RAM is only good for main memory and audilliary storage. (the VDPs may be able to directly pull graphics from main, I'm not sure: there's DMA but that may be limited to fast loading into V-RAM like the MD and PSX)

And N64's DD was a joke, why they didn't push for a CD add-on (even using the semi-proprietary format developed with Phillips with the chipped CD caddies -or pushing beyond that for a better security system -probably not as tight as what the GC does) I'm not sure, but that stupid Zip disk knock-off was more expensive to build and far more limited than CD-ROM and too late in any case. (hell, if release date was a major factor in CD for the N64 -especially developing a secure format to Nintendo's liking) they could still have promoted it as a planned add-on from the start and that might have been enough to keep Square even (not that they knew Square would jump like that)... by 1998 such a bare bones CD add-on should have been below $100 (depending on how tight Nintendo cut profit margins) and the duo version should have been $50 more than the base N64 and less later on. (assuming they didn't discontinue the cart-only version altogether)


The problems with add-ons are marketing, timing, price point, and actual utility provided by hardware and the software made to use it. (the latter is directly tied to 1st party development as well as tactics to push 3rd parties to start making use of it -albeit if an add-on immediately expands something that had previously been a major limitation, that's great incentive right there)
It also depends on how well you system is designed for expansion: Sega hit some bottlenecks with the MCD, though even there many could have been solved by using the cart slot instead.

The PC Engine is probably the best example of a highly flexible expansion system provided by Hudson with the excellent expansion port: the trouble is that NEC totally squandered it... the PCE CD barely made use of anything on the expansion port and to make things worse, the Super Grafx was made stanalone!!! when it easily could have been an add-on (preferably in a CD base tray/dock form factor to act as a drop-in replacement for existing CD users). And they screwed up again by not even integrating the SGX hardware with the duo.

The MCD was too expensive for the US market initially and the 1st party software support was not huge either, a lot of other factors there too.



An ideal platform for expansion is one that's specifically designed with that in mind and thus going a bit light on resources in some areas to save on cost (especially areas that are costly at launch but are expected to drop quickly) and have the expansion interfaces comprehensive to provide high flexibility. Using unified memory helps that too (initial cost savings plus no trade-off for deciding to use multiple buses or keep cost down and only have the main bus on the expansion port -of course the NES put both the main and video bus right on the cart slot at the expense of significant increase in pin count -many arcade boards like the Neo Geo did the same)
The PC engine is one of the best cases for that, historically speaking.

And then there's actual computers which ended up more or less as game consoles predominantly. (in cases like the C64, RAM expansion wasn't an option -but peripherals were standard fare of course -the disk drive was rare in Europe though -with the spectrum you needed an add-on to even use joysticks before the 128k and anyone using 16ks would need to upgrade to 48k early on -something important with all mass storage platforms as unlike carts the memory doesn't increase as the console ages -something that would have made RAM expansion on the PSX a good deal more useful than the N64 unless the N64 had gotten a CD add-on)

And of course, many systems managed add-ons very successfully in a hidden manner: especially the NES and SNES, more so in Japan with the numerous mappers and sound expansion and the array of coprocessors on the SNES. (granted the Genesis had provisions for such as well, including stereo audio input on the cart slot)

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It sounds like a great idea, but it doesn't work so well for console gaming. Think of the 32X as a hardware upgrade for the Genesis; it didn't go over so well, and the software made to take advantage of it didn't do publishers any favors.

Then you had RAM carts for the Saturn and N64. The only games on the Saturn that took advantage of the RAM cart were Capcom and SNK fighters. The N64 RAM Pack only had a small handfull of games that used it as well.

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I hear you when you mention the failed 32x. I'm not imagining an 'upgrade' to be carried out like that.

Imagine that you buy your console... say for $300... and 2-4 years later, M. or S. come out with an upgrade to their Video Card. Well, imagine they designed their box so that all they have to do is pull out one component inside the box, and swap it out with another.

So, a couple years later, you could send them your Console, and they'd swap out the old V. Card for the new one... say for a nominal fee. $100 including s/h every 2-3 years I think would be a very wise investment for M. and S. in the long run because it would allow them to stay competitive with the PC for much longer than the Console would originally without the capability to be upgraded. Maybe more like $150.

I think it'd be worth it. Imagine if the P3 and 360 could get 88GTs (something equivilent) installed. We'd have HUGE gains in FPS, the ability to force V-Sync on every game for both systems... and most likely AA on just about every game.


What S. & M. have managed to do is make proprietary PCs that can't be upgraded. That's ass backwards thinking. They need to wake up and start making something that can be upgraded in the future.



anyhoot, just thinking out loud here

The 32X was expensive, required extra cables and power.

The N64 expansion pak was only $49.99 and it even came with the DK64 N64 package. There's ~60 N64 games that take advantage of the Expansion pak and also a handfull of games that require it like Majoras Mask and DK64.

Changing out the GPU on a console would require removing the HSF and TIM and it would be to complex to expect end users to do. They could destroy the console if they didn't know what they were doing. But a RAM upgrade option could have been worked in to the current gen consoles fairly easily I would imagine.

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Originally Posted by MN12BIRD

The 32X was expensive, required extra cables and power.

The N64 expansion pak was only $49.99 and it even came with the DK64 N64 package. There's ~60 N64 games that take advantage of the Expansion pak and also a handfull of games that require it like Majoras Mask and DK64.

Changing out the GPU on a console would require removing the HSF and TIM and it would be to complex to expect end users to do. They could destroy the console if they didn't know what they were doing. But a RAM upgrade option could have been worked in to the current gen consoles fairly easily I would imagine.

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I didn't say anything about having the users do the upgrade themselves. The user would send their console off to M. or S. and they would take care of the upgrade.

If S. & M. could plan their Consoles around upgrading the Video Card at some point in the future, then they'd simply have to make their Motherboards with this in mind.


This is NOT an impossibility.