I'm just curious about this. I recently finally got an HDTV, and pretty soon after hooked up my PS2 only to discover how crummy (flat, soft, washed out) most of my PS2 and all of my PS1 games look blown up via component connections.

So I was wondering, if and when I get a PS3, will these games look reasonably good to much better via HDMI on my large screen? Or is the lack of definition inherent to the games themselves? I'm particularly concerned about PS1 games, as I have several of these that I like playing better than any later generation games, and would like them to at least look bright and well-defined on the large display, even if the inherent graphic shortcomings of these older games will always be readily apparent.

It'll still look crappy.

I heard Pac-Man looks unbelievable with a PS3.

But seriously, no. No upconversion for PS2/PS1 games.

Enter this combo as the PS3 boots up while a PS1/PS2 game is in the console:

up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, X, circle

With that combo, the PS3 will unleash its massive power and fill in all the missing definition and replace low-poly models with high-poly models that the developers of these old games forgot to put in. Doing this will make the PS1 Resident Evil look even better than the Gamecube remake.

AND it will have Resident Evil 4 over the shoulder controls.

Actually I read that trick only works if you pound on your PS3 repeatedly with a hammer or heavy rock first.

Well, thanks for the info. Early reports that I had heard on the PS3 were that it would upconvert PS/PS2 games at least to 720 progressive via emulation. I had not really investigated the status of that since the release, except for hearing internet rumors that Sony might release a firmware update that could possibly do so. I understand that the bc for PS3 is based on a PS2 chipset rather than emulation, so perhaps Sony never intended it to do so (which is disappointing).

Of course I don't expect these older gen games to have HD/native PS3 level resolution. But I was hoping for something akin to what the Microsoft did for first gen Xbox games on the 360.
And I assume from your reply that you don't even know what upconversion is...

Yup, current PS3's, at least here in the US have a PS2 chip inside for emulation. There was a big stink a month back about the European launch and their backwards compatibility done all in software. It lowered the compatibility rate, but the belief that it could actually upconvert was brought up.

Of course I know what upconversion is. It is taking 480i/p material and converting it to 720p or higher. This does not magically make the graphics better as your original post implied. You still have the same low-poly models and lack of overall detail. You just have it at a higher resolution which really only makes it look less jaggy and nothing more.

The current model has the PS2 chipset in it. The European model that just launched had the PS2 chip removed and does it all by software emulation. This is a cost-cutting measure, and most likely sometime in the near future ALL PS3 models will use software emulation.

I wonder if this will raise the value of the current PS3 model since it will become rare and not have the emulation problems of the new model. Maybe it will sell for a premium price on ebay again...

If the software emulation could re-render the graphics of PS1 and PS2 games in 1080p (no reason why this couldn't be done considering the power of the PS3 processor), then people will be selling their first gen PS3s to upgrade to the newer ones.

Yes, but the software emulation also has a big problem. Not every game will be backward compatible. Look at the 360. As long as it has been out, there are still quite a few Xbox games that are not backward compatible on it. Honestly, I would rather have 100% BC than have limited BC with upconversion.

I thought I remembered a Youtube video in a thread similar to this that showed Final Fantasy on a split screen with the PS2 and the PS3 and it looked much worse.


Ah, here it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoCD9TwLrVs

It does say that the issue was "somewhat resolved" with firmware upgrade 1.5, but that PS1 games still looked like crap.