PSP-3000 Problems

[ooPo]

I'm sure you've seen the various articles talking about how the new PSP screen has issues. Does anyone here have one? There's a lot of noisy fanboy-style bashing going on and its hard to tell what's really the problem.

My guesses:

1) The new screen has a low enough response rate that the tricks games use to get better performance (half-sized buffers, etc) are easily seen now. This is probably at least part of it.

2) The new interlaced mode for PSX games with the TV-out cable, is there a setting that some people have accidentally turned on making the PSP think its hooked up to a TV? Is it a firmware bug that leaves this on all the time?

3) Sony is now using a seriously VERY cheap LCD screen, like the one in the GP2X?

4) Are they playing with power consumption and decided to feed the screen just barely enough power to keep it on, causing brown-out style problems when there's a lot of changes onscreen? Power consumption seemed to be something they 'fixed' shortly before release...

I'm trying to avoid buying one but I have to say I'm very curious about what's going on here.

[Torch]

I saw a 3000 first hand and I'm disappointed with the crappiness of the screen.

Point (1) is a possibility but then you'd think the XMB Video player would have been recoded to compensate for it and not show interlacing. And most 'tricks' revolve around the refresh rate and not the response time.

Point (2) seems the most probable although I figure they might have fixed it by now.

Point (3) I doubt considering its the main selling point of the 3000. Its probably some other fuck up.

[Shapyi]

It probably has to do with the sub-pixel structure of the new LCD screen seen here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... pixels.png

If I were to guess, I would think that the new screen was designed this way to give the illusion they fixed the ghosting issues. Instead of getting rid of the "blur" from ghosting, dark colors and quick shifts in color are creating an "interlace" effect.

[ooPo]

Mmmmm, subpixels.

Knowing Sony, they didn't do anything other than use a screen that could be obtained for a low price.

So basically its looking like a faster response rate and a change in subpixel orientation? I suppose that could possibly explain why people are complaining that some games look 'blockier'. Can you even render to a subpixel (using hardware) on the psp?

[J.F.]

Can you even render to a subpixel (using hardware) on the psp?

Sure - just change one color instead of all three. :)

[Torch]

Can you even render to a subpixel (using hardware) on the psp?

Sure - just change one color instead of all three. :)

If the screen is 'smart' the controller will automatically convert the input RGB to an appropriate RGB value for the screen's subpixels based on the LCD characteristics. In that case, simply putting G&B=0 and R=255 won't only activate the R subpixel alone, there might be some amount of G & B.

[J.F.]

Can you even render to a subpixel (using hardware) on the psp?

Sure - just change one color instead of all three. :)

If the screen is 'smart' the controller will automatically convert the input RGB to an appropriate RGB value for the screen's subpixels based on the LCD characteristics. In that case, simply putting G&B=0 and R=255 won't only activate the R subpixel alone, there might be some amount of G & B.

Yeah, especially on older panels like the 18 bit ones. Don't know how the PSP panel rates in that manner. It is supposed to have a wider color range, so it's probably less likely to do that (unless you select the "old" color range in the settings).