So I did a ton of research today, mainly on AVS Forum, since I’m getting a new 1080p display. I found out a LOT of interesting information about the PS3 and video scaling. It was found and confirmed by many members of their forums that the PS3 in fact DOES NOT have hardware scaling capabilities. Sony will have to harness the power of the Cell and do all scaling in software for video. Because of this, there’s likely no chance of game scaling, due to the Cell and RSX being used extensively to render the games. It will be up to the developers to support 720p, 1080i, and (if they can) 1080p for all games. Sony should make this a requirement.

On the BluRay movie front, it was confirmed by a few users with Japanese PS3’s that v1.0 firmware DID in fact play BluRay perfectly at 720p. However, in v1.1 and v1.11 on Japanese consoles, and all firmware on US consoles, this was removed. Users are speculating Sony did this intentionally to prevent pirating 720p copies of BluRay films. I guess that makes sense, since there are PC capture cards that accept 720p inputs. But why disable that over HDMI? The HDCP protection scheme would prevent that from occurring.

I will provide more updates in a few weeks when my 1080p set arrives, and I can fully compare the PS3’s BluRay with the Xbox 360’s HD-DVD at 1080p. From what I have read on many many forums and video review sites, the PS3’s BluRay player is on par if not better than any standalone player on the market, and the 360’s HD-DVD drive has video output on par with the top standalone players of that format as well. The downfall of the 360, for a small portion of the market currently, is the fact it cannot output an HD audio signal without HDMI. I don’t have a receiver with HDMI inputs anyway, so that won’t affect me for a couple years.