What are the best display settings for a PS3?

May 31, 2008 11:31 PM

What are the best display settings for a Playstation 3 to ensure I get the best possible picture quality when watching Bluray discs and standard DVDs?

I just bought a Playstation 3. I bought it pretty much for the sole purpose of playing Bluray discs and upscaling my existing DVD collection.; games are pretty much an added bonus here, as far as I'm concerned.

So with that in mind, what are the optimum settings for a PS3 in the display settings section of the PS3's setup menu, especially where upscaling is concerned? I'm running it through an HDMI cable and my TV is a Sony Bravia 40" LCD TV. Assume I'm not an AV guru when telling me. I've also updated the system software, so you know.

Thanks in advance!

posted by Effigy2000 to technology (6 comments total)

Just select HDMI as your PS3's video output. There's not much more you can do than that.

Most of the display settings that are going to affect the quality of the picture are in the TV's display settings -- brightness, contrast, color levels, etc. Take a look at your TV manual for these settings, and also you might want to get one of those calibrating DVDs. (or many DVDs/Blurays these days come with a set of calibration slides with instructions; check your menus).

I assume your TV is 1080p?
Quick tip for games: Go into Display Settings in the PS3 and only leave 480i and 1080p selected as available video modes. This will force upscaling of 720p/1080i.
posted by jozxyqk at 4:54 AM on June 1, 2008

FWIW, I just got a PS3 and use an HDMI cable to and from my surround sound receiver. Everything worked fine for Blu-Rays (and games), but when I went to play regular DVDs the sound would cut in and out. I ended up having to use an optical cable for the sound for that. I'm told some PS3s randomly have this issue. Everything works fine for me now.
posted by Nabubrush at 7:59 AM on June 1, 2008

I assume you mean whether you want upscaling to be normal/full/double, and whether you want the video format to be auto/rgb/ycbcr, and whether you want the blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white enabled, and the deinterlacer settings, and so on.

AFAIK, optimal settings for this crap depend on your tv, and also on your preferences. Take the model number of your tv and search on avsforum for "modelnumber ps3 settings".
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:17 AM on June 1, 2008

"I assume you mean whether you want upscaling to be normal/full/double, and whether you want the video format to be auto/rgb/ycbcr, and whether you want the blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white enabled, and the deinterlacer settings, and so on."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:17 AM on June 2

Yes.

"AFAIK, optimal settings for this crap depend on your tv, and also on your preferences."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:17 AM on June 2

My Sony Bravia has already been maxed to the best settings as per the advice given in this question I asked about a year ago.

"Take the model number of your tv and search on avsforum for "modelnumber ps3 settings"".
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:17 AM on June 2

Thanks. This helped a bit, but not a lot. I found one or two useful bits of info but since the threads there run pretty deep I think finding exactly what I need will require a bit of trawling.

Anyone have a link to exactly how I need to tweak the PS3's settings?
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:36 PM on June 1, 2008

My Sony Bravia has already been maxed to the best settings as per the advice given in this question I asked about a year ago.

Right, but whether you want to the PS3 to send SuperBlack and SuperWhite, or whatever they call them, will depend in large part on what your TV does when it sees those codes for pixels. Some tvs expect only consumer-electronics levels, others can deal with the full 0-255 range.

Likewise, the deinterlacing setting you want will depend on whether the tv's deinterlacer is better than the PS3's or t'other way.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:29 PM on June 2, 2008

I'm going to give the best answer in this thread to myself; for this comment.

The best display setting video guide for PS3 I've found is here, at IGN.

I won't actually mark it as a best answer (that would be wrong), but it IS the best answer. Hope that helps anyone else who was wondering the same thing and stumbled across this question while doing their research.
posted by Effigy2000 at 11:48 PM on December 12, 2008