PS3 CECHA/B PS3 black level issue on PS2 games

[Legetzu]

Hi,

I've found out that when playing PS2 games on my CECHA00 40nm Frankenstein that there's small issue with black levels, that in PS2 games i.e. boot animation and overscan corners you can see that it's little bit brighter than full black. It looks the same if I have full or limited HDMI range enabled from XMB and TV. PS3 games and XMB don't have this issue. I have Local dimming LCD TV and I'm able to see this, but you might not be able to see this if you have regular LCD screen which doesn't have backlight zones, especially IPS because of the backlight bleed. I would think that you might recognize it even more with OLED TV.

Recently I found out that PAL and NTSC-J image standards have different black levels than NTSC. PAL and NTSC-J black is 0 IRE and NTSC is 7.5 IRE. Using my modded PAL OG Xbox with NTSC-J looks much better than regular NTSC with component cable on European model TV, even when playing American NTSC games, as the video standard seems not to be tied to game region on OG Xbox. Of course if you have American model TV and you're using analog input, you should use the NTSC, as they have calibrated the TVs to use the 7.5 IRE from the factory.

That got me thinking if PS2_emu uses some kind of region free BIOS which black level calibration is NTSC (if the BIOS even controls that like it seems to do in OG Xbox), and it's converted wrong to HDMI digital picture, or does the PS2_emu use different BIOS for each region? As we know, with jailbroken BC PS3 you can play PAL (if upscaling is disabled), NTSC-J and NTSC games, so the PS2_emu has the capability to play every regions' games. I'm thinking if it is possible to modify or change the PS2_emu BIOS to use NTSC-J color standard and if that could maybe fix the black levels fully from the PS3, if the issue even comes from that?

This issue is quite minor, as the black levels are still quite OK, but still not 100%, and especially when the BC PS3 should be the ultimate way to play PS2 when you get digital picture with deinterlacing right out of the box.

 

[Legetzu]

Just to update, best workaround for this is just to adjust black level from the TV a bit, then you're able to get perfect blacks in PS2 games. On my Sony TV I had to only adjust it from 50 to 48. That adjustment shouldn't make much black crush on PS3 games overall, so it's not a big problem to just use that level on PS3 HDMI input.

 

[cha0shacker]

It's a known problem and sadly affects all the 3 emulators if you run PAL games with full rgb output enabled. Best i can recommend is switching the PS3 to limited output and setting the TV to expect limited input as well.

 

[Legetzu]

It's a known problem and sadly affects all the 3 emulators if you run PAL games with full rgb output enabled. Best i can recommend is switching the PS3 to limited output and setting the TV to expect limited input as well.

I get this issue with any region game, not only PAL. And if you set TV and PS3 RGB range to limited, the issue doesn't go away. And I know what issue you're talking about, but it's wholly different thing. The blacks are really dark gray, so in most monitors/TVs you can't even see this issue but I can assure you it's there. Maybe you can't even see it with OLED because of black crush, but I don't know...

 

[Legetzu]

Just tried taking a image from the issue what I mean. This image is from Vice City NTSC using Webman with PS2_emu and have tried NTSC-J and PAL versions and all look the same. I had to edit the image to make the difference more dramatic so you can see it from a photo. I'm running the game 4:3 and took the image from the left corner of the 4:3 image. The left side of the image is from the TV screen leftover because of 4:3 and the right side is the PS3 image. The overscan borders are always dark gray, they never go full black and it doesn't matter what's on the screen while playing PS2 game. HDMI range change doesn't make difference from settings, and I run matching HDMI range on my TV.

If PS2_emu doesn't do any color conversion from GS -> RSX, I think this issue is impossible to fix at software level. But if PS2_emu does in example do some YPBpR conversion to RGB, then maybe there's some way to fix this, as it seems like PS3 runs everything in RGB, exception being movies.

 

[Legetzu]

Here's a better image of this issue.

Edit: But on netemu it looks like this, which it should look like:

As you can see, the background isn't fully black and you can see what fully black looks on my TV on the corners as the PS2's picture is 4:3.
I would like to know if everyone has this black level thing with fully BC PS3s, or is something broken in my PS3?

PS3 - HELP: huge image quality discrepancy between netemu and native backwards compatibility in CEHCA01 | PSX-Place
I saw this thread where someone had issues with image on PS2 mode on Frankenstein PS3. My issue isn't any way that bad as in that thread, because otherwise my image looks pretty good, at least I've not recognized any issues other than black level.

 

[RIP-Felix]

Maybe you can't even see it with OLED because of black crush, but I don't know...

You can, I've noticed as well on my OLED. I've been meaning to hook up a real PS2 to my RetroTINK5x VIA component and compare it's black levels to the same ps3 outputting component 480i through the same setup. Set everything to limited for a fair comparison.

I agree that PS3 should theoretically be the ultimate digidtal to digital solution for ps2, vs say a RetroGEM PS2 HDMI mod, but you have to remember that SONY is a big manufaturer and those have really had a piss poor record of upscaling solutions over the years. Especially in that era. Given that they are not enthusiest focused, I'd say the PS3 is still a very good upscaled PS2. The most convenient one. HDMI out of the box, all in one unit, wirless controls. But I don't think anyone is debating you can get a better PS2 upscale from an OG PS2 with a dedicated digital to digital HDMI mod purpose built with enthusiest level upscaling in mind.

Still, I'd like to see the black level result for myself, if this really is the case. I'vr not booted up a real PS2 pretty much since switching to a BC PS3.

 

[Legetzu]

You can, I've noticed as well on my OLED. I've been meaning to hook up a real PS2 to my RetroTINK5x VIA component and compare it's black levels to the same ps3 outputting component 480i through the same setup. Set everything to limited for a fair comparison.

I agree that PS3 should theoretically be the ultimate digidtal to digital solution for ps2, vs say a RetroGEM PS2 HDMI mod, but you have to remember that SONY is a big manufaturer and those have really had a piss poor record of upscaling solutions over the years. Especially in that era. Given that they are not enthusiest focused, I'd say the PS3 is still a very good upscaled PS2. The most convenient one. HDMI out of the box, all in one unit, wirless controls. But I don't think anyone is debating you can get a better PS2 upscale from an OG PS2 with a dedicated digital to digital HDMI mod purpose built with enthusiest level upscaling in mind.

Still, I'd like to see the black level result for myself, if this really is the case. I'vr not booted up a real PS2 pretty much since switching to a BC PS3.

I'm quite sure that in a real PS2 the black levels are better as I've used other 6th gen consoles with component and the black levels have been great, especially when PS2 was used as a DVD player back in the day. Unfortunately I don't have a real PS2, so I can't test that. Only thing that's quite important on a real PS2 is that you use same region TV and console, as black levels are different in different regions. But in a case of Retrotink, you can adjust them I'm sure.

Here's a very old thread about PS3's black levels being wrong in PS2 mode, that seemed to happen after some update:

RGB Full and PS2 games... | AVS Forum

It would be nice to test old version of PS2_emu, but I was unable to get old version of PS2_emu working on a newer firmware. I tried decrypting and re-encrypting old PS2_emu elf file with newer key, but maybe I did something wrong or it just doesn't work on a newer firmware. Maybe someone who has more knowhow of getting older files running on newer firmware might be able to do this. With Frankie, I can't really try running really old firmware versions.