Edit:
Cliffs.
**Many Samsung LCD televisions default to “16:9” as their output mode, which displays 1080p and 720p games from the Playstation 3 (and possibly the 360) incorrectly, resulting in a cropped image that is missing a couple inches of visible screen real-estate around the ENTIRE perimeter of the game screen. You can confirm your current output mode on Samsung televisions by pressing the ‘P.MODE’ button on your remote. It will display your screen’s current output mode.
Solution? If you own a Samsung LCD television, PRESS YOUR P.MODE BUTTON UNTIL YOU GET THE “JUST SCAN” MODE! This will facilitate the correct resolution and aspect ratio for SFIV and if you’ve defaulted to 16:9 output, it will address this problem and gain you some additional viewable real estate in various games - INCLUDING Street Fighter IV where this problem is quite apparent.**
Edit II - additional summary details from ParryAll:
**Alot of HDTV’s, especially the lower end models and off brands, they do not have support for Pixel-for-Pixel mapping. On Samsung this is called “Just Scan” setting, for Sony it is just the “Normal” setting.
For example, if you have a non-XBR Bravia, through component your TV defaults to “Full” (Read: overscanned image) and cannot be changed to “normal”.
So you have two solutions. First, if you hook through HDMI you will now have the option for “Optimal Resolution” in the 360’s settings page. However, for my Bravia, this created a huge problem. For some reason, the image quality for me was severly gimped: fucked up colors, shimmery and grainy text/graphics, and artifacting galore. People at GAF explained to me that because my TV’s native resolution was closer to a PC resolution, this caused my TV and 360 to get into an upscale/downscale/upscale problem resulting in the aforementioned problems.
The solution for me was VGA. VGA gives you the exact resolution you need without the problems, and allows for the correct resolution output. The result? A perfect, non overscanned image, without having to pay the extra $$ for an XBR unit that supports pixel-for-pixel mapping.
Makes a HUGE difference on SF4 and VF5 also. **
More details below. Most of which is rambly, inane crapola from me.
- Gamogo
Hi guys,
This is a follow-on of sorts to this thread: http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=179318 though it deals with a slightly different problem again: aspect ratios on Samsung televisions and SFIV. For this reason I felt this was in need of a new thread. If a moderator disagrees, please move my post.
I did some testing last night to back up some weird observations I had made concerning IV’s aspect ratio, cropping, etc. I was convinced something was awry for me (it was!) but held off making any judgements until I thoroughly tested stuff lest I be crucified like another weedy martyr.
If you use a Samsung LCD television, I recommend reading on.
Findings:
(All this applies to the PS3 version btw.)
The PS3 allows various output resolutions - 1080P, 1080i, 720P, 576P (PAL. Source: http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/videooutput.html) which I can verify on my setup. I have all modes enabled, as my television supports them. As discussed earlier, despite supporting a 1080P output and with 1080P enabled, SFIV sees my television revert to 720P to display the game. SFIV is a 720P game. No problems there. Few PS3 games are 1080P. The system simply doesn’t have the raw graphics horsepower and fillrate to run many games at 1080P and maintain a solid framerate with the exception of say Ninja Gaiden, Wipeout, etc. This is largely because those games have relatively simple detail. Comparativey speaking, SFIV is quite detailed and has too much going on to expect the constant 60fps Capcom wanted from the game were it to be jacked to 1080P.
Now, in light of all this and SFIV outputting at 720P and looking lovely and running nicely I still felt the game was somewhat off. It looked and felt cramped and claustrophobic, with the arenas feeling somewhat pokey and the characters oddly large for an SFIV game. I was convinced not all the rendered game-screen was being displayed, that something was broken with the way things were being output and that the aspect ratio was skewed. Naturally I figured something was broken with the PS3’s settings - a good example is with the Bioshock demo. FORCING your PS3 to output at 720P from the display settings when you have a 1080P capable television results is a noticeably clearer and sharper picture in Bioshock due to a botched implementation of the PS3’s graphics settings in the demo.
So. I tinkered with various settings - forcing 720P output. Forcing ONLY 1080P. I used the character portraits next to the energy bars (with the HUD in the arcade default position) as indicators for available real estate. In ALL forced resolutions (1080P, 720P) the character portraits still remained hard against the borders of the screen.
So? Well. Look at this image kindly provided by Shukuda:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/5426/dsc00060x.jpg
Granted he is using a different output to myself, screen elements still should maintain the same positioning ratio. The portrait positions do NOT change when you alter the HUD, only your health and Ultra bars do.
Yes. So? Well, notice the how the character portraits have a bit of empty space to the left and right of them. Between them and the screen edge? On MY television, at 1080P that empty space did NOT exist. That was the ‘border.’ Consider this also occuring on either side of the screen, and thats a significant amount of space missing. Taking it a step further I found that the top AND bottom of the playing field/displayed screen were also cropped. I was missing almost two inches of screen real estate around the entire perimeter of my display due to cropping. This really sucked when I was forced into corners. This really sucked when characters jumped. Why should this be?
Aspect ratio settings.
Lets look at some images.
Here’s the first. This is SFIV ouputting at 720P as usual. My PS3 has been setup to accomodate both 1080P and 720P resolutions. As mentioned earlier, SFIV will only output at 720P.
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/106/sfiv1.jpg
Take note of the character positions, the HUD, the protraits. Now, here’s image two:
http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/7738/sfiv2.jpg
Notice how we have gained almost two inches around the perimeter of the display? There is empty space between character portraits and the edge of the screen. Zangief’s boot and Sagat’s foot now have space beneath them and they are not flush with the floor. I have NOT moved characters nor changed PS3 output settings between these shots. What has changed?
Clearly the aspect ratio. But how? And why?
If you have a 1080P capable television its only natural that for the majority of the time you are going to default output to 16:9. This is so you can enjoy your movies: Blurays, DVDs, AVIs, broadcast television, etc at the correct aspect ratio. That is, you don’t want things squashed or stretched. 16:9 for the most part serves its correct purpose for movies and most television stations. The majority of stuff is 16:9 now right? So why not? This is also what the Samsung widescreen televisions DEFAULT to. Uh oh.
Herein lies our problem. 720P is NOT a 16:9 aspect ratio resolution. Our game is outputting at 720P. My/our television (this applies to many Samsung models - it may NOT be happening on yours, but feel free to test what I am explaining here.) is set to 16:9. We have a conflict between resolution and forced aspect ratios! How do we fix this? How do we reclaim the missing gamespace?
New Samsungs have a button labeled ‘P.SIZE’ on the remote. Press it. The first press will confirm the current mode. In MANY instances this will default to 16:9. In the case of image #1 above, this applies. We don’t want this. Certainly not for games. Press it again and it switces to ‘Wide Zoom.’ We certainly don’t want this. It makes SFIV look like a Wrestling game 
Press it again: ‘Zoom.’ Yikes. This is even worse. The characters are huge. I can see Zangief’s nose hairs. Again: ‘4:3.’ Yuck. We don’t want this because 720P is NOT a 4:3 aspect ratio resolution. Now our image is not only cropped, but also misrepresented and squashed. Press it one more time : ‘Just Scan.’
This is what we want. On Samsungs ‘Just Scan’ is a raw pixel for pixel output from your source device - in this case, the PS3. The aspect ratio is correct, the resolution a pixel for pixel representation. No stretching, no cropping, no skewing, no missing real estate. A correctly displayed game.
If you’ve read this far you’re probably thinking I am a complete retard and you’d probably be right. The issue for me is that Samsungs DEFAULT to 16:9 and at a glance, things look fine. But after seeing a few screenshots of IV and noticing some aspect ratio and cropping issues, I figured I’d test to see if I was losing my mind. Turns out I wasn’t. Now, some televisions may automatically deal with this. My Samsung (a 40" 1080P capable set from the LA40M series) doesn’t. This is also a pretty popular model due to its attractive pricing and its actual capability so I’m hoping this post perhaps helps others.
In short? If you own a Samsung television, PRESS YOUR P.MODE BUTTON UNTIL YOU GET THE “JUST SCAN” MODE! This will facilitate the correct resolution and aspect ratio for SFIV and if you’ve defaulted to 16:9 output, it will address this problem and gain you some additional viewable real estate in the game and also correct output for ALL other games.
