Many gamers with HDTV sets that only support the 1080i resolution have been disappointed with the way that the Playstation 3 handles upscaling issues. If a game does not natively support 1080i, the console will output a 480p signal, rather than scaling the 720p output. The officially “unofficial” Three Speech blog was able to talk with Sony about the issue, and find out the company’s viewpoint. Sony’s stance is that 720p is actually a higher resolution than 1080i; they believe that the output that one gets from a 720p signal is better than a 1080i signal. Sony claims that the lack of scaling should not impact that many users, and their ranking of signal quality is as follows:

1080p
720p
1080i
576p (480p for the US)
576i (480i for the US)

Current limitations on the Playstation 3 prevent resolution scaling from happening, but Sony again insists that this issue could potentially be fixed with a firmware update.