retired_princesspouty

retired_yuvaraja

It's also dawned on me that it might be a calculated stab at viral marketing.

retired_bemesel

Herman are you being serious???
They are watching the ad on the same TV as they would play the game on!

retired_princesspouty

When you're playing the game, you're being fed the graphics through hardware connected to your TV.

When they show the advert, you're seeing a video of the game being played through perhaps different hardware, and at a resolution dictated by whatever captured that video.

I'm not a gamer really, but even I can understand this fairly concept.

trotamundos

I'm not even going there.

retired_princesspouty

Am I on the right lines though... or are Ranjith and San actually cleverer than I thought?

San

the maximum resolution it can show will be the resolution of the television you're actually watching it on.

I fail to see how they could see HDTV graphics on their screen when their screen is not itself hdtv. I can see it would result in better quality if they scale it so that the advert shows someone playing the game, whilst watching a tv.

But if all that's being shown is the in-game graphics then the limit to the graphics will be the resolution of the TV it is being watched on.

If I am missing something there feel free to enlighten me.

retired_katie14

People only ever see adverts on their own TV?

retired_princesspouty

That's not how it works. When you watch Toy Story on your TV, you're watching a Super powered computer rendering graphics at hugh resolutions - which is then put onto film - which is then displayed by your TV. The mismatch between the resolution the graphics were rendered at, and the resolution of your TV are solved by the way light is displayed on the pixels of your TV (ie the same way it works when showing any film).

When your console renders and sends the output to the TV, you are seeing something rendered at a potentially lower resolution.

In simple terms - when you're watching a video you aren't seeing a pixel for pixel representation of the graphics - therefore it will be different to when you see it rendered via your console.

retired_princesspouty

Incidentally - I can see why Herms stayed out of it! It's one of those concepts that seems quite simple... but is hard to explain and requires the other person to suddenly click.