The recent consoles by both, Sony and Microsoft are highly touting 4k as their main feature. While it has been confirmed that the Xbox One S and PlayStation’s current fleet of consoles support 4k. There’s quite a lot of misleading advice around. Sony has been recently shot at by many websites for calling 4K gaming on their new console. While they didn’t actually make it clear at the PlayStation Meeting, Sony created an FAQ on their website covering the most-anticipated questions concerning the upcoming release of the PlayStation 4 Pro.
In an FAQ regarding the PlayStation 4 Pro, Sony mentioned how content will scale on different resolutions and how HDR will work in certain circumstances. It’s pretty clear that the PlayStation 4 Pro is using a technology called VSR. VSR has been on AMD PCs for quite some time now(Nvidia GPUs use DSR). How it basically works is by upscaling the output from your GPU to your display allowing for a much cleaner image. Not only that, anti-aliasing is also a part of cleaning the output to an extent.
As PlayStation mentions in their FAQ when asked “What benefits does PS4 Pro provide when played on a non-4K HDTV?“, they answered:
“PS4 Pro offers benefits even if you play on a HDTV that isn’t 4K. Depending on how the developer chooses to use the increased processing power, games with PS4 Pro support are able to render higher or more consistent framerates, increased environmental and character model detail, improved overall visual quality, and other related visual enhancements.”
“Additionally, PS4 games that render below native 1080p (maximum quality for HD TVs) on the standard PS4 can be elevated to render at full native 1080p on an HDTV.”
While I wouldn’t call them out for this, Sony also added a small table explaining how the PlayStation 4 will handle different resolutions and HDR content.
| 4K content | 2K or less than 1080p content | |
| 2K TV | Optimized to 1080p | If less than 1080p, upscale to 1080p |
| 4K TV | If 4K (2160p), display as is | Upscale to 4K (2160p) |
| 4K/HDR TV | If 4K (2160p), display as is If content is HDR supported, display in HDR | Upscale to 4K (2160p) If content is HDR supported, display in HDR |
Sony has made it pretty clear about how their console will work with different resolutions and how it will upscale content in regards to that.
As far as 4k movies and streaming goes, the PlayStation 4 will support native 4k video playback through their content partners such as Youtube and Netflix. Other than that, 4k UHD Blu-Rays just won’t work as it uses the same drive as the original PlayStation 4. As far as HDR goes, HDR will only be displayed on any content that has HDR support. Supported HDR10 TVs will take full advantage of the better picture quality output from the PlayStation 4 Pro.
