FAIL: Playstation 2 with High Definition (20th October 2011)
Thought this was possible by using a Component lead and playing Gran Turismo 4. First stumbling point is you have to change the system configuration defaults. Then you change some of the Options in Gran Turismo.
That greatly reduced fuzziness and interference. The menu screens look delicious! But the actual 1080i capabilities of the game were removed from the PAL edition. c{X¬[
System Configuration Defaults
As clumsily described by this How to Output Component on a Playstation 2 Tutorial on YouTube. I used the standard Composite lead to set the right output mode. This default seems wrong for nearly all home electronics – and for the Dell U2410 I run my PS2 through.
Whiloe I was there I changed something about the TV Size to Full. This seems to have made menus a lot sharper and use a better aspect ratio.
Make sure you don’t have a game in the machine. It will always start the game instead of going to the system screen, otherwise.
This alone has greatly improved improved the picture quality! The rendering of text is amazing. I can also see minor divisions in scales (such as the refueling meter) which were never visible before.
Options in Gran Turismo 4
Strangely, the ones I saw in a YouTube video to select different video formats are not available. At least, I haven’t found where they are.
The in-game pause menu has a Screen option and I used that to set Brightness to +5 and Contrast to -5. (Fiona’s Freeview box has a Component output, although not HD it’s the best output it has. Swapping the cables will be enough of a chore without changing the Brightness and Contrast every time!)
Texture Smoothing
From the homepage of the PS2 system menu, you can press Triangle to get the Version information. From here, you can selection Driver Version and press Triangle again to get a couple of hardware options.
For the past couple of days I’ve had Texture Smoothing set to Smooth. Not sure it’s made much difference.