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2160p to 1440p HDMI scaler?

#1

Are there affordable video scalers that support scaling 2160p at 60Hz to 1440p?

I am planning in buying a PS4 Pro soon and I really want to use it with a 1440p monitor but having learned that the PS4 still doesn’t support 1440p video output, and that my monitor doesn’t support scaling 2160p at 60Hz because it’s HDMI 1.4 only, has really bummed me because that means I will get a badly upscaled 1080p output in my monitor.

I have spent hours looking for one but it seems that almost all of them only support 4K to 1080p and vice-versa, and the ones that do support scaling 4K down to 1440p are marketed for enterprise users and are priced accordingly.

#2

chances are that they would both run at 1080p if you plug them into each other

#3

Thanks but may you clarify what are you are referring to by they? if I plug the PS4 in my monitor it’ll just deliver 1080p to it which will be upscaled to 1440p by my monitor and look bad. I am looking for a “4K” video scaler so that the PS4 may deliver 2160p to the scaler, which is a resolution supported by the PS4, and the scaler may deliver 1440p to my monitor.

#4

Depending on what monitor you have it might be totally fine. The nintendo switch only does 1080p and i have a 1440p 27’ monitor. It scales to 1440p perfectly fine. If you didnt explicetly tell me its upscaled by the monitor. I would not know it is.

So I say try it first. Then get the upscaler if youre unhappy with it. Good upscaler arent cheap. Especially with 1440p being a kinda alien :alien: resolution to TVs. And youre looking for a downscaler not an upscaler.

Good thing is the ps4 isnt even doing real 4k. But upscales to 4k itself. I mean it should work @1080p with the monitor upscaling to 1440p.

#5

Do you have a 1080p monitor/tv at all?

#6

I do but it has really really bad colors in comparison to my 1440p display, which sucks.

Edit: Ops, accidentally submitted my post while editing it.

#7

Thanks maximal. Unfortunately my 1440p monitor handles upscaling really badly, so it’s really a big turnoff for me.

It is true that the PS4 doesn’t do real 4K but it renders at a higher resolution than 1080p for it and upscales it to 4K itself, so I would prefer to downscale from 4K rather than upscale it to 1440p from 1080p with dedicate hardware for it.

I’m thinking about getting a XONE, which supports 1440p natively if I can’t find a downscaler. But I really want to play Kingdom Hearts :sweat_smile:.

#8

Damn, this is a rock and hard place situation.

Yes, even not mega high end PCs still don’t do 4k well all the time, the PS4 can do some games naively but most (like the vast majority) are upscaled from somewhere lower.

Unfortunately it would be a case of PS4 rendering at something 1080p or above and then upscaling it itself, sending it to you downscaler and back to 1440p.

#9

No matter what you do even if you had a device to scale down 4K to 1440p it would look smeared and not sharp. It’s a waste of money, just game at 1080p 60fps on that PS4 Pro.

#10

It’s not just yours. Any dithering is handled poorly on monitors.

1080p to 2160p would look almost native simply because of the 1:4 ratio there. 4 pixels on 2160p are equal to 1 pixel on 1080p. 1440p isnt a nice multiple, so it looks bad.

#11

The thing that I find kinda strange that I don’t really think it looks worse to be playing breath of the wild on the pg279q I have. But when I plug in my notebook into the HDMI port @1080p it surely does look undeniably worse. Not horribly. It’s just back to 1080p and text especially is a bit less sharp looking and everything feels HUGE with no space in comparison to 1440p.

I’m not sure if it’s actually upscaling anything to be honest. It probably just displays 1080p somehow.

But then again I have never in my life seen breath of the wild run (or the switch) above 1080p. So…
Not entierly convinced that that “plug a PC into the HDMI port thing @1080p” is really a issue of the monitor not being able to display 1080p properly rather than me just being more used to a 1440p desktop and noticing it more so than I would with a system I have never in my life seen on > 1080p. I could do a comparison with our 4k Samsung Q7FN. But apart from it being bigger it didn’t seem like a complete gamechanger to me the first time I tried that. (usually I don’t unless there is someone to play with, because it’s being used to watch TV and stuff by other people… But if that’s what I say. It probably does not matter to me at the very least.)

Some quick googeling got me a bit more confident. That I’m probably not half blind, but it works for other people too (on a PS4 as well) on my monitor at the very least.

#12

could it be that the switch is running in 720p (native to its screen) when docked too (it says up to 1080 docked). In which case 720p is a nice division of 1440p, much like 1080p is to 2160p?

Just a thought I don’t actually know

#13

No switch is switching to 1080p if docked. :slight_smile:

#14

Apparently Breath of the wild will only go to 900p docked, which is still not perfect, but maybe less stretching needed?

#15

Ehh, any amount of dithering looks awful.

#16

That is with the wii u I believe. But I mean I got other games too.

Ok, no actually they say 900p. xD Sorry.

Pokemon for instance is 1080p and that’s great too. Also in terms of scaling 900p would be strange too would’n it? Only because it renders in 900p, does not mean it won’t still output 1080p. I would highly believe it does, just as the ps4 pro always outputs 4k. Otherwise that’s gonna be really awkward for the monitor.

#17

The 900p thing was a specific reference to the switch, portable mode is 720p and docked is supposed to be 900p.

Gor there before me

#18

If DVDO made 4K to 4K/1440p scalers, they’d be the first option I’d try to get. But critically they have to support 2560x1440.

If worse comes to worse, Use a Magewell 4K capture card, then scale the HDMI capture using mpv. All PS4 Pro AAA titles are locked at 30fps anyways, so processing delay with this method shouldn’t be too bad. Plus the Magewell has a low latency mode.

Edit: Yup, KH3 is locked to 30fps, you don’t need anything better than this Magewell and the processing time is WELL within the 33.3ms of 30fps with the low latency mode on.

#19

I have contacted gofanco and HDFury and unfortunately none of their products support downscaling to 1440p. I wonder how much of a performance impact would supporting 1440p mean, if any.

If DVDO made 4K to 4K/1440p scalers, they’d be the first option I’d try to get. But critically they have to support 2560x1440.

Yeah. I just checked them out and they apparently have scalers that support 4K but unfortunately they only do upscaling.

If worse comes to worse, Use a Magewell 4K capture card, then scale the HDMI capture using mpv. All PS4 Pro AAA titles are locked at 30fps anyways, so processing delay with this method shouldn’t be too bad. Plus the Magewell has a low latency mode.

Thanks for the recommendation but considering that I’m not interested in recording or streaming my games, it is not worth the cost.

#20

Yes, you’re not recording or streaming, but using scaling in certain media players like MPC-HC or mpv by “playing back” the live capture (and not recording or streaming it) is in essence scaling your 4K output from the PS4 Pro to display in native 1440p inside the media player. You’re playing back your capture card’s output, then letting your PC scale it to 1440p.

Trust me, that’s much cleaner than trying to jerryrig thousand dollar specialized video processing hardware to do the same.

The Magewell series of cards even have a scaler built into the card, so if that already sounds daunting, let the card instead do the work, and play back the scaled output from the Magewell in VLC or any other media player.