The Digital Foundry Supporter Program has grown once again with the arrival of a brand-new show exclusive to backers. It’s a companion to DF Direct – hilariously entitled DF InDirect – and its initial format should be recognisable to viewers/listeners of our weekly show as it’s an extension to our existing Supporter Q+A section. The show is available to all backers on all tiers and it’s available to watch or listen to right now – and there’s a small sample on this page.
The idea for InDirect came about owing to the sheer wealth of excellent supporter questions we receive each week. The truth is, we get far too many to answer on the main show (which already tops two hours) while some of the questions require a bit of research before we should respond. That’s the case with the sampler below – supporter DaJaCo informed us of discussion surrounding a new upscaling patent lodged by Sony Interactive Entertainment and wanted to know what the idea was and its application in a potential PlayStation 5 Pro.
You can see our response below, but ultimately, the recent announcement from AMD itself that it’s looking for machine learning-based upscaling solutions for ‘game devices’ isn’t a particularly good fit for the mechanics of the patent. On top of that, many patents are filed but very few constitute detailed ‘tell all’ descriptions of actual shipping products. Based on our own thoughts and those of developers we’ve spoken to familiar with upscaling technology, this looks like an interesting thought experiment – but we’d be surprised to see this actually manifest in PlayStation 5 Pro.
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