Major PS5 Pro update could end up breaking most TVs
Your television sets might not be ready for the next major PS5 Pro update, as leakers have hinted towards a major resolution enhancement that could force you into upgrading your whole setup.
While it might not look quite as nice as the special anniversary edition that left fans frustrated due to its limited release, the regular PS5 Pro is by far the best way to play games on a home console right now.
Where Xbox has passed over the mid-generation refresh, Sony has instead opted to give its power users a means of extracting the highest performance possible out of the newest releases. For many, it's well worth the price of entry.
The ability to play games at smooth frame rates without sacrificing visual quality is appealing enough already, but the console's next major update could make the PS5 Pro an even more tantalizing prospect, and could even break your TV.
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As reported by ComicBook.com, hardware leaker Moore's Law Is Dead has suggested that Sony is targeting both 4K at 120 frames per second (FPS) and 8K at 60 FPS - with both achieved through enhancements to the existing PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) technology built into the PS5 Pro.
If you're unaware, PSSR is an AI-powered machine learning upscaling technology that enhances lower 'base' resolutions to make them appear indistinguishable from far higher ones, bringing major performance benefits.
This broader technology was initially pioneered by Nvidia with Depp Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), and when using this software at 4K, the base resolution can range from anywhere between 1440p and 720p.
4K gaming at 120 FPS is by far the more achievable and applicable target for most gamers, as many of the most popular gaming-oriented TVs out there accompany a 2160p resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate, making it a perfect target for Sony.
However, 8K is a far more complicated story. While the base PS5 is technically '8K ready' in the sense that it can technically output at 4320p, games aren't able to run at the incredibly high resolution.
For the PS5 Pro, though, right now it's able to run some select titles at 8K with PSSR, but you're compromising on frame rate. With updates to the upscaling technology, 8K60 could be a possibility.
The biggest problem after that would be the number of TVs that are actually equipped for that resolution, as most gamers don't have 8K-capable displays. Even then, not all of them will even work with the PS5 due to issues with Display Stream Compression (DSC), as reported by FlatpanelsHD.
It's certainly something that looks great on paper for Sony to boast, but most gamers won't be able to take advantage of it, leaving you with a $799.99 paperweight if it was your eventual end goal.