I move my Playstation 3 between my SD family television and an old 20″ IBM monitor in my office at 1080p (connected via one of these). When moving to the TV, I can do the “long press on the power button” to get to the right resolution, which is simple enough. Even if it does reset any theme settings. Setting up the PS3 with the monitor is a bit trickier as it does not support 480i or 576i, so I need to pull out an old 34cm TV I have sitting around, and need to do a cable shuffle and it’s all a lot more hassle than I’m interested in.
To avoid that, here is the combination of controller presses to get to 1080p without being able to see what you’re doing. It is easiest when you have working audio, so you can hear the clicks as you navigate the menus.
These are done with PS3 firmware 2.70. It may change in later versions. You follow these instructions at your own risk.
Pause between each press, particularly X presses as there is often a little delay involved in the screen updating.
To blindly change the resolution :
Turn on the PS3 Press the PS button on controller All the way up (to the top of the Games menu) All the way left 1 step right (to the Settings menu) All the way down (bottom of the Settings menu) 4 steps up (Display Settings) X (select Display Settings) X (select Video Output Settings) 1 step up (In my case, select Component / D-Terminal output. 2 steps up for HDMI, no steps for Composite / S Video, 1 step down for AV MULTI / SCART) X (select connector type) X (confirm connector change) 1 step left X (confirm that it works) All down (select 1080p. Back up one for 1080i, up two for 720p, three for 576p) X (select the desired resolution) 1 step right (move to next screen – all going well, the screen should be working from this point) 1 step left X (to confirm that it works)
At that stage, you should be able to see what you’re doing :) If not, turn off the PS3 and start again, hoping you haven’t reformatted the HDD along the way :p
The other circumstance I find myself wanting to navigate the XMB blindly is to get into OtherOS without having to change the resolution first. This will only work if you have already installed a bootloader (otheros.bld).
To blindly boot into the OtherOS:
Turn on the PS3
Press the PS button on controller
All the way up
All the way left
1 step right
5 steps down
X
All the way down
3 steps up
X
1 step down
X
1 step left
X