Ok, hi guys. Zen here. There has been some misinformation going around the forum, and it really....grinds my gears, so I'm going to give you the low down on PS2 gaming on HDTV as I understand it, and please correct any misassumptions or mistakes I make in writing this.
In the beginning, there were standard def TVs. These TVs didn't show you the entire image of the screen. They cut off, depending on TV size, about an inch or more on the top and left/right sides of the screen. That cut off area was called overscan, and it was part of the TV.
Well, Sony figured out that it could increase the performance of the PS2 if its games didn't have to render that part of the screen. The overscan area. Particularly, the largest part of overscan, the left and right sides of the screen.
Then, HDTVs came along.
Most good HDTVs didn't have any overscan, and was able to show entire images in their native resolution without leaving off any of the picture. Samsung and Sony, for instance, two great HDTV manufacturers, have settings for native scanning of resolutions, and also 16x9 settings with give a very small amount of overscan for some sources.
....oh, ok, when am I getting to God of War, right?
Well, if you've got a rather large TV, 46 inches ought to do it, and it's an HDTV, then you'll notice when playing PS2 games stretched, that even in the 16x9 stretch modes(or FULL mode on PS3 upscaling) your screen will still have small black bars on the left and right side of the television.
If your TV does not have those black bars, then your TV has overscan built in, or has a smart stretch feature. This can be considered good or bad, depending on who you talk to.
On a proper 16x9 mode, there will be the small black bars.
Sony went so far as to patch them in a PS3 BC update, only to unpatch them a week later after complaints from the slightly stretched image.
The only way to get rid of these bars is by cropping the image via your service menu in the TV, which is dangerous and voids your warranty, or by having a TV with a smart ratio option(Samsung at least, has no such option on its TVs, but I believe Panasonic does, not sure).
This means that on a plasma screen, you are in danger of seriously misaging your phosphors in the darkened area, commonly known as burn-in, if you play PS2 on it too often.
Good news is, with the God of War remake, these black bars won't exist. Thus, you can play the game safely on a plasma TV with the correct contrast ratio, and have it fill the screen.
If you want to find out more, please read this thread from another forum:
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&thread.id=1553589
Now a tangent. I see a lot of people viewing small screenshots and claiming that the GoW remastering doesn't seem like an improvement. It's completely wrong. Those images will look vastly different on a 52" HDTV, running at 60fps, with finally, a full screen mode that doesn't require stretching. I think the most noticable feature is the edge definition that the upscaling/AA brings. Besides these huge gameplay and graphical upgrades(and yes, framerate is a gameplay upgrade), the game is also at a reasonable price, not much more than buying the significantly inferior versions would cost on PS2. In play, and viewing screens in proper resolutions, the upgrade becomes instantly apparent and all encompassing.
/bow
I don't need your console war.
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor.
You're power hungry, spinnin' stories, and bein' graphics whores.
I don't need your console war.
NO NO, NO NO NO.
