Modern Warfare 2: A Lens of Truth analysis...

[Procrastinato]

Procrastinato said:

The "contrast differences" seen in these, and all comparisons across the board, really, are due to the PS3 conforming to the official DVI-VIDEO signal format (which clamps black to "16" and white to "235" rather than the 0-255 range allowed in some other signals). The 360 does not conform to said format.

I'm not positive, but the only real drawback to not conforming may be that the PS3 will work/look better on some televisions than the 360 will. I don't think the 360 signal could damage a TV, but... it might look odd in some relatively rare cases. Certainly the PS3 will seem more consistent from TV to TV than the 360 will.

Sony could change this at any time with a firmware update... however then they wouldn't be conforming to the DVI-VIDEO format, and that might cause some consumers to get upset, since their TVs might not work well with the expanded signal.

EDIT: In fact, a large number of consumers probably do not own TVs of high enough quality to actually notice the difference.  Ironically, those few users would notice would probably be owners of Sony Bravia XBRs. =)  In a certain sense, any capture done from the signal directly (most of them are done this way) is outright ignoring the fact that the vast majority of TVs/users won't see the difference, and in ignoring this fact, is biased by nature.

I should add that the DVI-PC color range is 0-255... that's the reason that you can see the difference in the screenshots (on your monitor), but not generally on your TV.  Thus, many of the people who complain that the washed out pictures are not "accurate" are not actually correct in fact, although they are in "spirit"  -- the truth is that the PS3 shots are also what the X360 shots tend to look like, on most televisions.