For those who watch recorded HDTV on their PS3:

I've got several HD-MPEG2 transport streams which I've converted to program streams via VLC Media Player and they play flawlessly from the XMB with full DD 5.1 audio and flicker free video as of Firmware 2.20.

Is this still the case for firmware 2.30? Same question for DVD rips: I store TV episodes of various series with .MPG file extensions on an external HD for playback on the PS3. After 2.20 they play perfectly, again with DD 5.1 audio. Still the case with 2.30?

I'm a little cautious to update as Sony broke this capability several firmwares back and only recently fixed it with 2.20. Any info would be appreciated.

Still works for me on all files that worked with 2.20. Used vlc to convert ts to a program stream. Sometimes making a program stream with VLC doesn't work, so I have used tsremux to create an m2t file. These also still work with 2.30.

For those who watch recorded HDTV on their PS3:

I've got several HD-MPEG2 transport streams which I've converted to program streams via VLC Media Player and they play flawlessly from the XMB with full DD 5.1 audio and flicker free video as of Firmware 2.20.

Is this still the case for firmware 2.30? Same question for DVD rips: I store TV episodes of various series with .MPG file extensions on an external HD for playback on the PS3. After 2.20 they play perfectly, again with DD 5.1 audio. Still the case with 2.30?

I'm a little cautious to update as Sony broke this capability several firmwares back and only recently fixed it with 2.20. Any info would be appreciated.
Don't you think its a little bit weird to postpone FW updates? You should always update ASAP, this isn't like SP3 for Win XP: it actually enhances features and performance...

Still works for me on all files that worked with 2.20. Used vlc to convert ts to a program stream. Sometimes making a program stream with VLC doesn't work, so I have used tsremux to create an m2t file. These also still work with 2.30.

Thank you! That's exactly what I was hoping for. Good to hear M2Ts from tsremux work as well. I believe I had an HD airing of Raiders of the Lost Ark that I couldn't pass through VLC, so just like you, I used tsremux and it worked as a M2T.


Don't you think its a little bit weird to postpone FW updates? You should always update ASAP, this isn't like SP3 for Win XP: it actually enhances features and performance...

Postpone it by one day so I can get a reply to my question? In this case, no... I don't think it's particularly weird. As I tried to explain in my original post (I didn't go into much detail, sorry), Sony had MPEG2 program streams (HD & SD) working with DD 5.1 before firmware 1.6 or so... but then sometime after that they broke something in their media player that caused either this odd frame flashing (everytime there was a cut, a frame from earlier in the movie would quickly flash across the screen) or no DD 5.1 sound or 5.1 mixed down to 2.0.

This problem lasted for many, many months. First there was the audio downmixing problem, then the frame flashing problem cropped up.

So sometimes when Sony updates the firmware on the PS3 it's two steps forward, one step back. It depends on what your priorities are with the PS3. I'm glad to hear this time they didn't break anything in their XMB media player. I was just being cautious, because I don't think we can roll back the firmware updates... that, and I don't yet have an HDMI capable receiver to take advantage of the primary feature of firmware 2.30 (DTS-HD MA).

Don't you think its a little bit weird to postpone FW updates? You should always update ASAP, this isn't like SP3 for Win XP: it actually enhances features and performance...

Absolutely not. Many times (from personal experience with various devices) a new FW will enhance/solve certain things and at the same time introduce new issues. I always wait and read reports before updating the FW on anything. I am actualy in the process of reverting FW on my XA2 from 2.8 back to 2.7 as 2.8 introduced some 1080/24p playback issues that were NOT present in 2.7.