One-and-Only PS3 as Blu-Ray Player Thread

I didn't say that PS3 buyers with HDTV's wouldn't buy or rent Blu-ray movies. In fact, I agree that a PS3 owner who also has an HDTV is very probably going to buy or rent at least 1 Blu-ray movie. I question the result that 80+% of PS3 owners would buy Blu-ray movies when a very large percentage of them don't have HDTV's. It could be that gamers have a higher percentage ownership of HDTV's (but I haven't seen any statistics one way or another) and there is nothing to extrapolate from that poll either way.

Well, at the very least you would get $.02.

Excellent post Grubert. He's absolutely correct that this isn't about gaming dominance or Sony vs. Microsoft. Sony already has that. This is Sony vs. Toshiba, who are already strange bedfellows with their co-development of the Cell processor.

And as he points out, we could have a PS3 launch in the US before Japan. The US is Sony's bread and butter market for their gaming consoles. They sold almost half of all PS2s sold in the US. The PS2 launched in Japan with 9 games. Sony wouldn't do that here in the US, but I think they would launch with 6-10 games and 20 BD titles.

I think the author of that piece has some interesting and illuminating tidbits there.

Joseph

IMO, the computer drive advantage right now goes to HD-DVD, that was all I was saying. And just because Dell may be Blu-ray doesn't mean that every computer they ship will have a Blu-ray drive installed.

Wow. That is the mother of all rumours.

That's a very interesting and losses reducing way of doing it. Don't appeal to the gamers initially, cause the game availability is spotty. PSP-redux.

Gary

Grubert,

Good find!

As crazy as that article is, it does make a certain amount of sense. Very interesting indeed.

Dont forget about TSST either - The Toshiba/Samsung company that, among other things, makes Blu Ray drives.

The speculation is that the PS3 delay has as much to do with the software as it does the hardware. The developers are supposed to be having a hard time learing to use the Cell to its full potential.

If Sony doesn't want to wait until the games are ready, they could put out the PS3 early with limited SW support, in order to seal the deal on the movie end.

The PS3 will be a much more intuitive approach to hidef in general. I'm not comparing BR to HDDVD but the gamming public may just have their lights turned on by the simplicity of hidef implementation. The majority of these people imo will seek out information on hidef programming from major suppliers (ie. cable,sat,OTA) especially if they already own a hidef set and are confused. And the non hd displays are disappearing limiting the masses choice to a hidef set or junk DVCRT. Down the road PS3 adopters will have a collection of BR movie titles (even if there collection only consists of 3 titles) that they wont want to jump formats to a stand alone HDDVD player, they will stick with BR after the stand alone players come down in price. On the other hand HDDVD will be common place in the PC domain but mainly for storage. Down the road PS3 adopters will just use there PC for HDDVD movie titles if the really want to try out the other guy. The DVD-A/SACD argument has no merritt here. After cassette tapes CD's were considered the benchmark for audio and the masses still think so. With the MP3,AAC being so popular its obvious the masses just don't hear the difference in compressed music....that leaves little chance for DVD-A/SACD to succeed.

I have said many times over the past few months that Sony should make an exception this time, and release the PS3 as soon as possible in the U.S. first.

This combined with the eight studios not supporting HD dvd would in effect kill that format very quickly imo, and we could have a single format and not have to deal with a war.

I hope they don't. I don't want another rush job like the 360 was. Let them bring it out in Japan first, like they always do. They can iron out all the kinks and then launch it in the US a few months later, like has always been done. They really don't have any reason to change this cycle. Remember: Gaming market comes first, then the BD vs. HD-DVD stuff.

LOl yeah sure.. iron bug out.. LOL so that's why my PS had to be placed upside down to play game (exchange 3 times over a year) or my PS2 did failed after 2 weeks...

Console are made so fast in so little time, that whatever place it's release Rev1 is Always buggy and they are about 1 Rev each year and a half... generally.. 360 had issue (i didn't) , PS3 will ... that's inevitable...

Bad luck. It happens.

Nothing's perfect. Ask Xbox 360 owners. E-74 errors? Crashes? Bugs? Heat?

You're always going to have that 3-5 percent bug/failure rate. Anything beyond that, of course, is unacceptable.


We all agree on this. It pretty much goes without saying.

I wasn't trying to infer or imply that a Japanese first release would guarantee perfection by any means.

If it comes out here first, it will pretty much seal the deal though for BD, and Sony knows that the PS3 will prevail regardless if its buggy like my kids 360 is.

The smart thing to do from a business stand point is to unleash the PS3 in the U.S. as soon as possible because they have no risk in the gaming war...they will win that whenever its released.

Anyone know if the PS3 will have/support HDMI 1.3 for true 1080p output?

I would certainly hope so, especially considering the expected time period the thing is supposed to launch by?

Here's a noob question: HDMI can be updated via firmware, yes? Example: HDMI 1.1 can be updated to 1.3 via software?

Not typically, no. HDMI support is provided/determined by silicon in the box. Chips are sold that are 1.1 complaint, 1.2 compliant, etc.

What a pain. Did I mention that I think HDMI is of the devil himself?

I, for one, could have been perfectly happy sticking with DVI for video and, oh noes! One whole extra cable for audio! I could've lived...

Yeah, it better have 1.3 HDMI support so it can dump the audio data into an outboard surround processor (since it seemingly won't decode all the audio formats onboard).

HDMI was poorly implemented and its standards board is slow to respond to the wave of future technologies. They're JUST getting the proper A/V output channels into its specs. Many current 1080p displays, for example, don't even ACCEPT 1080p signals (like 24 fps, 30 fps, 60 fps, etc.) via HDMI. Because the full HDMI implementation wasn't ready we'll probably have to wait until CEDIA (and even the next CES) to find out what products will support 1.3. And do I smell a version 2.0, etc.? This is craziness!

Dan

Come on, does anyone actually think that if Sony had anything of substance to say about a solid release date they wouldn't say it?

Yes. Typically you can only announce something once and expect it to cause a stir. Try to imagine when would be the most inopportune moment from an HD DVD perspective for Sony to announce the PS3 price/date. I'd think that would be their best bet as far as timing goes.

Microsoft did the same thing with the the 360. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

That's from Engadget, January 6 2005. It's exactly what people are saying now. That mght mean the same launch schedule for the US, but it's not as if it doesn't even exist.

yes.

Perhaps some official news (rather than analyst's speculations) will be forthcoming at the next E3..

The downside?

Apparently, the fluffers won't be as forthcoming as in the past. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29238

Think about it. Right now the fact that they didn't say anything has got the PS3 on everyone's lips and fingertips. They've generated quite a bit of interest without saying anythign at all. No media campaign, not boisterous announcements. My guess is they'll tell us what they want us to know when they want us to know it, just like with the PSX and PS2.

Joseph

I think that's the same marketing technique Apple had developed and refined decades ago. Set a date for a convention, reveal nothing before then, and finally open curtain.

February should be good to hear from the Playstation convention. By which time, the ink on those agreements from peripheral makers is just about to dry...


fuad

Why would anyone pay $1000 to $1700 for a stand-alone Blu-ray player when a Sony P3 (with a built-in Blu-ray player) will purportedly sell for less than 500 dollars?

Sony is still trying to figure this one out too