One-and-Only PS3 as Blu-Ray Player Thread - Page 12

I agree, it's smaller than my HDTivo.

I remember being quite impressed with an xbox vs. 360, side by side comparison at my house. Halo2 looked much better, as did any compatable games I threw at it. Also, is there such thing as anti-allaising with out upscaling? I don't think it would do one with out the other.

In 3 years we will be waiting on the 720 and the 360 will be waning. The PS3 may be fully utilizing BD by then only to have to deal whatever MS is throwing down the pipe.

In 3 years, the XBox might finally be a profitable enterprise, too .

I, personally, am happy that some companies are actually pushing the envelope. You might laugh, as Sony might not be known around here as the most innovative--but just think about the Walkman, the Trinitron, the original Playstation...and what the PS2 attempted in its day. They were paradigm shifters. They've lost their way a bit (read 'eclipsed' of late by everything from the Apple iPod to the SlingMedia Slingbox), but this PS3/Blu-ray combo might just put them back on the map--if they, of course, deliver more than exquisite PR materials.

How long could it take MS to recover from 3 BILLION in debt

You'll have to ask the Gates Foundation....

I don't see MS borrowing $700 million to roll out any of their new products.

I haven't either..Any predictions on when MS can/will be come profitable on their consoles?

Regardless the consumer wins as many of us have already benefitted from owning and xbox and xbox360. I'm just wondering how long they'll stay in. I'd hate to see them out of the market as competition is good for gamers

I don't think anyone can confidently predict that at this point, not even MS themselves. I think MS as a whole has enough cash reserves and profitability to subsidize the gaming part of their business for the foreseeable future. That's just my opinion, I'm too lazy to research it right now I also think they are willing to bleed red ink on the 360 for a good while in an attempt to dampen Sony's dominance in the console business and to make inroads into becoming more of a presence in our living rooms. They must be getting bored with just dominating our offices

lol, you are probably right. I hope so, otherwise its just the Big N and Sony. I like all three of them in my living room

Persistency is the key strategy that has worked well for M$ in the past, espeically when they can't buy out the competitors. They can afford to lose a large sum of money in order to gain a small hold in a particular market. Overtime they would continue to gain little by little, eventually wearing out the competitors. Then, they'd start making money left and right once monopoly is acheived.

On the other hand, the console market has traditionally been dominated by the Japanese whose game studios created signature titles that can make or break the systems (Zelda, Final fantasy, Mario, etc.). Buyers are known to flock to a particular system as a result of certain games.

I think, M$ needs those Japanese signature titles if they hope to claim the top spot in the console world which isn't going to be easy, else they need to create a new gaming segment that attracts the mass (online stuff)--might be even harder to do. And we all know the Japanese will support their own consoles first and foremost. So, it's not going to be easy but M$ has to stay in the fight for now if they hope to regain the 3-4 billion dollars they've lost/invested from the original Xbox. Should they allow Sony to slide by this time like the PS2 vs Xbox era, they may never have another chance in this market especially now that Nintendo is steadily gaining more and more popularity.

I don't think M$ will have it any easier than Sony in this 2nd round/generation of console war, but I think they'll hang in there waiting for the right opportunity to dominate. After all, isn't global domination the ultimate goal of M$

Getting OT again. Try and keep in mind we're talking Blu-Ray aspects, not videogames.

Sorry. You are absolutely correct. I guess it's kind of hard to not talk about video games when the thread topic involves the PS3.

Back on topic......

It should be interesting! There is a lot of speculation and predictions being bandied about and some important unanswered questions.

Will the PS3 actually launch on time in November?

How will the PS3 match up against stand alone BD players in HD playback and SD upscaling?

Will the gamers who buy the PS3 use it for movie playback in enough volume to make an impact on the market?

Will a significant number of non-gamers buy the PS3 as a BD player simply because of the price point?

These are just a few examples. Everyone has their theories and predictions, and I'm sure millions have been spent on market research. The bottom line is... nobody has a crystal ball. Consumer behavior is notoriously fickle and difficult to predict. The CE landscape can change dramatically over the course of a short time, especially when it comes to emerging technologies. Anyone who professes that they know how all of this will turn out is living in a fool's paradise.

I am anxiously awaiting to see how all of this plays out and actually find it entertaining in a sort of demented way

Mwahahahahahahaaa!!!! Me too.

Take a look at the PS2, the games have never been better or looked better it´s the law of consoles. The xbox on the other hand never peaked, it flattend out, i sold mine after a year, didn´t find anything on it that i really really wanted (i play FPS games on the PC, i hate controllers for that), i figured i can get one in few years when it´s matured and the games are there. Well turns out it would never happened :-)

I don´t forsee a new XBOX in the next 5 years, at least not if Microsoft wants to earn back some of those 5 billion dollars they have lost so far. Ohh that is gonna take some time :-)

Here is a question that has been haunting my head for a long time now. Granted that the Blu-ray playing software on the PS3 is top notch or SONY intends to throw a lot of support for it why wouldn't the PS3 be one of the finest Blu-ray players ever?

The PS2 was a horrible DVD player, mostly because of a low quality DAC. But since there we have HDMI on the PS3 and no image data needs to be converted back and forth then that no longer is a issue.

So what remain is the mpeg2/H.264/VLC software decoder and perhaps even the scaler. For delivering 1080p content directly from the disc to the display device the scaler is not needed and so there only remain the decoders.

So if the decoders are of an acceptable quality then the PS3 should in theory perform as well as any "High end" Blu-ray player out there. And added to that the PS3 has several advantages over standalone players in that it is essentially a computer with a very powerful CPU and graphics processor that are architecturally ideal for decoding and processing video.

So instead of ending up with a player that can never become better because it relies on hardware you have a dynamic platform that can improve all the time by updating its software. So of the Blu-ray player on the PS3 is regularly updated with improvement then it should get better and better. Also if a flaw is discovered in the hardware decoder of a standalone player one cant do anything about it but with the PS3 all you need is to patch the software and you are set.

Of course if the codecs and other software are poorly programmed and never improve then the PS3 will never reach its potential.

If I was SONY I would dump the CELL chip in all future Blu-ray players and just focus on making the software better rather than relying on expensive hardware. That way there would be no need for constantly developing new player with better hardware to keep up with the competition.

Since the PS3 will be one of the first BR players, I hardly think it will be "one of the finest Blu-Ray players ever". I'd be happy if it was just an adequate one. I suspect it will be missing a lot of bells and whistles that a more expensive/top of the line player offers, but those things don't bother me because I hardly use them anyways.

Remember too that Sony will sell their own standalone BR players/recorders, so they will be competing against themselves.

Other than that, Sony needs to start publishing quality titles, and if they don't they will only suffer for it. All those who pony up $600 or so are most likely going to buy at least 1 or 2 BR titles, and if they suck, that could hurt them right off.

When I said fines player I meant purely from a video quality point of view. Obviously I don't think that PS3 will be able to decode the new lossless DTS and Dolby Digital formats. But most other features can be added to the PS3 at some later time via software updates. My point is that the PS3 hardware is so powerfull that it should be viewed as a HTPC. Even of SONY decides not to support the PS3 Blu-ray player there is always the fact that it comes with linux preinstalled. So once the homebrew crowd get their hands on it they might be able to write software that will make the PS3 rival any high end standalone player. The potential is definitly there but time will tell if it will be reached.

I think audio is harder to handle that video. Since video for the new HD formats are lossy compression, it has to be decyphered to deliver almost perfect video to most people.

With audio, well we've lived with Dolby Digital and DTS for about ten years now (and some people with MPEG Audio). But the lossless track are even easier to decode since the data to rebuild is already there.

So my point is if Sony wants the PS3 to decode the lossless audio tracks, it won't take much of the Cell's computing power.


fuad

Yes, but remember too if the PS3 is going to offer Lossless decoding they are going to have to offer jack-pack that offers 5.1 discrete outputs, and I really don't think Sony wants to deal with that. It starts getting a bit complicated at that point.

I am sure HDMI 1.3's 1-plug solution is exactly what Sony is shooting for. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) should apply.

According to various sources, HDMI 1.3 allows transport of lossless systems such as Dolby TrueHD. To the best of my knowledge, PS3 will support at least the Dolby flavor of lossless, probably both. But only in the higher-end HDMI-enabled model.

Clearly they are targeting the HDMI model more at the home-theater folks.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/24/gdc2006_ps3_no_hdmi/

This link is nice because it contains logos of some of the various supported standards:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/06..._website_20gb/

I can't tell if the DTS logo is the new losses codec or just a standard logo, can anyone figure that out?

I think that picture is an old one (over a year old) and no longer applies. Sony has stated that they dropped SACD support.

Does the PS3 still support Bluetooth as well?

Sony updated its US site about a week ago with the specs of the system and it shows SACD as well as Bluetooth are still in.

Do you have a link to the statement by Sony dropping SACD? I definitely have seen documents more recently (2-3 weeks) that still have these logos present, so I think they are accurate.

Well, if they updated it, then it's still there. But someone posted in the videogame forum a while back that SACD support was dropped.

But once again, without 5.1 discrete output SACD output is going to be sort of half-assed. No surround support.

I'm pretty sure HDMI 1.3 supports that.

Wouldn't it output 5.1 through its toslink connection as well?

I'm also curious if the SACD feature might have been dropped, but only from the "low"-end model of the PS3? Another way to differentiate it from the "high"-end A/V-centric model, perhaps? In that case, everyone is correct...it's been struck, and it also remains. Confirmation would, of course, be great, one way or the other.

Games Devs shying from PS3

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=13291

According to a BusinessWeek Online report, some developers are actually steering resources away from the PS3 in favor of the more affordable Wii from Nintendo and even the Xbox 360. Hirokazu Hamamura, president of publisher and game industry researcher Enterbrain, believes that Sony's next-gen console might not be a smash hit the way previous PlayStation systems have been. "Many developers think the console's initial high price will lead to slow sales and are holding off on creating games for Sony," Hamamura explained.

Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer himself has admitted that the console is expensive and that consumers are paying for its "potential."

This has nothing to do with the topic, and so, I finally add a second person to my ignore list. Nice job.

Since they've been not yet posted, here are some videos of the PS3 user interface from the E3 demo in May, including the software BD player in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mq5job_en0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyd041cYyzc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfpjOlfTdCg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhggjWvtcDI