A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

Qriocity's Music Unlimited service launched in UK and Ireland with 6 million songs:
http://www.sonyinsider.com/2010/12/23/music-unlimited-powered-by-qriocity/

Demo video is inside the link. It mentioned:
3.99 pounds/month for basic service
9.99/month for premium service

A new cloud based, digital music service called Music Unlimited has been announced and became available in the UK and Ireland, soon to debut in other select countries in “Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, New Zealand and [the] U.S…in due course during 2011.” Most of your might be familiar with Qriocity – Sony’s network platform for distributing video, now will be hosting music streaming. Once it becomes available PlayStation 3 users will also be treated to a new icon on their XMB interface. Also most TVs and Bluray players released in 2010 will be able to partake in this new music service. Expect also your 2011 VAIO models join the party as well.
Click to expand...

Besides Music Unlimited, Sony has also launched a Qriocity VoD service 1-2 months ago for Bravia TV:

It looks like PS3 is keeping PSN Video Store (No PS3 Qriocity VoD yet). We already have tons of video services anyway.
 
More Qriocity details:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multim...16_Sony_Debuts_Cloud_Based_Music_Service.html

The basic plan permits unlimited streaming of the songs to "ensure users discover music they want to hear". With access to an expanding catalogue of about six million songs, the basic plan works as an infinite ad-free radio station and subscribers can listen to dozens of personalized channels - categorized by genre, era as well as mood through SensMe - without the requirement to download or manage their music files.

Additionally, the premium subscription plan offers a one-time 30 day premium free trial enabling users to listen in full to every song on demand, create personal playlists of favorites, and gain access to premium Top 100 channels which are regularly updated with the latest hits.

By studying users' listening habits, incorporating their 'like/dislike' song ratings, analyzing their existing music collections and more, MUQ adapts to users' music preferences and constantly tailors music channels to offer the most compatible and enjoyable list of songs. Therefore, the more you listen, the more uniquely personalized your music channels become. Furthermore, users can also synchronize their existing music files and playlists from other media players including iTunes into MUQ and enjoy their existing music at any time across all compatible devices
Click to expand...

They should also add integration with Photo Gallery, Custom Music, and also eventually upsell to SingStar Karaoke songs in the future.
 
I've been using Qriocity since it launched on the free trial month. It is very slick. I just think £9.99 is too much, they need to make it £6.99 and then I will buy into it. The £3.99 package sounds pretty crap tbh, but then I never really liked free Spotify because there was no customisation.

Qriocity is going places, and by next year we won't recognise PSN. :oops:
 
patsu said:
Hah, show me a screen shot. I'll believe it when I see it. :p
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It has to offer more to compete. Again Sony appears to be slow to implement change, relies on others to implement features which were a planned for in advance part of new Sony products.

If I were Sony I'd be touting the PS3 as being the only blu-ray player able to display 4K resolution currently on the market but I guess that would impact their CE product line blu-ray players.

I purchased the PS3 because it was more future proof than other blu-ray players and more future proof than the Xbox. I was correct in that choice as the Xbox has gone through 3 hardware revisions and still lacks HDMI CEC, blu-ray and who knows what else, planned for the PS3 future. This from a multi-media perspective.
 
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jeff_rigby said:
If I were Sony I'd be touting the PS3 as being the only blu-ray player able to display 4K resolution currently on the market...
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How niche do you want to go? 4k will probably be less relevant in the consumer space than SACD. No-one has a 4k TV now, and by the time some few people have 4k TVs in their home, we'll be in next-gen. Undoubtedly whoever buys a 4k TV will also buy a 4k BRD player marketed as for the job.

Ultimately, higher TV resolution support has practically nothing to do with this thread which is about the media features of the systems.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
How niche do you want to go? 4k will probably be less relevant in the consumer space than SACD. No-one has a 4k TV now, and by the time some few people have 4k TVs in their home, we'll be in next-gen. Undoubtedly whoever buys a 4k TV will also buy a 4k BRD player marketed as for the job.

Ultimately, higher TV resolution support has practically nothing to do with this thread which is about the media features of the systems.
Click to expand...

Shifty...all correct and also true for 3-D. There is an overlap time frame where PS3s will be used for 4K TVs.

So it's current features only in this discussion. Nothing that's possible because it's supported by the hardware choices made for each platform which affects the price of each platform. No one is supposed to look to the future to insure their investment is protected. Then why do we have firmware updates for both platforms? There should then be a law locking features, this would make decisions easier and lowest price would always win.

Possibly a correct view given the US consumer.

Back on point. I'm amazed at how much forethought went into the PS3 hardware and how slow Sony is to utilize the features we all paid more for. Beyond a PS3 10 year life Sony says nothing....for most consumers including myself, we don't know what a 10 year life means as I do not have insider information of the timetables for new features implemented by the Industry. Apparently Sony does given the PS3 design.

I believe 4K DLPs will be out next year at prices which are affordable ($3K for 73 inch and $2K for 65 inch). Edit: According to the research I just did, TI dropped the ball and is just now releasing 1080P mirror arrays. Projections for a high end home theatre DLP 4K projector were targeted at under $10K (this for 30 foot screens). This new information puts off DLP 4K by MGA till 2012.

Current MGA 65 inch 1080P DLP TVs sold for $699 black Friday. That low a price usually signals a new feature set so that newer models can sell for a higher price.

4K movie releases
http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/mkt-digitalcinema/resource.latest.bbsccms-assets-mkt-digicinema-latest-4kmoviereleaseslisting.shtml

EDIT: The above list is for Sony-Columbia only. Few are true 4K res, many are upconverted from film with a res slightly over 2K. Sony "borrowed" RedRay 4k cameras for two movies this year. Why would Sony upconvert their movies and start filming in 4K?

1) 10,000 new 4K DLP projectors are going to be added to the 6,000 already in theaters.

2) Multiple 4K CE prototypes are being shown. Several are displaying 1080P 3-D (DLP and LG polarized 3-D display) by starting with 4K res.

http://www.taranfx.com/4k-resolution-3d-lcd

LG makes many of the Sony TVs and they are experimenting with polarized 3-D viewing with 4K monitors.
The PS3 can, I believe with a software update, display 4K pictures and 4K video.
Blu-ray players that can display 3-D may do this also or with minor production changes, can play 4K blu-ray.

4K resolution is coming, the time frame is debatable. My guess is within 2 years, others are saying 7-10.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=59292

With resolution for movies and commercials now jumping from 2K (2048×1080) to 4K (4096×2160), the time required for post production work has risen significantly, driving a growing demand for more efficient workflows to speed up the process.

To date, post production work has typically been carried out on general purpose workstations or cluster servers. Sony’s efforts to accelerate the process have now resulted in the development and deployment of the new BCU-100 Computing
Unit.

The new unit, which incorporates Cell/B.E. and RSX technologies, employs a “heterogeneous multicore processor” architecture that is specifically designed to optimize a particular type of application.Under current plans, the BCU-100 will be available with a software package that includes mental ray® from mental images GmbH and Houdini®
Click to expand...

1) Movies and commercials are NOW jumping to 4K
2) The Sony editor mentioned uses the PS3 chipset to edit 4K video which means the PS3 hardware can display 4K.
 
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Came back from my ski trip.

Make sure you check out VUDU. You should have $6 free credit in your account now. The movie selections are very new (Same day as DVD and Blu-ray)

They have $0.99/rental deals for the entire holiday season for older movies.
 
NathansFortune said:
I've been using Qriocity since it launched on the free trial month. It is very slick. I just think £9.99 is too much, they need to make it £6.99 and then I will buy into it. The £3.99 package sounds pretty crap tbh, but then I never really liked free Spotify because there was no customisation.

Qriocity is going places, and by next year we won't recognise PSN. :oops:
Click to expand...

I rewatched the Qriocity trailer. Remember you work for a Sony partner company.

Is the fanciful Qriocity UI really usable ? It looks rather cumbersome and confusing.

I got stranded over the weekend up in Truckee, California. While waiting for the snow shower to pass, I helped a few random people in the cafe fix their laptops.

These people have laptops but they don't understand technologies and modern UI. e.g., One of them doesn't know copy-and-paste exists. She has been retyping the same advertisement to post on Craig's List everyday. The other guy was too afraid to click on anything that animates. ^_^

But they are all very familiar with the web. It may be more acceptable to these people to have simple point and click UI (but keep things snappy -- like the new PS Store). Don't distract or confuse the users with over designed UI.

The Qriocity UI in the trailer looks like it's designed or dressed up by a PR/ad agency than a UI designer.
 
It's pretty easy to use, but they need to have a better search. It's pretty good on PS3, as good as it is going to get. It is a universal UI, but it works best on a touch screen. The Android app is really good, and adding songs to your library and making playlists is trivial on a touch screen.

https://music.qriocity.com/

If you can try out the PC web-app outside of the UK then it is over there. It works like iTunes basically, make a playlist, sync locally stored playlists, songs and albums to your library.
 
patsu said:
I got stranded over the weekend up in Truckee, California. While waiting for the snow shower to pass, I helped a few random people in the cafe fix their laptops.
.
Click to expand...

Any jokes about the Donner party considering you were 10 miles from Donner pass and stuck in a diner/cafe due to a snow storm.....
 
NathansFortune said:
It's pretty easy to use, but they need to have a better search. It's pretty good on PS3, as good as it is going to get. It is a universal UI, but it works best on a touch screen. The Android app is really good, and adding songs to your library and making playlists is trivial on a touch screen.

https://music.qriocity.com/

If you can try out the PC web-app outside of the UK then it is over there. It works like iTunes basically, make a playlist, sync locally stored playlists, songs and albums to your library.
Click to expand...

It says: "Sorry, this service is not available in your country/region.".

Patience....


jeff_rigby said:
Any jokes about the Donner party considering you were 10 miles from Donner pass and stuck in a diner/cafe due to a snow storm.....
Click to expand...

Ha ha, I was indeed stuck right before Donner Pass, trying to make my way back to the Bay Area.

No joke, but I'm christened "The Computer Angel" by the local folks. Makes me feel like Santa Claus. It's a nice, white Christmas for me. \^o^/
 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704278404576037691969791946.html

Blu-ray is emerging as a holiday hero for Hollywood as the film industry grapples with the rise of online video and a persistent slump in its most profitable source of revenue: DVD sales.

A combination of the weak economy, online piracy and low-cost rental and streaming services has driven continued declines in DVD sales this year, but strong growth in Blu-ray—premium-priced discs that offer a higher-quality home viewing experience—suggests consumers still have an appetite for physical home-movie products.

...

Sales of Blu-ray movies were up 75% year-to-year at the start of the holiday shopping season, according to Nash Information Services, and are expected to nearly double for the full year. Blu-ray is on track to be a $2 billion business this year, while the DVD business—down 13% through the first three quarters of the year—is expected to shrink to $8 billion.

NPD Group said that 13% of U.S. households had a Blu-ray player at the beginning of the holiday season, and that number could rise to 20% early next year, driven by a proliferation of Blu-ray players available for under $100 in this holiday season.

...
Click to expand...
 
Ripping Blu-ray directly may take a long time, but including a separate lower res copy for other players should be easy. The only part that may screw up is the DRM. If they make Qriocity DRM as easy as Apple's FairPlay, even better !
 
I'm thinking of dropping WinXP on my desktop PC & going full-time to Jolicloud, but I'll need a Linux replacement for PlayOn to stream Hulu, TheCW & other channels to my Xbox. Other than PS3MediaServer are there any other suggestions out there? Guess I could continue using PlayOn with Wine, but haven't heard good things about that. Appreciate any feedback.

Tommy McClain
 
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