PS3 Firmware 2.30

Then you are all set starting June: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008...patriots-–-product-details-revealed/#more-467



Don't know when the 40Gb + Dualshock 3 bundle will happen.

Someone else was looking for a 80Gb PS3 here. Can't seem to find the post using the forum search.

Greetings, Since you are looking at what is bundled figured a better screen shot might help. http://www.flickr.com/photos/playstationblog/2401726269/sizes/l/

Right after mentioning included dual shock controller + Pain downloadable game voucher. So you get 48GB Metal Gear Solid 4, (Possible MGS Online Beta if pre-ordered), and included PAIN (Not sure how fun that game is?).

As well as DTS-HD Master Audio and DolbyTrue-HD in up to 7.1 surround sound. (I was right, They did it. ;)) Not sure if firmware 2.20 will decode & output all 7.1 channels, or start with 5.1 channel output. (Wait and see. :???: ) For what it counts movies natively encoded in 7.1 LPCM, already output perfectly fine (as mentioned in forums at some unmentioned bitrate). So if the firmware/decode works well then 7.1 seems reasonably possible.
 
I would really like to see explanation of the user hearable jitter.... it would have to be in tens of milliseconds range and how does that happen in reality?

It is a receiver issue here. Different receivers handle timing differently. The problem isn't when you get off by 1 bit, the problem is when you get the clocks mismatched so that it drops a few every second. Your receiver can get off and it can get to be audible. You need REALLY good speakers to do this though or other effects will dominate jitter by a lot. What is worse is that you also tend to need a low to mid end receiver (one that does not buffer and post process LPCM signals). That combination is doomed for failure regardless IMHO.

edit. Why doesn't that jitter occur with decoded picture that has much higher bandwidth requirements?

It does. It shows up in two forms. One is "snow" - which you will rarely see on any decent HD receiver. The other is missing pixels at the end of the line. Missing pixels will be colored either white or black. Remember though that the edges of the lines are fixed, so this would only appear at the edges of a screen. Most people's televisions have 1-5% overscan anyway so the affected areas would never be drawn.

Note that there is another "timing" problem with picture that is far more prevalent. That is when the television or receiver doesn't get the pull down right.

Even more to the point though, most recievers or televisions do some form of post processing - meaning they buffer incoming information and try to correct it for artifacts in the source. That tends to crush any artifacts caused by transmission.

edit2: How would jitter happen if client has nice buffer to fight against lag. all jitter would be null&void before actually occuring

It doesn't happen if a good buffer is available - hence the reason such buffers are useful in processing.

Just more in general, there are two main reasons people prefer bitstreaming:

1) Post Processing - this one is the big one. Post processing includes things like Pro Logic II processing. In other words, taking a 2.1 signal and turning into a 5.1 or a 5.1 and simulating a 7.1. Several receivers that people would consider mid to high end will not post process LPCM sound. For example, the Onkyo 605s will not. The Onkyo 705s will. Personally, I use a Denon that does post process LPCM sound. So in my case, there is no advantage to have the sound bit streamed. Note that most of the receivers that don't are older. However, when you spend $2000-$5000 on a receiver you expect it to last 5-10 years. I know people who bought high end receivers only a few years ago that will not post process LPCM. They look for bitstreamed solutions for obvious reasons.

2) Configuration/quality issues. Jitter falls into this. This is really a very setup specific category. Some people have very expensive pre/pros and amps. They prefer their processing to happen in their receiver to make sure they get the most out of their equipment. The more components you add into the mix, the more likely small differences are going to matter. Jitter is the most often cited example, but there are others. Out of the two, I think most people in this category know very well they are in this category and don't generally see the difference as positive or negative. They just choose what is best for their own equipment.

I think the whole topic is really overdone though. If you are really into AV you choose what is best for your setup. I have no idea why people got hung up on the details in the case of the PS3.
 
Someone dig out the other Jitter thread, personally i am done with that discussion :)

The only interesting part imho about Bitstreaming is the ability to correct for example, sound levels, speaker placement, dialog normalization, EQ on LFE or Crossover frequencys, all in the domain of the actual decoding process and not by messing around with the PCM signal afterwards.

Afaik it isn´t possible to adjust any of those on the PS3 with AC3 or DTS?
 
Xalion, thanks for your good and clear answer. Learnt something new. The discussions in avsforum tend to get derailed and seems to be difficult to separate real information from all the noise and voodoo.
 
Upgraded to 2.3. The new store is fast and easy to use. It also standardized on O and X as the buttons for many operations. Good job ! Now if they were to update other XMB interfaces and utilities to follow the same convention, PS3 will become a no-brainer to use. :)

There are some broken images probably due to the high load right now. Should be back to normal once the load dies down.
 
Store is clean to navigate and outside of the pics waiting to be downloaded, it moves fast!

A couple of things though:

Under "all demos" don't sort them out by A-C, D-F, etc... I clicked "all demos" for a reason. Show them ALL please!

It shows a PS sign next to content you already have downloaded but if you click it anyway, it doesn't give you an option to go straight to that product. Still seems that the Store and XMB are seperate.

Web browser is still garbage.

The thing I'm most excited about though is DTS HD MA. Gonna give it a go tomorrow! Thanks Sony for lisetning to that!
 
After downloading 2.3, first thing I did was put in a blu-ray, played it, and hit select. Ahhhh, DTS-MA! I love it, this machine have become a movie lovers wet dream. I tried the new store as well, looking good. It's much more friendly with the blu-ray remote which is what I usually use. Also, I noticed that some of my WMV videos that would stutter while playing under 2.2, seem to be playing ok now.
 
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new store seems completely dynamic and loads content every time it starts. maybe sce will be adding content daily rather than weekly.
 
The EU Playstation Forum has also sync'ed its user IDs with the PSN IDs.

EDIT: The PSP/PC store was also updated with a newer look.
 
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1) Post Processing - this one is the big one. Post processing includes things like Pro Logic II processing. In other words, taking a 2.1 signal and turning into a 5.1 or a 5.1 and simulating a 7.1. Several receivers that people would consider mid to high end will not post process LPCM sound. For example, the Onkyo 605s will not. The Onkyo 705s will. Personally, I use a Denon that does post process LPCM sound. So in my case, there is no advantage to have the sound bit streamed. Note that most of the receivers that don't are older. However, when you spend $2000-$5000 on a receiver you expect it to last 5-10 years. I know people who bought high end receivers only a few years ago that will not post process LPCM. They look for bitstreamed solutions for obvious reasons.

My Onkyo SR605 excepts LPCM from the PS3? I think you mean the SR505 or am I being blonde?
 
If DTS-MA is being decoded on the PS3 and passed out as LPCM, is there some indication that it's using the DTS-MA soundtrack?

Some kind of on-screen display from the PS3 or at your receiver?

What about the other lossless format, TrueHD?

Which discs are using DTS-MA? This must be one of the first Blu-Ray player to support DTS-MA?
 
The PS3 will indicate that it is sending DTS HD MA over PCM, the reciever (in the case of the Onkyo SR605) will show multi channel PCM stream as the PS3 is doing the decoding not the amp. If the PS3 was capable of sending DTS HD MA over bitstream then amp would show that is was decoding the DTS HD MA soundtrack. Well that's how I understand it anyway.
 
If DTS-MA is being decoded on the PS3 and passed out as LPCM, is there some indication that it's using the DTS-MA soundtrack?

Some kind of on-screen display from the PS3 or at your receiver?

What about the other lossless format, TrueHD?

Press the select button during playback and it will inform you as to which codec is being used and its dynamic load. Press the 'square' button and go to the audio icon to toggle through audio stream options during playback if you are not on your preferred soundtrack; you can then check again if the change was successful by pressing select.

Which discs are using DTS-MA? This must be one of the first Blu-Ray player to support DTS-MA?

DTS-MA is featured on many (if not most) FOX releases, and New Line films as well.
 
Noticed new undocumented feature in 2.3 firmware. Go over mp3 and choose info. The editing of song information is now easier and they show more information like how many times song has been played and when the last playing time was. Previously it was possible to only edit single tag in that dialog(the one which was used to sort mp3s), now one can edit any tag linked to the mp3.

Hopefully sony would add subfolders in future. I would like to be able to sort my songs by artist and inside artist each album should show up as a folder. Currently I just sort by album which is not as convenient when one has many albums from single artist.
 
Updated today. Haven't looked at the media aspects, (not really my thing).

But like the new Store from my quick browse through it - I cut it short because I wasn't getting any icons displayed at all.

But it's fast and much, much easier to use. Very pleased with it; although, of course, content will be key.

I'm sure in time some logical inconsistencies will occur to me. For now my only (minor) gripe is that when you're in the right hand side of the screen in the boxes (the 5 x * grid)... if you reach the right hand side limit it won't "carriage return" for you. I guess it was more noticable because I didn't have the icons - but for now it's frustrating. :(
 
I'm sure in time some logical inconsistencies will occur to me. For now my only (minor) gripe is that when you're in the right hand side of the screen in the boxes (the 5 x * grid)... if you reach the right hand side limit it won't "carriage return" for you. I guess it was more noticable because I didn't have the icons - but for now it's frustrating. :(

You mean it doesn't wrap around. :)

I prefer them not to wrap around because I can be lazy and keep the button pressed down to navigate a long way. I also hope they will standardize their usage model throughout the entire PS3. If they wrap around here, they should consider whether to wrap around in XMB too. Once they are consistent (and yet still context sensitive), PS3 navigation will become second nature.

For another example, they can also consider using a XMB-like menu for their PS3 DVD/Blu-ray playback menu. Right now, we have 2 totally different control schemes for the optical disc player (one mini-menu map when you press ^, and one based on shortcut controller keys. Both are totally different from XMB). In general, the lesser the users need to learn/remember, the better.

More (good) sh*t is coming: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/04/15/inside-playstation-network/
I don't want to re-learn or remember all the different nuances for using these services.

Peter Dille said:
The strong lineup of games doesn’t stop there. Many of you have been hearing rumblings about a video service that will allow you to download full-length TV shows and movies via PLAYSTATION Network for North America. While I don’t have any new announcements here for the PlayStation Nation, it’s already been confirmed that we’ll be offering a video service for PS3 in a way that separates the service from others you’ve seen or used. Ultimately the goal of the PLAYSTATION Network service will be to break through the overwhelming clutter of digital media to give you the TV, movies and gaming content you want. More on this very soon …

Community-related services available via PlayStation Network have also been a big focus for enhancements here in 2008. We know you want in-game access to XMB features and we’re committed to bringing that, among other community-related services this year. They will be designed to allow more community development and collaborative gameplay, as well as recognize and reward you for your gameplay accomplishments across a broad portfolio of PS3 games. Of course, 2008 will also see the launch of PlayStation Home, and we’ll have more announcements on the expanding community functions within PLAYSTATION Network in the near future, so stay tuned.

Lastly, we feel your overall experience on PLAYSTATION Network should be rewarding. We hope the redesigned PLAYSTATION Store is a step in the right direction and delivers on your feedback, which is vital to some of the short and long term changes you’ll be seeing with PLAYSTATION Network. We understood from your comments on this very blog that you wanted the PLAYSTATION Store to have a more dynamic look and improved navigation. We want the PlayStation community to enjoy their experiences on PLAYSTATION Network and the online storefront is a key part of that experience.

EDIT: By the way, Playstation Card is coming too

And to wrap up with one of the many topics I know you ask about regularly, we are rolling out the PlayStation Cards to retailers nationwide as we speak. They will have the PlayStation Cards in denominations of $20 and $50 starting this spring. This will provide you with another option to get on board with the PLAYSTATION Store and enjoy the content that I’ve outlined above.
 
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That comment makes me remember that the Play TV interface looks remarkably similar to the new Store.
 
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