A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

None of the 720p WMV game videos from Microsoft sites (Turn 10, Bungie) work properly on my PS3. Video is fine but the audio codec doesn't work. Forcing me to watch them on my 360 (which is annoyingly loud)

Is MS deliberately using an audio format unplayable on PS3?

Isn't there a setting somewhere for enabling WMA, something you have to register through the settings, like the DivX thing? Maybe you didn't do that yet on your PS3?
 
Are you downloading them and then playing them from HDD, or are you streaming them? I haven't tried any of those videos directly from their site, but I did watch the Turn 10 video on my PS3 (the one that starts with the yellow, ehm, I think it was a Supra?) and had no problems.

No, I download them on a PC and play them off a USB drive.

Yea that vid works but the some of the others don't (the Dreams one), none of Bungie's vids work either.

I did enable WMA playback so I guess it must be MS's proprietary audio format that the PS3 doesnt support.
 
Yes, the audio format is WMA-Pro. It's not, as you say, that MS is "deliberately using a codec incompatible with the PS3", it's that MS uses WMA-Pro in high-def .WMV files on the PC. WMA-Pro is significantly higher quality to WMA and is arguably higher quality than AAC.

While it is proprietary, it's trivially licensable. My A/V receiver supports it as a format, Motorola phones support it, Windows Mobile/Zune/Xbox (of course) support it, Verizon uses it for their V-Cast (mobile TV on cell phone) service, NBC uses it on its wildly-popular NBCOlympics site for live streaming as well.

Sony has simply chosen not to license it.
 
Isn't there a setting somewhere for enabling WMA, something you have to register through the settings, like the DivX thing? Maybe you didn't do that yet on your PS3?

That setting is only for the standard WMA.

Yes, the audio format is WMA-Pro. It's not, as you say, that MS is "deliberately using a codec incompatible with the PS3", it's that MS uses WMA-Pro in high-def .WMV files on the PC. WMA-Pro is significantly higher quality to WMA and is arguably higher quality than AAC.

There are several codec listening test results in WMA Pro's wikipedia entry.

While it is proprietary, it's trivially licensable. My A/V receiver supports it as a format, Motorola phones support it, Windows Mobile/Zune/Xbox (of course) support it, Verizon uses it for their V-Cast (mobile TV on cell phone) service, NBC uses it on its wildly-popular NBCOlympics site for live streaming as well.

Sony has simply chosen not to license it.

Yap... I prefer companies to go with standard codecs. That way we only need to remux streams in the worst case.
 
Yes. Sony also has simply chosen not to write a decoder for it for its SPE. ;) (just wanted to point out it's not 'just' a matter of licencing - or maybe it is, because doesn't the 360 lack AC3 support or something during playback of certain video files, and they simply chose to go for their own format because they didn't have to pay anything for it?)
 
Yes. Sony also has simply chosen not to write a decoder for it for its SPE. ;) (just wanted to point out it's not 'just' a matter of licencing - or maybe it is, because doesn't the 360 lack AC3 support or something during playback of certain video files, and they simply chose to go for their own format because they didn't have to pay anything for it?)
You don't usually need to write WMA/MP3 type decoders in machine code...they could license the decoder's code in C++ and get it running pretty easily without much work. They choose not to. There are free, open source implementations also (eg, ffmpeg).

Yap... I prefer companies to go with standard codecs. That way we only need to remux streams in the worst case.
I prefer companies support as many codecs as possible, not just ones they deem standard. The lack of WMA Pro support means PS3 users won't be able to play back many .WMV files downloaded from the web (as we've seen here), they won't be able to stream NBCOlympics' live coverage during Olympic events (which would actually be quite a cool use of the PS3 web browser), and they won't be able to play back music people rip with Windows Media Player at the highest settings.

I can understand why they don't have support for it, but they really should.
 
I prefer companies support as many codecs as possible, not just ones they deem standard. The lack of WMA Pro support means PS3 users won't be able to play back many .WMV files downloaded from the web (as we've seen here), they won't be able to stream NBCOlympics' live coverage during Olympic events (which would actually be quite a cool use of the PS3 web browser), and they won't be able to play back music people rip with Windows Media Player at the highest settings.

I can understand why they don't have support for it, but they really should.

It's like asking why MS doesn't just adopt 5.1 AC3 since 360 can already play it... except not with H.264 together :)no:). It's a simple switch on their side.

My guess is WMA Pro support will require $$$ and additional support cost. If they were to make a family of products, some of the features may need to carry over to other products (e.g., AVCHD is supported on Sony and Panasonic products). Easiest is probably for all to standardize on AAC and H.264. They can contribute to the standards like everyone else.
 
It's like asking why MS doesn't just adopt 5.1 AC3 since 360 can already play it... except not with H.264 together :)no:). It's a simple switch on their side.
It's perplexing but don't the same limitations exist on the PS3?

I've got a bunch of 30 Rock rips which are H264 video, AC3 audio and whenever I try to view them through PS3 Media Server straight through DLNA or through TSMuxer I get "Data corrupted" errors. I need to transcode them for them to stream.
 
It's perplexing but don't the same limitations exist on the PS3?

Nope. PS3 supports AVCHD, which includes AC3 and H.264.

I've got a bunch of 30 Rock rips which are H264 video, AC3 audio and whenever I try to view them through PS3 Media Server straight through DLNA or through TSMuxer I get "Data corrupted" errors. I need to transcode them for them to stream.

Check your encoding parameters.
 
I prefer companies support as many codecs as possible, not just ones they deem standard.

I don't think the consoles will ever do that, they have too many other interests and conflicts to allow that. You may want to consider a non console though, I pre-ordered this thing:

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=productspec&item_id=12

The Popcorn Hour c-200. Apparently it just plays everything without any drama, even ripped blu-rays. It's not a console, but it seems like the consoles will forever fumble about with half assed media playback support, and I'm tired of having to deal with transcoding, broken playback, partial codec support and all the other hassles of the so-called console media center consoles including having to re-organize my media needs around them. So I ordered the c-200 to see if it's really as trouble free as everyone claims it to be. At least this way if a family member sends me a video in a format deemed un-worthy by the consoles, in theory I won't have to worry about it with the c-200.

Or so it's claimed...I'll know soon enough once I get it, but it's something to consider if like me you're tired of waiting on the consoles to catch up to 2009, or get irritated when someone comes over with a thumb drive of home videos and the damn consoles won't play them.
 
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Check your encoding parameters.

Check them for what? They're not my encoding parameters either.

They play just fine for me on the PC. The only thing different from them and other files I have is they have AC3 audio, vs AAC in most of them.

While the PS3 supports AVCHD, that doesn't mean it supports all combinations of h264 and AC3. As this demonstrates.
 
I got them from a colleague at work.


The shows are very recent (few months ag0).


I used PS3 Media Server, whatever the default transcoding option is is what it used.

Might want to check debug.log to see if PMS report any issues. The "Data corrupted" error may apply to something that is not related to the AC3 decoder. e.g., Your demuxer may be too old for some new mkv features.
 
Or so it's claimed...I'll know soon enough once I get it, but it's something to consider if like me you're tired of waiting on the consoles to catch up to 2009, or get irritated when someone comes over with a thumb drive of home videos and the damn consoles won't play them.

ETA of arrival, installation, and impressions?
 
Might want to check debug.log to see if PMS report any issues. The "Data corrupted" error may apply to something that is not related to the AC3 decoder. e.g., Your demuxer may be too old for some new mkv features.
I'm not entirely sure how it works, but doesn't PMS have the same MKV parser frontend? It works if I transcode through PMS, just not strict demuxing. I cannot fathom this MKV using any advanced features, there are none that I can see -- it's a very simple container. No subs, no chapters, single audio track, etc. If it was the MKV parsing that failed, wouldn't it be systematic with anything in PMS that needs to read the MKV?
 
I'm not entirely sure how it works, but doesn't PMS have the same MKV parser frontend? It works if I transcode through PMS, just not strict demuxing. I cannot fathom this MKV using any advanced features, there are none that I can see -- it's a very simple container. No subs, no chapters, single audio track, etc. If it was the MKV parsing that failed, wouldn't it be systematic with anything in PMS that needs to read the MKV?

You might try multiAVCHD as a tool to try and convert this to what it thinks should be Playstation 3 compatible (big button for that by default). There will be no mistake then whether or not it will really transcode or just remux.
 
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