A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

[-tkf-]

YI know Sony has been secretly/quietly testing day-and-date releases for digital distribution and disc-based releases. iTunes, NetFlix, XBL Video Marketplace, and Playstation Video Store will certainly benefit from the new digital download business models.


All in all, consumers will get to choose how they want their movies: Full ownership and rental model.

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/s...owards_Video_On_Demand_Same_Day_Releases/3464

I am just so happy with the way Blu-Ray is growing, movies are going down in price, the selection is growing.

 

[thambos]

NetFlix low-cost Blu-ray rental help too.

NetFlix charges extra for BD rentals now. Granted it's cheaper than $7-8 video store rentals, if you watch & mail it right back the next day; but it's not as low cost anymore (like when it used to be treated the same as DVD)

 

[patsu]

NetFlix charges extra for BD rentals now. Granted it's cheaper than $7-8 video store rentals, if you watch & mail it right back the next day; but it's not as low cost anymore (like when it used to be treated the same as DVD)

Ahem, have you rent Blu-ray movies from NetFlix at all ? There is no mailing fee. >_<
It is only US$1-2 more expensive than NetFlix's DVD subscription fees.

I believe RedBox kiosk will be vending Blu-ray discs too.

 

[BadTB25]

RedBox??? That's really cool. I wonder if it will still be $0.99.

 

[patsu]

CoinStar bought RedBox entirely. The Blu-ray rental price may go up from their limited trial $1/rental.

In CoinStar's August 2009 report:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/153785-coinstar-inc-q2-2009-earnings-call-transcript

First, we clearly understand the importance of fostering collaborative relationships with the studios. Just two weeks ago, we announced a long term partnership with Sony and we continue to have positive conversations with other studios along similar lines. Secondly, we plan on testing different pricing models, all the while preserving our core value proposition. Third, we will continue to expand the footprint of our DVD kiosk and increase market share. The retailer and consumer demand has been incredible, so we plan on continuing to strengthen our significant leadership position. And fourth, we plan to extend the current product offering by testing video games, Blu Ray and a broader title base.

I think some studios are trying to delay/block RedBox because $1/rental is too cheap.

 

[thambos]

Ahem, have you rent Blu-ray movies from NetFlix at all ? There is no mailing fee. >_<
It is only US$1-2 more expensive than NetFlix's DVD subscription fees.

I believe RedBox kiosk will be vending Blu-ray discs too.

I used to until they increased their fees. i had the 3 out at a time plan and they raised it from like $16 to $22. they actually raised it twice if i recall, once last year and once again this summer. i wasn't too happy about that. the only real advantage to netflix over hollywood video or blockbuster is watching on XBL.

i switched to a BB 3-out unlimited rental since i drive by one 4 times a week anyway, cheaper ($20) and i get twice as many rentals per month w/ 1/2 the time waiting for the mail. You can return them in the store and the next one is sent out instantly (or the next morning if you return it at like 11PM), instead of netflix you have to wait for it to get there by mail and for it to be sorted & scanned. You can also exchange 5 a month for a rental from the store w/ no waiting (even for a game). and no extra charge for BD.

 

[patsu]

Yes, they did raise it twice. But I think it depends on your plan. We only get a US$1 increase in my household (The raise may be US$1/disc ?). There is no mailing fee. I wanted to check out Blockbuster's rental services but couldn't be bother to switch yet.

 

[thambos]

Yes, they did raise it twice. But I think it depends on your plan. We only get a US$1 increase in my household (The raise may be US$1/disc ?). There is no mailing fee. I wanted to check out Blockbuster's rental services but couldn't be bother to switch yet.

i'm not sure how they did it. you probably have their 2 (or 3?) a month plan. The larger the plan the more they charged for having BD as an option.

i suppose what's better also has to do w/ how far you are from the distribution center. if youre a 1-day mail away from a netflix that's better than being 3 days away from a BB mailing center, even w/ in store returns. i just happen to be close to a BB dist so it was the better choice.

 

[flynn]

Which is the same as video upscaling...

The upside to audio upscaling is the signal is far simpler than video and we can work within a more confined space of perception and interpretation.

I was thinking about some paper I read a while ago (sorry don't have a link) where a low res video was used to produce a high res picture. AFAIK no DVD player/software uses this technique but I think it could be used. I've never seen anything like this being done for lossy compressed audio.

When it comes to DVDs my main complain is the edge enhancement abuse but I think the PS3 does a pretty good job at upscaling DVDs.

I don't usually listen to music on my PS3 but do with a pair of reference monitors and my take on it is this: CD quality is okay but many times the sound engineer compresses (I dynamic range compression) the heck out of the sound and the result is pretty bad. For mp3 I'm ok with an mp3 with high enough bitrate unless it's something like jazz or classical in which case it's always going to sound bad, no matter how much signal processing you throw at it.

I really don't get what you mean by this line! "Sound better" and "perceived as sounding nicer" are exactly the same thing! All sound is a perception. If you meant "does it rebuild a more accurate representation of the analogue source, or does it just make the errors in the digital source less obvious" than upsampling is a bit of both.

I wasn't clear enough, my bad. I meant trying to restore the original. In the above mentioned video based image enhancement this is actually possible as the information is spread over several frames. Would something like that be possible with audio? Maybe.

But also the purpose isn't to rebuild exactly the source wave, but to create a more pleasing experience.

That makes a lot of sense and it would be no different from people setting their equalizers in a certain way because they like their music better that way.

 

[patsu]

Sony to roll out PSP Digital Copy on Blu-ray:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/29/new-digital-copies-on-the-actual-blu-ray-disc-from-sony-exclusiv/

What Sony is doing now is something that was demoed at CES 2008, which is to store a PSP friendly copy, on the actual Blu-ray Disc. This way all you have to do is insert the disc into a PlayStation 3 and transfer it directly over to a PSP -- no computer required. This of course doesn't help those who'd prefer to watch the Digital Copy on their PC or iPod, so they'll still need to continue to look for an extra DVD in the box. All this fun starts November 10th with the release of Godzilla and The Ugly Truth, both of which sport the PSP copy on the Blu-ray Disc

This is different from Blu-ray's Managed Copy scheme. Likely to be a stop-gap until more BD players support Managed Copy.

 

[Rotmm]

It may have been mentioned before (scanned the thread, but didn't see any mention), but Windows 7 Media Center streaming is much, much improved to the Xbox360.

So far, every movie type I have thrown at it is supported (though some x264 files need to be run through tsMuxer) in both standard Xvid and HD formats. On top of that, the WinMC GUI is beautiful.

No more Tversity for either platform.

 

[joker454]

ETA of arrival, installation, and impressions?

Finally got the c-200, and toyed with it last night for a while. The fast verdict: my quest is at an end I love this thing! I uninstalled tversity, don't need it anymore. Don't need any media server for that matter. The c-200 can talk directly with my 6tb dlink raid which uses smb. All I had to do was add a network share on the c-200 where my movie directory is and that was it.

It plays my blu-ray dumps perfectly. No re-encoding needed anymore! Just dump the blu-ray to raid with anydvdhd, and this thing plays them perfectly. It even supports the chapter stops which I kept on all dumps, and menus which I kept on concert blurays. It works fast as well, I can rewind and fast forward up to 32x no problem even over a network on 30gb+ m2ts files.

Apparently it also supports L5.1 h264 encodes. I don't have any such files so I haven't been able to test it, but on the forums people are claiming they play just fine. They won't officially say it's supported though since apparently that spec can go as high as 300mbps. But typical L5.1 files are claimed to work.

The firmware is still beta, the only issue apparently is that their gigabit network driver sucks. The fix is to use a 10/100 switch. Indeed with a gigabit switch I was getting lots of stutters on playback. Switching that to a 10/100 switch totally eliminated that issue. They are working on a fix. There might be more issues, I've only used it for an hour or so, but so far it's working nicely.

Anyways, in a nutshell I'm done with the hobbled consoles as media centers, no need anymore. Funny how a small company can outdo both Microsoft and Sony, but the consoles suck compared to this thing. All my rips now work, so I'm done. My quest is at an end.

 

[-tkf-]

Finally got the c-200, and toyed with it last night for a while. The fast verdict: my quest is at an end I love this thing! I uninstalled tversity, don't need it anymore. Don't need any media server for that matter. The c-200 can talk directly with my 6tb dlink raid which uses smb. All I had to do was add a network share on the c-200 where my movie directory is and that was it.

It plays my blu-ray dumps perfectly. No re-encoding needed anymore! Just dump the blu-ray to raid with anydvdhd, and this thing plays them perfectly. It even supports the chapter stops which I kept on all dumps, and menus which I kept on concert blurays. It works fast as well, I can rewind and fast forward up to 32x no problem even over a network on 30gb+ m2ts files.

Apparently it also supports L5.1 h264 encodes. I don't have any such files so I haven't been able to test it, but on the forums people are claiming they play just fine. They won't officially say it's supported though since apparently that spec can go as high as 300mbps. But typical L5.1 files are claimed to work.

The firmware is still beta, the only issue apparently is that their gigabit network driver sucks. The fix is to use a 10/100 switch. Indeed with a gigabit switch I was getting lots of stutters on playback. Switching that to a 10/100 switch totally eliminated that issue. They are working on a fix. There might be more issues, I've only used it for an hour or so, but so far it's working nicely.

Anyways, in a nutshell I'm done with the hobbled consoles as media centers, no need anymore. Funny how a small company can outdo both Microsoft and Sony, but the consoles suck compared to this thing. All my rips now work, so I'm done. My quest is at an end.

Well well, excellent news! Few questions. Are you hooked up via HDMI.
Does is support bitstreaming and full PCM over HDMI.
Does it upconvert everything to 1080p or can you pick a res.

 

[BadTB25]

Finally got the c-200, and toyed with it last night for a while. The fast verdict: my quest is at an end I love this thing! I uninstalled tversity, don't need it anymore. Don't need any media server for that matter. The c-200 can talk directly with my 6tb dlink raid which uses smb. All I had to do was add a network share on the c-200 where my movie directory is and that was it.

It plays my blu-ray dumps perfectly. No re-encoding needed anymore! Just dump the blu-ray to raid with anydvdhd, and this thing plays them perfectly. It even supports the chapter stops which I kept on all dumps, and menus which I kept on concert blurays. It works fast as well, I can rewind and fast forward up to 32x no problem even over a network on 30gb+ m2ts files.

Apparently it also supports L5.1 h264 encodes. I don't have any such files so I haven't been able to test it, but on the forums people are claiming they play just fine. They won't officially say it's supported though since apparently that spec can go as high as 300mbps. But typical L5.1 files are claimed to work.

The firmware is still beta, the only issue apparently is that their gigabit network driver sucks. The fix is to use a 10/100 switch. Indeed with a gigabit switch I was getting lots of stutters on playback. Switching that to a 10/100 switch totally eliminated that issue. They are working on a fix. There might be more issues, I've only used it for an hour or so, but so far it's working nicely.

Anyways, in a nutshell I'm done with the hobbled consoles as media centers, no need anymore. Funny how a small company can outdo both Microsoft and Sony, but the consoles suck compared to this thing. All my rips now work, so I'm done. My quest is at an end.

Do you have a link for where you got yours?

I love my modded XBox for it's XBMC features (too bad it doesn't play HD vids) and have been waiting for something to replace it on my media center.

I would be willing to pick one up if the price is reasonable.
Also, I'm not very experienced setting up a home network so would you mind posting your setup?

thanks

 

[joker454]

Well well, excellent news! Few questions. Are you hooked up via HDMI.
Does is support bitstreaming and full PCM over HDMI.
Does it upconvert everything to 1080p or can you pick a res.

Yup, hdmi. I'm using it in the bedroom, so a single hdmi cable straight to the tv.

The unit does not have support to decode DTSHD-MA or DolbyTrueHD. They apparently skipped those for cost reasons. But it can bitstream them according to the docs. On my bedroom setup I have no way to test that since I have no a/v receiver there, it just goes straight to the tv. They do support decoding the older DTS and AC3 formats (which are included alongside the new HD audio formats) so in my case it will find the legacy audio tracks embedded in the new HD ones and decode those, and send them as pcm to the tv. If I had an a/v receiver I'd set the unit to bitstream instead to get hd audio support.

I left it on auto, and it defaulted to 1080p on mine. There was a setting for output mode, I think it can be set to 720p if need be.

Do you have a link for where you got yours?

I love my modded XBox for it's XBMC features (too bad it doesn't play HD vids) and have been waiting for something to replace it on my media center.

I would be willing to pick one up if the price is reasonable.
Also, I'm not very experienced setting up a home network so would you mind posting your setup?

thanks

I had ordered mine way back in August right from their website:

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

It took forever to arrive My wife handles all the network crap at our house, it is kinda elaborate and I'm definitely not the networking expert. But it's basically a gigabit network wired over the whole house. I keep all the movies on a Dlink DNS-343 which is a gigabit unit. It's down at the opposite corner of the house. 3 switches later it will make it's way to the c-200 in the bedroom. I don't think the unit includes wireless, so you would need a wired network jack.

It's $300, which is definitely overpriced. When you open it up you can see that there is nothing in there. It can take an hdd and blu-ray drive, but it comes with none of that, just a tiny motherboard in the case. In my case I added a 4gb usb 2.0 thumbdrive to it, there's a jack right on the motherboard for it, and that's all I added just to give it some storage if needed. So the unit runs silent and powers on pretty quick. It is technically still in beta so I'm sure there are some issues that will crop up, but so far so good. It is silly that it costs as much as a PS3 and yet comes with no hdd and no blu-ray! But at this point I'm not sure if there is anything else out there that has as much functionality, so they can get away with it for now.

 

[BadTB25]

Thanks,

I may wait a little bit before purchase. It's more than what I want to pay for right now.

It's a shame that neither the PS3 or Xbox360 can play all the formats especially when my xbox could play the non-HD vids.

 

[joker454]

It's a shame that neither the PS3 or Xbox360 can play all the formats especially when my xbox could play the non-HD vids.

Yeah it's a shame since they both have plenty of power to play everything. But it'll never happen on consoles due to politics so I gave up and moved on.

 

[Rotmm]

It's a shame that neither the PS3 or Xbox360 can play all the formats especially when my xbox could play the non-HD vids.

Xbox360 plays all the formats I've thrown at it when using Win7 and connecting to Media Center via 360.

I'm sure there's something I haven't come across yet, but Divx, Xvid, x264, etc all play fine.

 

[BadTB25]

That's good to hear.
How about .mkv files?

I have a ton of Bleach episodes that my X360 played flawlessly up until ~160. For some reason even though it is a .avi file, it won't play it.

 

[joker454]

Xbox360 plays all the formats I've thrown at it when using Win7 and connecting to Media Center via 360.

I'm sure there's something I haven't come across yet, but Divx, Xvid, x264, etc all play fine.

But then you have to keep a PC on 24/7 no? I don't really want to do that. The raid unit snoozes when not in use and auto spins up when it needs to serve movies. I also kinda doubt Win7 would support the bluray folder format so I could get chapters, menus, etc... I suppose I could test if it at least supports streaming the m2ts files directly, just out of curiosity.