A comparison of PS3 and 360 as media players

New PS3 Media Server build:
http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3217

I wondered what happend to the updates, were i looking at the wrong place?

 

Cool, I was wondering what happened to him since the PMS update has slowed.

There was a Blu-Con 2.0 convention on Nov 4th. DEC revealed some info about Blu-ray's status:
http://www.dealerscope.com/article/...oughout-day-blu-con-los-angeles-414132_1.html

 

Managed Copy delayed until March 2010:
http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6705943.html

On paper...

 

Good thing the war with HD-DVD is over...

Tommy McClain

 

Another report on Blu-Con 2.0:
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/s..._to_Connect_Viewers_to_Movies_AND_People/3729

It summarizes the 5 major studio's BD-Live philosophy and products.

 

A truckload of details and tidbits about Blu-ray from Blu-Con 2.0:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/mytwocentsa173.html#110509

About 3D TV + Blu-ray:

The link has more.

 

That's a relief. I had no interest in 3d until I very recently was demo'd a whole bunch of scenes from popular movies all converted to 3d at a companies theater screening room. Needless to say I was blown away, now I want it Still not sure I'm all that crazy about having to wear the glasses though.

Normally the cpu has little to do with it. It's all about the gpu rendering two frames, each one having stuff offset by a bit depending how close or how far away you want them to be. Any platform can do it if it has enough gpu power. For example, I saw a 3d demo running on an older nvidia quadro card on a regular pc and it worked fine. For the current consoles to do it all they have to do it spec and render the game at 60fps, then halve that to be able to render both offset frames to get it working 3d at full 1280x720 res.

 

Yeah, it's a definite case of seeing is believing!

 

Is there anyway of doing this without the glasses?
Also, will the TV be able to still output regular HD without the 3D effects?

I haven't really kept up with the technology.

 

My first 3D movie was Up! I wasn't that impressed. The 3D effect is good when the image is stationary, or slightly changing, but fast motion juddered horrifically. I also found it distracting, that I was looking at the 3D effect rather than the story. And when you 'switch off' from looking at the 3D effect, you notice it doesn't really add anything. So I for one am in no rush. I want faster framerates overall, and only 3D when it doesn't need glasses and when it actually contributes something rather than just being a gimmick.

 

For movie decoding there is obvious need for more hw power to decode 2 images instead of 1. PS3 should have the hw power and flexibility to do that. Standalone players with their dedicated decoders on the other hand...

 

No, this BD-spec does not support that.

A screen not requiring glasses will need more information than that to work properly. I guess we should not expect such screens aimed at the mass market for another 5-10 years now, given this BD spec.

I would expect it to be selectable.

@patsu, thanks for the meaty information!

 

Bound to be standard TV capable. How many people will be happy to have 2 TVs in the prime TV spot?

 

Are they really going to go with two simultaneous streams for 3d blu-ray? That would effectively halve the blu-ray 50gb/40mbps video spec leaving them 25gb/20mbps available for each 1920x1080p stream.

The one I saw was a new tech, apparently not seen by the public yet. The glasses weren't new, but the 2d->3d process was new. It was a private screening room at their corporate location and it looked incredible to me. They just took short classic scenes from assorted movies from the 70's to today and 3d'd them to show off the tech and get buyers. I suspect people will be hearing about them more soon.

 

My best guess would be one stream with variant of h264 that is optimized for storing 3d movies. What I have been reading it requires 50% more space compared to the normal single frame 1080p video. PS3 has anyway 2* br drive which would allow a bit higher bitrates than what are used currently.

I'm not holding my breath though, it might very well be ps3 will not end up supporting 3d movies. It just is much more likely for ps3 than for current and past standalone players.

 

I thought the PS3 engineers already implemented 2 parallel BD streams when the PiP specs was not fully defined at BD launch. It also has spare capacity to run a Java app at the same time. There was an interview with the Japanese engineers that mentioned this 2-3 years ago. Basically, they planned it that way to fake early BD PiP.

As I understand, the potential problem is more with the HDMI 1.3a port. May not be an issue with PS3 Slim though since it uses a newer chip.

 

I will not be in a hurry to get a 3D capable TV. In the future, if they can figure out how to get the effect without the glasses, I may reconsider.

 

Well personally I feel it would be madness to introduce a 3d blu-ray format that didn't work on PS3. That way when 3d blu-ray movies are ready they will be launching into a market that already has 30+ million players. Seems like the logical thing to do.

Pip streams are usually not very demanding though, space and bitrate wise. Whereas with 3d the left frame is as demanding as the right frame, so you are basically doubling space and bitrate needs. I don't doubt that the PS3 has the muscle to process it all, but it's that 50gb/40mbps space and bitrate specs that seem like they could be limiting if they go with two full streams.

I took a look at my blu-rays just to see how much space each movie needs. Each one is stripped to the bare movie + best audio track into a single m2ts file. Out of 81 movies the biggest is 44.1gb, the smallest is 14.6gb. 38 of them are >25gb, and 43 are <25gb in size. So if they do intend to go with two streams, I guess they will need to be quite clever.

 

Yes, 2 parallel streams is an overkill for PiP. But the engineers mentioned that they made the worst case assumption and went with it because they had to complete the implementation before the BD specs was finalized. The same article also cited 3D movie as a reason why they optimized for 2 parallel streams during development.

I could find the link on B3D, but the source site is no longer there.

 

That's right, but what people want is that they play all formats on their own, not having to use a computer.