And completely usable from a 360, so not really a distinguisher.
Media Center is not a DLNA server. If you have your Media Center connected to your cable, it essentially allows you to forward your DVR/Cable TV to any TV in the house connected to a console, without paying the cable company any extra money. Fully functional, you can watch live TV, record new programs, and also use it for everything you could use a DLNA server for. Never found much use for it myself, since the DLNA media sharing is good enough for my purposes, but for the folks that have a media center, it's incredibly useful.
patsu said:Best version so far is PS3 Media Server. It's free and open sourced.
And completely usable from a 360, so not really a distinguisher.
Indeed, as I said, I don't stream video around my house, but the couple of times I've tried, it worked fine on the XBox, however, I didn't use DivX, I used H.264.My experience with xbox360+ps3 media server(and ms mediaplayer) was far from smooth. A lot of(dozens of files) divx content played back jerkily and audiosync was lost along the way. Also mkv files required transcoding which made my poor little server barf. Same files on ps3 work perfectly(divx as is) and mkv's get remuxed realtime with fairly low cpu usage. So at least to me xbox360 is unusable as dlna client. For now my xbox360 only plays games and ps3 get's to do games and media.
I fully agree. I'd love to be able to choose from different audio and subtitle options. I'd prefer multiple audio tracks personally, since I hate subtitles. Audio dubbing doesn't bother me, I grew up in South Africa and watched many shows dubbed into Afrikaans and Zulu as a kid.edit. Oh, something positive on xbox360. I like the zune marketplace for movie renting and price is also spot on. Also the performance is excellent, no hiccups and hd movies start to play back pretty fast. The bad thing is that zune marketplace doesn't have subtitles which limits the audience. I don't mind as I don't use subtitles but I see that as a pretty big issue if microsoft wants masses to rent videos from them.
Hollywood's hopes for a future built on digital film downloads have been undermined by research showing cooling consumer demand for movies online.
"Digital downloading is characterised by its restrictions - it's all about what viewers can't do rather than what they can do," added Mr Amel.
Hollywood has moved to address problems associated with digital distribution yet the industry is divided on the best way forward.
Walt Disney has created Keychest, which it describes as "enabling technology" that allows people to buy a film once and watch it anywhere. But the rest of the industry is supporting the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem coalition, backed by Sony Pictures.
Screen Digest has slashed its growth forecasts for digital
“The fundamentals of our business are still viable, but let’s not be complacent,”
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Figures are encouraging indeed. In the US, HDTV household penetration is approaching 50% and, by the end of 2009, Europe will count 78 million HDTV homes. Sony research reveals that more than 50% of what people watch on their HDTV in the US is already in high definition, be it via cable, satellite, telecom or over-the-air broadcasting. Some 30% of HDTV homes own a BD player, and 70% already believe BD delivers a better picture than DVD.
Providing a digital copy of a movie is part of the roadmap as well. Already 100 BD title include a digital copy compatible with portable devices. “A digital copy elevates the value of physical media by building a bridge to the digital world. The BD disc has been specifically designed to serve as an evolving medium,” says Bishop.
The Blu-ray session brought to the forth – once again – the “extortionate” cost of AACS licensing for independent replicators, and the challenges of competing against Sony DADC.
“The AACS charges four times,” says a disgruntled Laurent Villaume, CEO of French replicator QOL. “A licensing contract for the publisher, a license for the replicator at $15,000/year plus a $1,250 key per title, and €0.03 per disc. Given that piracy is taking away a lot of revenue potential, spending all this money on AACS is ridiculous, especially on catalogue titles.” This AACS cost is an obstacle to the growth of BD, because a number of independent publishers would like to release movies, but the fixed cost is too high particularly at this point in time when sales are still modest.
Screen Digest invited AACS LA to answer these concerns, but “the anticipated imminent release of our final specifications and the licenses prevented us from coming to PEVE,” said the Los Angeles-based organisation
Another recurring theme is the difficulty for independent replicators to compete with “BD inventor, manufacturer, distributor” Sony DADC – who control nearly 90% of the market. “A level-playing field via a global licensing system for disc and players is in order,” said QOL’s Villaume. “I had feared that some companies did not want to play the BD games on the basis of the sharing of royalties.” He now welcomes the new partnership Sony has joined with the other French companies.
With a monopoly on the manufacturing side, Sony DADC does not make it easy for the other replicators to commit the huge investment necessary,” argues Jean-Michel Cathonnet, VP European Logistics & Distribution, Cinram. “If Hollywood studios will not share their production requirements with independent replicators with local knowledge, as was the case with VHS, they will be faced with a dearth of capacity as DVD replicators will have little incentive to convert to Blu-ray.”
Is going green conflicting with economic necessity? No, says Aodan Coburn, EVP Worldwide Operations, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, setting out the company strategy.
“Home entertainment companies represent more than 50% of the carbon footprint for the studios. From 2006 to 2009 our objective is a 20% reduction, then 10% reduction on an annualised basis. There is a myth that sustainability is a luxury with a cost to it. There are some elements that may have a cost, but sustainability is often doing the right thing for the right reasons. It’s about going back to the supply chain and questioning how things are done. In Central Europe, we now ship new releases to retailers directly from the replicators that was not something we did in the USA. This had immediate impact on our carbon footprint, saved us money, save our partner investment costs.”
The conference also looked forward to the arrival of 3D content in the home. Theatrically, 3D is already a reality and the amount of 3D content is set to ramp up; furthermore, everyone agrees that Blu-ray is an ideal platform for bringing it to the home. However, despite the involvement of several industry bodies there are as yet no signs of a single industry standard; a real concern for an industry still reeling from a previous format war.
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Digital video delivery is not longer confined to a PC.
...
“The idea is to buy content independent of the format that it is delivered on,” Taylor explains. “You buy something once and you get a physical disc you can play on multiple devices and you can stream it anywhere. For example, you buy a video from CinemaNow, you can stream it to an LG player, you can put it on your mobile phone, you can stream it to a Yahoo TV widget player, you can burn a DVD, and you can put it on your Archos portable device. This will extend the value of digital content when you can buy it once and distribute across multiple devices.”
According to aggregate weekly estimates from the research department of Home Media Magazine, revenues from Blu-ray sales in the US in 2010 through February were $200.95 million, 59% more than in the same period of 2009. Additionally, thanks to Blu-ray, the revenue from packaged-media sales stopped falling and grew 3% year-on-year.
As to market share, Blu-ray accounted for 11.7% of packaged-media sales revenue in the first two months of the year. In Jan-Feb 2009, this percentage was 7.6%.
PlayStation Network’s video delivery service is the first to offer high-definition movies for purchase from all of the major movie studios, including 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.
I used to think that way until I realized that devices are getting more and more powerful. Even a dingy digital camera can have large storage now (Moved my PSP memory stick there). Importing photos from digital cameras and iPhones are more like syncing these days. I also don't need to clear out my cameras that often. I have simple NAS HDDs that keep most of the media, but they are no longer that important since there is at least another copy elsewhere (like on my PS3 since "everything" is there too).
Most importantly, my use cases involves more outdoor use too; thanks to laptops, iPhone and free Internet storage. I even retired my old NAS storage without any issues. I just don't depend on it anymore.
For people who purchase DD movies...
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010...r-hd-movies-from-all-six-major-movie-studios/
I believe it's US only.
I think Fox might be the only pub that has no HD Movies for own on 360 (weird since there is a panel promoting Fox Movies and TV shows in Spotlight), I'll have to check. So right now the last remaining major bullet point for me staying 360 is that Zune marketplace allows me to download directly to my PC and when you choose that option you also get a mobile HD version (this isn't such a big deal to me considering I don't own a Zune). While the 1080p instant streaming is great I highly suggest people still take the time to do the download to PC (or 360) at some point before the download expiration date. The other mid-level bullet point is me still having the ability to delete and re-download which I think is still not an option on PSN-V?
cheers, bummer looks like no ps3 for me then@zed, AFAIK you can't. Best thing you could do is rip them to your PC and stream them to your PS3 (I'm pretty sure you can stream DVD's).
On a related note
Is it possible to rip dvd's from the ps3 to the ps3 HD to watch later?
You cannot rip to the HD, but if you connect an external USB harddrive to your PS3, you can rip over any movie that you want and play back on the PS3.
But FAT32 sucks. Neither console supports NTFS or ext and that's fail. Especially with MS since they have the (closed) source code for NTFS.Indeed, just rip films to an external HDD and you're away!
