Another Story of PS3 (PS3 A/V articles by Masakazu Honda at PC Watch)

[Npl]

@Bobbler: My thoughts exactly.
Additionally, the SPEs draw ridiculous low amount of Power, like 2-3W each. Pretty impressive (would be interesting to know how much the PPE is used).
I hope Sony will enable some advanced Power-saving features to kick down the 180W draw even when doing nothing.

 

[Sethamin]

All it needs is access to the iPod directory structure. The rest is already there AFAIK. The problem as I undertand it is that in accessing media on any attachable media store, PS3 assumes a directory structure rather then searching for suitable files automatically. I have read that you can browse a connected iPod to find and play the music.

No, the iPod directory structure wouldn't really help. All the files and directories are pretty well obfuscated for some reason or another. And searching for tens of thousands of files all embedded in different directories of a USB MSC device and parsing their metadata would be slow, to put it mildly. What you actually need to do is to parse the iPod's media index file. Unfortunately, that file has changed format several times over the lifetime of the iPod, so there's lots of versions of it floating around, and Apple isn't exactly helpful in helping anyone decode it. It's definitely not an easy problem.

 

[Sethamin]

Definitely shows one of Cell's strengths over X360's CPU. MS has been saying HD-DVD playback stresses the system more than anything (besides Gears, apparently) and Amir confirmed it was tough for them to fit it all on the CPU... meanwhile everything we've seen from SCE/PS3 seem to indicate it decodes even ridiculous bitrate streams with rather ease. Now if only it was that easy to get the performance out in games.

Amir's protestations aside, SPEs are almost tailor-made for exactly this kind of use case. I daresay this could be the absolute pathological best-case scenario for an SPE (highly pipelined decoding w/very few branches, large amounts of data, and lots of room for SIMD instructions). I don't think anyone with any technical sense would ever doubt that the Cell processor would absolutely scream in this application of it.

 

[patsu]

Shifty, not everyone is a laggard like you! Reports show that SACD sales have increased 300%!! 6 SACDs were sold last month!

How big (physical storage) is a SACD song ? Might as well make them downloadable to differentiate from lower quality MP3 and AAC ones.

1080/24fps is good. Anything dealing with improving DVD and gaming experience is great. Fixing damn de-interlacing problem is best. *crack whip* Let's get things moving !

I hope these experts are now writing papers, libraries and open source code for PS3 devs to benefit from.

 

[patsu]

...highly pipelined decoding w/very few branches, large amounts of data, and lots of room for SIMD instructions). I don't think anyone with any technical sense would ever doubt that the Cell processor would absolutely scream in this application of it.

Sneaky FUD'ers argued that the CABAC algorithm in H.264 HP decoding is very branchy, unpredictable and intensive, so Cell will s*ck. Unfortunately because of their conjecture, these same people have unwittingly proved today that: Even with branchy code, there can be ways to speed-up Cell processing. Oh noes ! What are they doing ?

 

[blakjedi]

Definitely shows one of Cell's strengths over X360's CPU. MS has been saying HD-DVD playback stresses the system more than anything (besides Gears, apparently) and Amir confirmed it was tough for them to fit it all on the CPU... meanwhile everything we've seen from SCE/PS3 seem to indicate it decodes even ridiculous bitrate streams with rather ease. Now if only it was that easy to get the performance out in games.

I agree that the PS3 should be a screamer in video decoding (Apple should have waited for Cell to use in Macs as opposed to the Intel chipset but oh well), however; I want to know if the X360 has so much trouble doing this... what the hell kind of ASIC is in HD-DVD and Bluray players that allow them to decode as effortlessly as the Cell?

 

[wco81]

No, the iPod directory structure wouldn't really help. All the files and directories are pretty well obfuscated for some reason or another. And searching for tens of thousands of files all embedded in different directories of a USB MSC device and parsing their metadata would be slow, to put it mildly. What you actually need to do is to parse the iPod's media index file. Unfortunately, that file has changed format several times over the lifetime of the iPod, so there's lots of versions of it floating around, and Apple isn't exactly helpful in helping anyone decode it. It's definitely not an easy problem.

Then how to all the various freeware read the iPod directory structure?

A couple of months ago, I accidentally deleted the iTunes directory off a partition. Fortunately, I had my entire library on my 5G 60GB so I downloaded some program and it copied everything from the iPod to my PowerBook. It wasn't perfect on the podcasts but it got 99% of it back.

I think it's not a very difficult problem. If nothing else, Sony could license the code from one of these utilities.

 

[London Geezer]

I agree that the PS3 should be a screamer in video decoding (Apple should have waited for Cell to use in Macs as opposed to the Intel chipset but oh well),

A heavily modified Cell maibe with a better core at least.

however; I want to know if the X360 has so much trouble doing this... what the hell kind of ASIC is in HD-DVD and Bluray players that allow them to decode as effortlessly as the Cell?

I guess the players have the advantage of having hardware decoders which will always be faster than general CPUs, although less flexible of course.

To be totally honest, i couldn't care less if HDDVD takes up 100% CPU time on 360. If it works, it works.

 

[Carl B]

I agree that the PS3 should be a screamer in video decoding (Apple should have waited for Cell to use in Macs as opposed to the Intel chipset but oh well), however; I want to know if the X360 has so much trouble doing this... what the hell kind of ASIC is in HD-DVD and Bluray players that allow them to decode as effortlessly as the Cell?

I don't think they do decode as effortlessly as Cell is the thing.

 

[patsu]

To be totally honest, i couldn't care less if HDDVD takes up 100% CPU time on 360. If it works, it works.

It depends.

I am still waiting.... for the day when PS3 can serve requests (e.g., Blu-ray LIVE, website, photos, ...) while my family is watching Blu-ray or playing mini-games.

EDIT: Now that I think about it... if they can handle 2 HD streams today, it may also mean that the PS3 has sufficient resources to handle HD movie playback and TV recording at the same time (If suitable capture hardware is available).

 

[London Geezer]

It depends.

I am still waiting.... for the day when PS3 can serve requests (e.g., Blu-ray LIVE, website, photos, ...) while my family is watching Blu-ray or playing mini-games.

Well the problem ain't gonna be Cell you know, it's gonna be the OS. Heck, PS3 can't even organise downloads, and it's all the OS's fault.

It will take a while till we have a PS3 that can multitask as much as Cell is capable to multitask.

 

[patsu]

Yap... OS maturity and availability. At least hardware resources and application programming-wise, there's no or little issue.

Sony has already committed to Blu-ray Live and Blu-ray Java. This was one of my earlier concerns: Whether PS3 can playback a HD stream and run Java programs at the same time. It looks very possible right now.

 

[London Geezer]

Yap... OS maturity and availability. At least hardware resources and application programming-wise, there's no or little issue.

Sony has already committed to Blu-ray Live and Blu-ray Java. This was one of my earlier concerns: Whether PS3 can playback a HD stream and run Java programs at the same time. It looks very possible right now.

I don't see why not, if H264 at high bitrate takes up 3 SPEs (apparently, and that's the most processor intensive decoding it will have to do), then there's loads of free room for other tasks.

 

[Bobbler]

I agree that the PS3 should be a screamer in video decoding (Apple should have waited for Cell to use in Macs as opposed to the Intel chipset but oh well), however; I want to know if the X360 has so much trouble doing this... what the hell kind of ASIC is in HD-DVD and Bluray players that allow them to decode as effortlessly as the Cell?

I think it just happens to be that Cell, by design, really excels at this type of thing (possibly its greatest strength and weakness)... It's a lot closer in design (or the SPEs are, at least) to the DSPs in HD-DVD/BR players. I have to agree with Xbd though, I'd be very surprised if any of those players have anywhere near as much headroom as PS3 does in regards to decoding ability (it would sort of defeat the purpose -- those players are made to do exactly what they need and not much more).

I also agree with L-B, as long as it works on 360, it doesn't matter so much. I merely pointed it out because when I read that I thought about Amir and his sly FUD spreading (and I'm not saying Amir spreads only Fud, he's actually a pretty reasonable source on a lot of things, it's just funny to see).

 

[wco81]

Yap... OS maturity and availability. At least hardware resources and application programming-wise, there's no or little issue.

Sony has already committed to Blu-ray Live and Blu-ray Java. This was one of my earlier concerns: Whether PS3 can playback a HD stream and run Java programs at the same time. It looks very possible right now.

Where did you see this commitment? Not doubting you but a lot of HD-DVD advocates on AVS would.

But Sony has promised software enhancements before, like AOL, Real and Netscape on the PS2 (probably never had the RAM or the scratch disk storage to run those programs).

I think it just happens to be that Cell, by design, really excels at this type of thing (possibly its greatest strength and weakness)... It's a lot closer in design (or the SPEs are, at least) to the DSPs in HD-DVD/BR players. I have to agree with Xbd though, I'd be very surprised if any of those players have anywhere near as much headroom as PS3 does in regards to decoding ability (it would sort of defeat the purpose -- those players are made to do exactly what they need and not much more).

Not only the Cell (and RSX, as it looks like SCE is trying to balance the code between the Cell and the RSX) but the RAM and OS seems to make it possible for Sony to do bigger upgrades than standalone players. Instead of relatively minor tweaks which the standalone players get, the PS3 would get major new features and capabilities, like BD-Live, BD-J, 1080p24, upscaling. There's more RAM and CPU, not to mention storage, to add more ambitious code than could be put in the firmware of standalone players.

If that is true, then not only do consoles offer good media playback, there's the prospect for the PS3 to offer a lot of software upgradabilty that standalone players may not be able to match.

 

[patsu]

Where did you see this commitment? Not doubting you but a lot of HD-DVD advocates on AVS would.

Kutaragi mentioned Blu-ray Live will be supported when he talked about Blu-ray in 2 occassions. You should be able to google it.

Regretably, I am indifferent to what "the lot of HD-DVD advocates" in AVSforum think about Blu-ray specifically. They are wrong on many (all ?) accounts. If they are objective experts and need the answer, may be they should research the topic better themselves first.

Is BD-Live really a big deal (to implement) since they already have the entire Blu-ray stack, including BD-J in the bag ? The Descend, to be released on 26 Dec, is said to be BD-J compliant. Perhaps it's the authoring software that's the bottleneck ?

But Sony has promised software enhancements before, like AOL, Real and Netscape on the PS2 (probably never had the RAM or the scratch disk storage to run those programs).

So does MS, Apple, Nintendo, ...
OTOH, Sony has promised software enhancements before and delivered it too.
All we can say is different situation, different answer.

 

[patsu]

Has this been posted before ?

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hd-dvd-bluray/1927/shootout-3-blu-ray-disc-players.html

 

[Arwin]

Quite a raving review! And this despite the ironic fact that he found its fan to be loud (!)

 

[Planet]

Yep, noticed that too. He probably recieved a faulty PS3, clearly stating that the console is louder than his already loud beamer.

 

[pipo]

Yep, noticed that too. He probably recieved a faulty PS3, clearly stating that the console is louder than his already loud beamer.

What's loud? Projectors at 25dB are considered silent, but you still can hear 'm. Real HT freaks think that's too loud. I couldn't care less. The 360 occasionally gets irritating though.

Is there a dB rating of the PS3?