My PS3 play by play setup!

[RobertR1]

Background: found a great deal on ebay for a 60GB with Resistance + extra controller. It showed up today and I just got home. There will be NO PC or 360 comparisons made at any time.

8:30PM
Unboxed everything and connected to the receiver via HDMI. No HDMI handshake issues which was very nice to see. The system is fairly heavy and big but quiet so far while navigating the dash. Ran through the initial setup which wasn't bad. Then went into wireless settings. This took a few mins and I do not think many people should just give this to a kid and have them get at it. It does require a someone with decent technical ability to get it setup. There are NO error messages that give you any sort of detail. I had to re input my key via the controller to get it to work. Also, it prompts for security settings and so forth which might confuse some. A simple "find wireless networks" and connect using key would have been ideal. Give a "basic" or "advanced" option from the beginning and let the user decide. Once I tested the connection it told me to download update 1.30 which is located in the Settings, System Update area. It's now at 6% and started at 8:40. The layout of the menus could use work. A GUI with tabs would perhaps be easier for navigation. Took a few times to get used to which option is really highlighted during menu navigation. They went overly sleek with the minimal approach, I feel. I don't mind theme's and so forth. Makes it pleasant.

Stay tuned............

 

[Rainbow Man]

A simply "find wireless networks" and connect using key would have been ideal.

This is how Wii works. I just picked my network and typed in the key and that was it. Amazingly it connected right away to my lousy wifi AP with zero fuss, both 360 and DS refuses strangely enough.

Soiny likes to overly complicate some things sometimes unfortunately. I remebmer how it was to et up the PS2 for online play, they wanted to know everything, down to color of your underwear..

Gratz on scoring a PS3! Tell us more when you got news please.


Peace.

 

[RobertR1]

It's 9:40PM now and we're at 45%. Gonna play BF2 for a bit and will come back to it

If you have a brand new plasma to go with your PS3, be sure to turn it off and check intermittently or you might get burn-in.

 

[thatdude90210]

It's probably just your 300 baud modem.

 

[inefficient]

The patch update for me only took under 30seconds for me. You either have a really slow internet connection or the loads on their server are starting to get bad.

The text input system is really annoying though. Especially when I first got it. But now I'm starting to be less annoyed. I do like the prediction system on it.

 

[Bad_Boy]

The patch update for me only took under 30seconds for me. You either have a really slow internet connection or the loads on their server are starting to get bad.

yeah, it took a couple minutes to download it, a couple more to install but nothing this long.

The text input system is really annoying though. Especially when I first got it. But now I'm starting to be less annoyed. I do like the prediction system on it.

I think I was the same way. At first it felt the same as the psp version, but after a while the predictive text shows its uses. It's kinda cool actually. It remembers text you typed in weeks ago for faster input. But I think I still prefer keyboard over it. Got a wireless one plugged up to the ps3 for that use specifically.

Anyways, congrats RobertR1.

 

[RobertR1]

Update:

At 10:15 the update finished downloading. Went through the procedures and the install went well. Not in the mood to start up Resistance this late so I decided to try out the Playstation store. Sign up wasn't too complicated at all and it's only one time so no complaints there. As for the PS Store, slow isn't the word for it. Downright painful. Took a few tries to just connect. It would keep kicking me to back to the main menu after I'd hit sign in. After I signed in, I got to choose through possibly some of the worst avatars available. Thankfully a lot of them failed to load. Get to the store, the first thing you notice is the weird layout and how it's competely different from the main menus. This takes away the transparency to the end user that is important. You know and feel that you're shifitng from place to place and have to learn each aspect of it. Like going from one software to another basically. After some snooping around started the Motostorm Demo download. Once you start the download, you can only leave the screen by cancelling. No pause/background downloading options at all. Hopefully all these issues are likely software related and can be fixed over time.

Inbetween I went through the menu options of which there are a lot to choose from. Thankfully there is an "auto" option for most items such as display and audio settings so consumer confusion should be generally low. However, if you hit advanced you better know exactly what it is you're asking of the system. A small description of the various options in the sub menu's would go a long way. I really apprecite the plethora of audio output options. GJ Sony!

 

[RobertR1]

The patch update for me only took under 30seconds for me. You either have a really slow internet connection or the loads on their server are starting to get bad.

The text input system is really annoying though. Especially when I first got it. But now I'm starting to be less annoyed. I do like the prediction system on it.

No clue, I'm on a cable modem which is pretty fast all the way around. The motorstorm demo isn't exactly creating fireworks either. Slow and steady but speed issues should improve as the platform matures. However, currently, it is what it is.

 

[inefficient]

The avatars are pretty crappy. Signing in is something you should only have to do once and just let it remeber your password. Unless you are really paranoid, I don't see why anyone would choose to input their password into that T9 interface everytime.

The store is supposed to look like a webpage or an online shopping thing. (Even mouse is supported if you have one) I think they are just using their web browser to render it. It should theoretically allow for content to be updated very easily for them. I think what is holding them back a bit is that they also have to support 480i users with the same interface. So in the end it looks like an web online shopping site made for toddlers.

Their webbrower lets you open mutiple pages at the same time. They should at least implement that into the PS Store. Letting you go back to the XMB without exiting the store would be even better.

 

[RobertR1]

The avatars are pretty crappy. Signing in is something you should only have to do once and just let it remeber your password. Unless you are really paranoid, I don't see why anyone would choose to input their password into that T9 interface everytime.

The store is supposed to look like a webpage or an online shopping thing. (Even mouse is supported if you have one) I think they are just using their web browser to render it. It should theoretically allow for content to be updated very easily for them. I think what is holding them back a bit is that they also have to support 480i users with the same interface. So in the end it looks like an web online shopping site made for toddlers.

Their webbrower lets you open mutiple pages at the same time. They should at least implement that into the PS Store. Letting you go back to the XMB without exiting the store would be even better.

I pretty assumed that you'd have to disconnect from the store to get back to XMB/watch a movie or play a game but thanks for the confirmation. This tells me that it'll be a while before I can watch a movie while I'm downloading a game or get notifications about my downloads in the middle of games and movies. I don't really like the idea of having the whole machine in a hands off state in order to do a download. We're past that stage. I'm hoping the big update in march fixes that.

 

[Bad_Boy]

You are using wireless connection right? Whats your signal strength like? Mines steady around 90% and the playstation store is a lot faster than it was around launch. Not just browsing it, but faster downloads as well.

But I agree, hopefully they add in the background downloading as the 360 received. That would be most appreciated.

 

[patsu]

No clue, I'm on a cable modem which is pretty fast all the way around. The motorstorm demo isn't exactly creating fireworks either. Slow and steady but speed issues should improve as the platform matures. However, currently, it is what it is.

That's odd. Now that I have my own PS3... I can confirm that the store is fast and the v1.3 update took about 8-10 minutes to retrieve. The only time when the Store was slow for me (and I blamed Sony for it initially)... was bandwidth contention with another app. I was downloading YDL from my laptop BitTorrent client at the same time. Are you sure your bandwidth is not consumed by someone/something else ?

As for background download... it should be doable in a future upgrade. Afterall, even Blu-ray viewing occupies only 3 SPEs. While it's a great convenience feature, background download does not mean quicker download (e.g., It may be suspended/trottled when the box is busy). You might want to find out the root cause or it will affect you continously. ;-)

EDIT: Ok... Bad_Boy is correct, poor wireless reception may be a problem too. You should check for reception at the PS3 location. My original PS3 location had very bad browsing speed until I moved it to the current spot just a few feet away but more open.

 

[hey69]

i had a 20g and a 60g connected at home. trough wifi it felt slower. maybe it was bad luck i dont know but that 1.1 update took very long to install and download

 

[RobertR1]

Signal strenght is at 100%. It should be. The router is about 2-3feet away! I left the Motostorm demo to download over night. Didn't work. It error'd out and gave me a "connection to the server has been lost" and kicked me out of the Playstation store. I restarted the PS3, logged back in and started the download again just now. There does not seem to be a "resume" feature. It started back up at 0%. If it freaks out again or goes real slow I'll connect via an ethernet cable and see if that makes a difference. The logging into the store was immediate this time around but the loading up was still quite slow.

Gonna play some Resistance tonight and pick up "black hawk down" for some weekend viewing.

 

[hey69]

you tried an usa server of japan server?

 

[RobertR1]

you tried an usa server of japan server?

Yeah, I went through the setup and gave it my location info (california, usa) so I assume it put me on a US server. How can I check?

 

[patsu]

Signal strenght is at 100%. It should be. The router is about 2-3feet away! I left the Motostorm demo to download over night. Didn't work. It error'd out and gave me a "connection to the server has been lost" and kicked me out of the Playstation store. I restarted the PS3, logged back in and started the download again just now. There does not seem to be a "resume" feature. It started back up at 0%. If it freaks out again or goes real slow I'll connect via an ethernet cable and see if that makes a difference. The logging into the store was immediate this time around but the loading up was still quite slow.

Yeah the resume download part is another thing they should add.

Given the current situation, it seems that you may have to try a wired connection instead. If the problem goes away, then we know it's between the wireless router and PS3 (or anything in the proximity interfering with them).

 

[RobertR1]

Update:

Came home and the motorstorm demo was done and ready to go! (yay!) Played it for about an hour. It's very good but not spectacular or jaw dropping as has been discussed often. There is no interaction with the grass on the track. Even in slo mo crashes you just go through it and it never moves. Just dirt kick up. The slo mo's are cool but get old quick and you just end up skipping them after a few times. Aliasing on the models is apparant and some very low detail on some places. The shadows are just horrible. Watch the rider shadows when they crash, esp. in slo mo and you'll know what I'm referring to. The blur effect with max boost is well done however. Overall a 7/10 but I'm not a big rally fan so that might have something to do with it. The sound was good though. Sixaxis using the bike would have been a great way to demo the motion stuff but that was not present. Downloading F1 demo now. I'm a big F1 so we'll see how this one is.

The console itself never crashed or got loud (to the point I could hear it over the speakers). Very happy about that!

 

[TTP]

Sixaxis using the bike would have been a great way to demo the motion stuff but that was not present.

Pause the demo

 

[patsu]

Indeed ! You can control the vehicles using SIXAXIS in the demo.