Play-Yan to get MP4 firmware update

T

Teasy

Veteran
Nintendo have announced that they will be releasing a firmware update for the Play-Yan movie and audio player very soon.

The update will allow Play-Yan to support DivX video and MP3 audio (MP4) movies. The same format that PSP uses. Also IGN have said that Play-Yan is definitely being released on the US and Europe.

http://ds.ign.com/articles/629/629224p1.html
 
Teasy said:
The update will allow Play-Yan to support DivX video and MP3 audio (MP4) movies. The same format that PSP uses.
Click to expand...

PSP movies are H.264 encoded which is a completely different thing from DiVX. DiVX is MPEG4 part 2 video Advanced Simple Profile (though in this case Nintendo are almost certainly limiting themselves to Simple Profile). H.264 is also known as MPEG4 part 10 Advanced Video Coding.

They both have MPEG4 in the name and they can both be stored in mp4 file format but they are completely different beasts.
 
Well I have a PSP movie encoder and when it converts a movie it converts it to DivX/MP3 (as it describes them). So I don't think PSP's format is quite completely different. Point taken though in that they're not exactly the same formats.

To be honest the video quality on Play-Yan is fine anyway IMO. The only bad point is the 32k 8bit mono G726 audio, which does sound pretty muffled and crappy IMO. So if this knew firmware supports some decent MP3 audio formats in movies I'll be very happy with that (64k 16bit stereo would be great!).
 
I don't know anything about this product but a quick glance at the spec page suggests that they were only supporting ASF format previously.

ASF is the Microsoft container format used mainly for WMV but historically also for Microsofts own flavour of MPEG4. Nobody ever used MPEG4 in ASF containers but Microsoft managed to convince some hardware manufacturers to support it (shame on them).

MP4 is the official MPEG4 container format which is supported widely so it was probably a fairly easy and very sensible change for them.
 
Yeah Play-Yan currently uses the SD-Video format (MPEG4 ASF).

The thing I'm nost interested in is the audio, since that's the biggest problem with current Play-Yan movies. The change to MP4 should most likely mean MP3 audio right? (that bit in my first post was my assumption and hasn't been confirmed yet to my knowledge).
 
Audio in mp4 files is usually AAC as far as I know. That is the same format that Apple use for iPods and iTunes.

I suppose you can probably have mp3 audio in mp4 files. Audio isn't really my area.
 
Got these official specs for the new format from Nintendo:

File Format - MP4
Image Format - MPEG4 Video
Picture Size - 128x96 (Sub-QCIF), 176x144 (QCIF), 240x176, 320x240 (QVGA), 352x288 (CIF)
Video Bitrate - 64k - 1Mb
Framerate - 6 - 30
Audio Format - AAC (stereo)
Audio Bitrate - 16k - 320k
Sample Freq - 16khz, 22.05khz, 24khz, 32khz, 44.1khz and 48kHz

Compare it to the original format specs:

File Format - ASF (SD-Video Standard)
Image Format - MPEG4 Video
Picture Size - 128x96 (Sub-QCIF), 176x144 (QCIF), 240x176, 320x240 (QVGA), 352x288 (CIF)
Video Bitrate - 64k - 1Mb
Framerate - 6 - 30
Audio Format - G726 (mono)
Audio Bitrate - 32k
Sample Freq - 8Khz

So the video isn't likely to be much different (no real disapointment there its already good). But the update to the sound is pretty amazing! Going from a limited 32k 8Khz mono to upto 320k 48khz stereo is an absolutely massive improvement! It'll finally make my Play-Yan a great video player, can't wait for the update!! :D
 
OMG thanks for posting the changes Teasy. The audio formats were the weak point of the Play-Yan (mono?) but it seems the Broadcom (Alphamosaic) VC01PXX-ES2 chip used in Play-Yan is more capable than that and this confirms it. AAC is a very good sounding audio codec comparable and even bettter than MP3. Nice to see it also support 320kbps bitrate and 44.1khz sampling too. 8)

Oh btw Broadcom acquired Alphamosaic in Sept of last year and it seems they have a new VC02 chip now. It's also been said that Apple will use the new VC02 chip in an upcoming PMP. :devilish:

nin_9716.jpg
 
Got this update yesterday and have been trying it out. The sound now possible in movies is brilliant. ATM I'm using 128k 44.1khz stereo and while before Play-Yan movies were muffled and crackly now they sound perfectly clear.

Encoding is now much easier as well. I just used a PSP movie encoder and movie plays fine on the Play-Yan :) I watched a new episode of Trailer Park Boys on my DS in bed last night :D
 
Nah I've been using my DS for music (and occasionally movies) since before the PSP was released in the US :) The movies have been a bit crappy up till now though due to the audio restrictions.
 
Teasy said:
Nah I've been using my DS for music (and occasionally movies) since before the PSP was released in the US :) The movies have been a bit crappy up till now though due to the audio restrictions.
Click to expand...

I've been using the 3rd party movie player for my SP long before PSP too.
 
I did say I was just kidding.. and I did say "catching up", i.e. I was taken aback at how bad Teasy said the sound used to be.. I've also had media playing abilities on my handheld consoles for much longer than the PSP came out :)
 
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