PS3 May Get 2X or Faster Blu-ray Drive

Two good questions; I've been wondering about those also. The answer to these could possibly affect things more than the actual 'transfer speed'.

 

yes i think the reference scaling will is 1x 36mbps for all case
and i think the PS3 will have a 4x (36mbps) in single layer (2x in dual layer but not necessary for game)

and in real situation a 100mbps BD is clearly superior to a 100Mbps DVD because more density > more data in external side and not necessity dual layer
a next-gen game in DVD will fill the disc in dual layer (down the effective data rate) and in internal side (down again data rate, 2.5x less in internal side that in external side) and finally the real average data rate for a next-gen game in DVD is down
for a 8GB games in a BD a 1cm external band in single layer be enough for that, and then at full data rate! (seek time is also good because there is less head move ) even with more GB the data rate remain good on BD (and the HD video may push in internal side, not need full data rate for video)

 

Who on earth cares SO MUCH about max transfer rate when 12x DVDs need a few seconds to get a decent performance, make much more noise and hold less than 5 times less data...

(But they have better access times instead)




PD: What have happened whith the style of this forum lol

 

I don't know why peeps are crying for more ram space when blu disc load time is so critical.

btw, those not in the know, its highly dubious all 512 ram will need to be filled at load, because only bdevs or wireframes and textures. polys from bdevs, or completed scenes with polys are created by cpu and loaded into store memory by system at draw time. imho this is the lions share. you are looking at more like 100 to 200 meg at load time on both ps3 and x360.

 

External side? External band? Don't CDs/DVDs/next gen formats have data starting from the center out? I know personal cd/dvd records do it this way and I'd imagine its the same for pressed discs.

 

Data can be pushed to the outside of discs by using dummy data.

On bit rates:

User bit rate [Mb/s] 35.965
Channel bit rate [Mb/s] 66.000

I think channel bit rate is the raw 1s and 0s, these 1s and 0s include ECC data (error correction code). Movie data in MPEG2 form is resistant to bad data so movie aplications will use less ECC data then data that needs to be bit perfect (like games). Less ECC data translates to higher effective bit rates or 56Mbps for movies. In the case of games the effective bit rate would be 36Mbps.

 

Better access time compared to what?
The only info we have on seek-times related to BRD is on Sony's Professional Disc format, which basically shares the same physical structure as BRD so it's likely an offshot of the same tech.
And on that drive the stated average-seek time is 100ms for CAV mode, which is better then just about any DVD drive that I can think of right now.

Anyway the spin-up time on DVDs is a non-issue in games because you can keep the disc spinning in the application if you anticipate accessing it a lot on random intervals.

 

If the PS3 has DVD compatibility, isn't it possible that the DVD mode could be 12x?

If that were the case, wouldn't the software developers have the option to produce in either DVD or Blu-Ray depending on their content? Then if they have content within DVD capacity they can take advantage of the faster access times. Movies and games with large amounts of content would be produced on Blu-Ray and gamers would just have to muddle through the longer access times for presumably better content.

If the DVD mode were capable of 12x then the PS3 would have equal to the X360's DVD plus the bonus of HD high capacity storage. The only important requirement for the Blu-Ray of course is that it would be fast enough to play HD movies.

On the other hand, wouldn’t Sony profit more if all PS3 games were produced on Blu-Ray disks? If that's the case, Sony should be pushing to incorporate a Blu-Ray drive that has faster access times than a 12x DVD drive.

-aldo

 

Uhm... Ps3 does have DVD compatibility and the DVD speed should be 12X.

Yep, that's why lots of people are saying that early games will come out on DVD, much like early PS2 games (lots of them) were on CD, before everyone migrated to DVD.

Sony might or might not profit from games being on BDROM any more than they were on DVD, in the end the drive will be a very nice DVD drive at 12X when u put a DVD in. The drive is compatible with pretty much every disc except DVD-Audio and obviously HDDVD which Sony don't support. It even plays SuperAudio CDs.

 

yes I don't understand the concern over x1 or x2 BR drives.

My guess is most PS3 games will be on DVD for a long time coming and BR will be only for movies with a few notable exceptions of course.

 

EXACTLY!!!

 

Interesting, I didn't know that about the PS2.

-aldo

 

Yep, lots of games were on CD. Tekken Tag is an example, and it was one loud beast when loading.

 

If the PS3 is to be backward compatible with the PS2 and PS, it would have to be able to read PS2 DVD's and PS CD's. So if the PS3 DVD is as fast or faster than the XBOX 360's DVD (12x), there is no advantage for Microsoft's optical drive. You can look at it this way--the PS3 drive has everything MS has plus BR.

 

Possibly. You're speculating.

 

Actually it has everything the X360 drive has plus BR and SACD which depending on who you talk to is quite a big deal.

Anyway, i'll be surprised if the drive won't read DVDs at 12X minimum. In the end even if it's 10X or a bit less (unlikely), loading times are hardly dependant on the speed of the drive, as has been discussed lots of times.