Sony announces PLAYSTATION®Eye Camera

Yay! We got a mention!

 

I really like the idea of not wearing a headset for chat. The specs look good, assuming the price is not to high ($40?) I'd get it. I have the 360 camera, but it's essentially a $5 webcam, it's so light that USB cable makes it point in all kinds of directions you don't want it to. It's also useless in low light.

 

I see two IR LED on the PSeye, one on the left near the PS logo an the other on the right. It could be cool to use some reflective material on accessories and for tracking.

 

I would guess that are the red and blue status LEDs like on the eyetoy (?)

 

Three Speech Q&A:

That's rather disappointing.

 

Eyetoy comes to ps3 around summer (specs and photo).



http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04/26/sony_eyes_eyetoy_3/

The microphone above the camera has 4 microphones to cancel out environmental noise. The camera has a good amount of options like slo-mo and time-lapse and sony says it works well in low-light conditions. The weakest part seems to be that it can only go up to 640X480 at 60 fps which I believe is also what the 360 camera goes up to.

They didn't say the price yet but it should obviously be around what the last one cost.

I'm guessing they're going to do a bundle with this, a eyetoy game or mini-game collection, and maybe video-editing software by summer or fall.

 

I can't see any reason not to include things like h.264 encoding to save files. It seems daft to tie people into a particular software for viewing vids, and preventing their uploading to YouTube. Though TBH I don't know what exactly people expect to create. YouTube - another move of some guys at home talking into a webcam while on their PS3. Not likely to get nominated for many Oscars...

 

You're 6 hours late!

But why would the cost "obviously" be around the last one? Have you learned nothing from the PS3?

 

oh, mods delete this thread or maybe merge? I think it'll be around the same price as the last one because they want people to actually buy it and also consider that the wii and "waggling" are really taking off so sony wants to include some of those capabilities.

 

I'm guessing that you, like me, thought the same thing about the PS3 before the price came out. And we both know how that ended up. Seriously though, you may very well be right. If I recall, there is no one "PS3 Eyetoy." There are several projects, each with different purposes. This one looks mass market, too me. The lowest common denominator amongst PS3 cameras. An HD-IP cam later on still seems like a distinct possibility to me.

 

I don't really see a HD camera taking off because of size/price. considering current hd camera's cost thousands of dollars I don't think anybody cares or else they'll hook up their own hd camera and upload it to somewhere on PSN that gives the option for user-provided HD video.

 

The specifications look pretty good. 640x480 at 60fps is twice as fast as the Xbox360 Camera, which only goes up to 30fps. I would rather they offer a higher resolution capture at a lower framerate over the 320x240 at 120fps though since that seems rather useless.

 

I'm not talking about an HD camcorder. Just an HD web-cam, like what you see here. They can be had for about $100, and in some cases are no bigger than a standard webcam. 1280x720 at 30fps should be doable, and would be a nice improvement over current HD cams. $75 - $100 would be high for a, mainstream, EyeToy replacement. But the Playstation Eye is there for that, opening the door for a higher end product. We are talking about a $600 “consoleâ€￾ here. So, higher priced accessories (to complement mainstream counterparts) shouldn't be out of the question.

 

Yes without more information... it sounds like a stupid move to me.

The video stream should be standard (e.g., H.264) but perhaps the container format is proprietary for some unannounced features ? Or perhaps EyeCreate will have the ability to organize, import and export videos just like iTunes/iPhoto... so they don't have to do it in the primitive XMB interface.

Hey David Karraker... clean up your communications. You always leave conversation hanging halfway for people to misinterpret. That's one of the reasons your PR suck lately.

 

If I had to put money on it, I would say Titanio is probably right. Wasn't there discussion about that at GDC in regards to Home? How devs didn't have access to the content on the XMB, and that libraries would be out to allow that? Or maybe, it was just a complaint from a dev, and there was no announcement about any support for that. Regardless, Home does it (access content on the XMB), and I guessing libraries will be released closer to its release date.

 

I have no idea but what's clear to me is that with PS Home, Sony released a long FAQ to make sure that people understand what it is. The result is a consistent and clear mental picture of PS Home.

With a major peripheral announcement like PS Eye, I'd think they would spend a few more minutes thinking through their Q&A, and articulating the overall concept better.

 

I could see that happening but than people may wonder what is the point? If there's a pack-in camera it's definitely going to be the SD one.

 

Does the MS camera manage that? When I checked these things a while back, all the HD cameras only managed 30 fps at 640x480. Higher resolutions dropped the framerate. The blurb on your link says 'up to 30 fps' but doesn't say if there's a framerate limit on higher resolutions, as there is on other cameras.

I'd also question the worth of hires webcams. Transmission of HD footage is pretty pointless, and the accuracy in motion detection probably isn't needed.

As for price, PS3's peripherals have generally been on the cheaper side. I can't see a reason why this thing should be priced beyond the original EyeToy ($40 including game).

 

For a webcam and online chat purposes, that is indeed useless. For motion tracking and gestural recognition, particularly with fast motions, higher framerate is a bigger deal than higher resolution because it means less noise and less blur in the image and maintaining of features. Bear in mind that the 640x480 @ 60 fps or 320x240 @ 120 fps is in the form of an uncompressed stream, so you get an unfiltered image with no weird artifacts or inexplicable noise. Of course, some things may still come up in the process of demosaicing, but that's done in software, so you have control over that.

High resolution on a small camera with a tiny lens and tiny sensor array also means either poor low-light performance or need for longer exposure times.

That is correct.