Sony Interview (Please Translate)

[scooby_dooby]

I think you have an absurd idea of how much "work" the average person does on a PC at home besides browsing, communicating, and entertainment.

LOL. I said doing work on the couch is not comfortable, you said define work, I did, now you go a little rant about my perception of the 'amount' of work people do? Please direct me to my statement about the 'amount' of work. Quit putting words in my mouth. People do 'work' all the time to backup their photos, to select phtos for printing, to burn a CD or download some music, the amount is not relevant since nearly any amount requires the PC.

This is all about ease of use, and practicality. Of course peripheral devices are relevant because they need somewhere to go, and again having them in your living room is simply not appealing. Do users NEED a PC to print? No. Is it easier, more practical, and better suited to multiple users? Yes. And this is crux of the whole point.

You're just putting words in my mouth. Of course some people are saying that this could replace the PC, that's what is such a ridiculous notion. I never even spoke to the degree that consumers would enjoy these extra functions and use them, I said it will never replace the PC, period. So if you're going to debate my position do it on what I've actually said instead of some little rant that has nothing to do with the points i'm making.

This is merely extra functionality that will appeal to a small subset of people, nothing more. It will not allow the average household to get rid of their PC, and as such PC will remain doing what it's doing for the most part. I know that seems completely obvious to some people, because it is.

"And as soon as most home users realized this, they'd stop paying exhorbitant prices for MS's bloated security-hole ridden hard-to-use software."

Sure they will.... Security holes? Hell ya. Hard to use? LMFAO.

 

[TheChefO]

Wouldn't a Standard drive made the PS3 even fatter than it already is?

lol - hey I didn't design the thing - I'm speaking from a functionality standpoint. Functionally they're pushing mass media functions without the need of a pc. To do this you need vast amounts of storage space.

As has been pointed out you could get and external storage device connected to ps3. but for a lot of people a few hundred gigs could at least get them up and running. 60gigs for the amount of data they're planning to access without the pc is a bit short-sighted and calls for external storage imidiately which goes against the "one stop shop" mentality their promoting.

Agreed?

 

[London Geezer]

lol - hey I didn't design the thing - I'm speaking from a functionality standpoint. Functionally they're pushing mass media functions without the need of a pc. To do this you need vast amounts of storage space.

As has been pointed out you could get and external storage device connected to ps3. but for a lot of people a few hundred gigs could at least get them up and running. 60gigs for the amount of data they're planning to access without the pc is a bit short-sighted and calls for external storage imidiately which goes against the "one stop shop" mentality their promoting.

Agreed?

Hey how do you suppose Sony will make money out of the "upgradeability" of the HDD?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wouldn't a Standard drive made the PS3 even fatter than it already is?

Not necessarily. It depends how much space there is in that case. Even then it'd only by all of what, 5 mm's fatter? You can get cheap half-height 3.5" with as much capacity as the 2.5" drvies being included and yet cheaper. I'd have liked to have seen a full 3.5" drive in the PS3 now, and a 2.5" in the slimline version down the road (assuming there is one) where 2.5" drives are cheaper and more capacious.

 

[TheChefO]

Hey how do you suppose Sony will make money out of the "upgradeability" of the HDD?

It was my understanding they were putting standard 2.5 drives (user upgradeable)

 

[London Geezer]

It was my understanding they were putting standard 2.5 drives (user upgradeable)

That was my tongue-in-cheek point... They give u a small one now, you get addicted to all the cool storage-hungry features, and eventually you'll just have to buy a bigger hard drive.

 

[Naboomagnoli]

Functionally they're pushing mass media functions without the need of a pc. To do this you need vast amounts of storage space.

As has been pointed out you could get and external storage device connected to ps3. but for a lot of people a few hundred gigs could at least get them up and running. 60gigs for the amount of data they're planning to access without the pc is a bit short-sighted and calls for external storage imidiately which goes against the "one stop shop" mentality their promoting.

Agreed?

Yup. 60GB is nowhere near enough for the long HD haul.

If the 3.5" drive wasn't going to lead to size issues, I would have expected them to do just that, and swap down to 2.5" for the slimline edition.

Having said that, 60GB is still quite a lot with respect to the transitional phase from using your PC for most media to using your PS3 instead. 60GB is enough for a hell of a lot of songs and a lot of compressed SD movies and TV shows, which is mostly what my own media collection consists of. Initially Sony will be wanting your HD movies to be on a certain disc format rather than just on your hard drive , so I'm not really considering those just yet.

For the typical early adopter 60GB will be quite a lot to tide them over for the first year or two - certainly enough to get people interested in the idea of a media centre in the living room, and substantial enough to be considered more than just a free sample on a cocktail stick. Obviously it won't be enough for everyone, which is why external drives would be very useful (not least for taking your stuff over to a friend's house). Alternatively for those who don't like external drives, I believe Toshiba are releasing a 200GB 2.5" drive before the PS3 launch..

 

[TheChefO]

That was my tongue-in-cheek point... They give u a small one now, you get addicted to all the cool storage-hungry features, and eventually you'll just have to buy a bigger hard drive.

Yes but that is my point - 2.5 is a VERY limiting form factor. At the moment the largest you can buy is 160gb.

The other point is with it being standard Sony makes no money off your upgrades.

 

[Naboomagnoli]

That was my tongue-in-cheek point... They give u a small one now, you get addicted to all the cool storage-hungry features, and eventually you'll just have to buy a bigger hard drive.

Sony won't be making any PS3-specific hard drives. You'll be upgrading with a standard 2.5" PC HDD, so Sony won't make any more money out of your upgrades.

 

[TheChefO]

For the typical early adopter 60GB will be quite a lot to tide them over for the first year or two

ehh ... depends on exactly how they intend you to use it. I have well over 500gb used in my media center pc and I'm just about to the point where I need to order up another external hd. And this is mostly just movies. Throw in music (and potentially games) and this number gets dwarfed. True I may not be a typical user but if the format was not going to make them money directly (ie open) then they might as well have given us an open 3.5 drive to really use the systems abilities without having to turn to multiple external discs.

 

[Sis]

Sony won't be making any PS3-specific hard drives. You'll be upgrading with a standard 2.5" PC HDD, so Sony won't make any more money out of your upgrades.

I actually find this quite dubious, regardless of what Sony says. Until I see the specific upgrade instructions, I'm going to assume that Sony with have a "plug-n-play" hard drive offering, though potentially only by way of third party.

 

[London Geezer]

I'm sorry but i find it very naive to think that Sony won't try to sell HDDs as "proper" PS3 HDDs, like they sold "PSP" Memory Sticks DUO, usually with a premium too, targetted at the people who have no idea that any Memory Stick DUO works on PSP.

There will definitely be Sony-branded HDDs of various sizes in the shops.

 

[Naboomagnoli]

ehh ... depends on exactly how they intend you to use it. I have well over 500gb used in my media center pc and I'm just about to the point where I need to order up another external hd. And this is mostly just movies. Throw in music (and potentially games) and this number gets dwarfed. True I may not be a typical user but if the format was not going to make them money directly (ie open) then they might as well have given us an open 3.5 drive to really use the systems abilities without having to turn to multiple external discs.

It does indeed depend on how you intend to use it, and how Sony intend for us to use it. You certainly aren't a typical user with that quota!
At a guess I reckon the typical user probably has around 20-40GB of media on their PC (taking movies as ~700MB rather than full quality, and taking TV shows to be even more compressed). Of course, most of us probably have a lot more than that, but there are a lot of people who don't have movie media on their hard drives at all, only music or photos and using DVD's for movie playback.

Out of interest could you put a number on your current movie quota? That must be a helluva lot!

I suppose the only alternative reason for 2.5" use is the low power/heat/noise cost. With Sony looking to be as quiet as the slimline PS2 and noise being a very important factor for most home theatre PC's I guess they'd need every advantage they can muster?

 

[TheChefO]

It does indeed depend on how you intend to use it, and how Sony intend for us to use it. You certainly aren't a typical user with that quota!
At a guess I reckon the typical user probably has around 20-40GB of media on their PC (taking movies as ~700MB rather than full quality, and taking TV shows to be even more compressed). Of course, most of us probably have a lot more than that, but there are a lot of people who don't have movie media on their hard drives at all, only music or photos and using DVD's for movie playback.

Out of interest could you put a number on your current movie quota? That must be a helluva lot!

I suppose the only alternative reason for 2.5" use is the low power/heat/noise cost. With Sony looking to be as quiet as the slimline PS2 and noise being a very important factor for most home theatre PC's I guess they'd need every advantage they can muster?

I'd guess ~200 movies - if Sony are serious at targeting the hometheater crowd they should make it a standard 17" wide chassis. In fact they could make a high end version with 5+ 3.5 hdd drive system that truly replaces a media center pc if they're up to snuff on the software side. This would also enable them to charge upwards of $1000 with ease.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Interesting idea, a full 'rack-mount' design that fits in with existing gear rather than being a 'work of art' like PS3.

 

[TheChefO]

Interesting idea, a full 'rack-mount' design that fits in with existing gear rather than being a 'work of art' like PS3.

By doing so, they truly hit a market that isn't so cost consceus and the additional cost of producing it would more than be made up for by the profits of such a high ticket item. problem would be making the thing truly seemless in living room integration. MS has done a fairly decent job of that with mce2005 and it would make a great template for them if they are indeed serious.

After putting ~$1500 into a mce box built from the ground up (aside from the case, already had a perfect fit), I'd have seriously considered this option had it existed.

The work of art bit is questionable but to each his own. Personally I find it resmbles a kitchen appliance a bit more than av gear or "art" but you know what they say about opinions.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The work of art bit is questionable but to each his own. Personally I find it resmbles a kitchen appliance a bit more than my av gear but you know what they say about opinions.

I believe that was Kutaragi's sentiments even if he didn't say as much. It looks okay to me and would probably pass as a work of modern sculpture if made in black marble.

 

[Naboomagnoli]

If the market's there, I don't see why not (not for a few years I'd have thought). Didn't one of the Sony execs mention something about the possibility of built-to-order PS3's? I think he was talking more about HDMI outputs and memory card readers, though there's no reason why your idea wouldn't be included in that. Personally I'd want such a device to have a TV tuner as well.

 

[TheChefO]

If the market's there, I don't see why not (not for a few years I'd have thought). Didn't one of the Sony execs mention something about the possibility of built-to-order PS3's? I think he was talking more about HDMI outputs and memory card readers, though there's no reason why your idea wouldn't be included in that. Personally I'd want such a device to have a TV tuner as well.

Agreed - Ideally one(atleast) enabled to read cable/sat box cards for direct to hdd recording. I remember the build to order part - along the lines of "it's a pc, we can spec to the user in the same fashion". In this case the chassis being a very limiting factor in build-to-order. Although with the option I see many possibilities.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Technically it should be possible to attach even a WiFi hard drive to the PS3, though I'm pretty sure at lkeast the first firmware(s) won't support them).
Even then, the usb drives shoiuld work. Or is it going to be limited to just reading like the xbox360?

I guess there won't be a possibility to use your PC as a storage and stream from there, at least that's the impression I got from P.Harrison interview where he said "we don't need the (Windows) PC" or something like that. What about a Linux PC then?
Or, maybe there'll be the elusive "Home Server" from Sony, that'd be basically just a dumb mass storage (wireless , lan or usb).

There's possibilities certainly for extending the storage beyond 2,5" drives, it's just a matter if Sony will support any other than the internal solution in the PS3 firmware.
60GB might be plenty if it's just mainly for content downloaded from Sony's dedicated PS3 online shops, but if you wish to transfer your existing CD's, MP3's and movie files to it, it will soon become full.

Also, what about when you'r 60GB does become full, how do you transfer the data there already to the new, bigger HDD?
The ideal solution would be an upgradeable separate "Home Server" where you'd be able to put like five 2,5" HDD's, and the old and new drives would still show as one storage space in the PS3.