zerolight

I’ve had the PS3 a little while now and find that there’s a few simple things that I hope Sony will integrate into the OS. Sure, it could have a better online service, and better integration of your friends list into games, and better use of voice chat, and all the other things we’ve come to love about the 360. But none of those are as important to me as the following.

1. Independent resolutions for the Dashboard, Gaming, and Blu-Ray playback. I’d like to be able to set my Dashboard and Gaming to 720p, and Blu-Ray movie playback to 1080i. Developers can already force games to 720p regardless of dashboard resolution, so why not just expand the options and make them available to the user. This would be great because…

2. What’s the point of setting up the audio formats your AV amp supports only to have Blu Ray movies default to plain old DD 5.1 (640kps bitrate)? Should I really have to go into the options menu of my Casino Royale disc in order to enable uncompressed 5.1 surround (4.6Mbps bitrate)? How about making the PS3 a bit more intelligent – isn’t that Cell processor meant to be a super computer ? Let me choose my preferred audio and video options, then actually use them.

3. Let me stream movies from my Mac. In any format. And while your at it Mr Sony, let me also stream MP3s and Photos.

Sony delivered my free copy of James Bond: Casino Royale today. Nice surprise that one. I’ve watched about 30 mins of it thus far (well I have seen it several times already on DVD and at the Movies). Impressions are as follows. Picture quality is a step up from Terminator 2, I guess camera technology has advanced some what in the past decade or two. Casino Royale looks much better than it’s DVD counterpart, and a step up from the compressed HD preview available on the PS Store. Check out the photo below, and apologies for the glare coming from the window… I really should have closed the blinds. I’m still not entirely convinced that the masses are going to flock to the new HD media over regular DVD, but that’s another debate.

The biggest surprise was the Audio. Casino Royale has regular Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks and a full, uncompressed, linear PCM 5.1 surround track. The difference is very impressive. Regular DD has a bitrate of 640kps which works out at 106kps per channel, which is pretty much an average MP3. Linear PCM 5.1 has a bitrate of 4600kps which works out at 766kps per channel. That’s a 7 fold increase in definition, which I guess is like comparing low bit rate MP3 with CD. The difference is noticeable. It’s not just more detailed (though the rain in the opening jungle scene was most impressive) but also a much fuller, stronger, louder sound. It really is Hi-Fi. It delivers that cinema experience like never before. I look forward to experiencing the Matrix on Blu Ray one day as that has a particularly good soundtrack which can only benefit from HD audio.

So, 1 day back from SA and a new gadget. What’s it like? Surprisingly good. I nearly didn’t buy one, but I’m glad I did. It’s certainly eye-candy in terms of looks, with a lovely hi-tech shiny look to the consoles casing. Once up and running the interface is simple, yet elegant. The same can’t be said of the PS Store where you can download demos, videos, etc… it’s simple, yet, well it’s simple… leave it at that.

The only disappointment on the hardware front is the pad, which is the worst I’ve ever used. The triggers are convex instead of concave… which results in your fingers insisting on slipping off the triggers. So you have to press harder than normal to keep a grip. Add to that the compact size of the pad and it just leads to arm and hand fatigue. This is lessened somewhat by using your middle fingers instead of index fingers on the triggers, though this feels so odd that you find yourself reverting to index fingers again.

The games I’ve bought are Motorstorm and VF5. First impressions of Motorstorm are very very good. It’s beautiful, smooth, and very hard. I love it. It’s a lot of fun, surprisingly deep for an off-road arcade racer, and has top notch physics and handling. Definitely the best launch game on the system, and one of the best next gen games on any console. VF5 is again a beautiful looker with a smooth framerate. Disappointingly though, you can’t choose a preferred resolution for the game, so it defaults to the dashboard resolution. Not a big problem, though games tend to run better at 720p whilst movies and the dashboard are better at 1080i. My one gripe after a short time with VF5 is around the controls. At times, pressing the buttons did nothing. Button lag? A bug? A one off? I don’t know, I’ll boot it up again tomorrow to see if it’s still there. It’s certainly a gamebreaker… so the jury is still out on VF5.

I’ve not tried any media playback yet, but like the 360, it only plays certain formats. Unlike the 360 you can’t stream though, unless you install Linux on the PS3, which I’m not inclined to do. When you first register your PS3 and select an online ID it makes mention of the Blu Ray Disc offer. A google suggests that the first 500,000 registered users get a free copy of Casino Royale on Blu Ray… so here’s hoping. For now, I have no Blu Ray Discs so can’t comment on performance. I’ll wait for the R2 version of T2.

All in all, very happy. It’s keeping me away from Crackdown on the 360 at the moment, which is telling as Crackdown is superb. I’m unlikely to be lured back to the 360 in a hurry, that is, until Forza 2 hits the 360 in May. Motorstorm rocks. Who said the PS3 didn’t have a killer app?

Update: I’m not seeing any button lag in VF5 today, so that must have been a one off. It’s a lovely game too, but very complex.