zerolight

Another disappointment. I’m beginning to wonder why I bought a PS3 – my 360 still gets all the gaming time. Still, a couple of trailers showed promise, noteably Killzone 2 and GT5 – speaking of which, this really can’t be in-game, can it? Half is clearly rendered, but from the shot of NYC on it appears to be game footage. Oh, and I just watched the trailer for the new MGS game… now that does look impressive, though I’ve never quite got into the MGS series. Maybe not as disappointing as I initially thought.

edit: In a bid to convince myself that I should just sell the PS3, I fired it up today – fully expecting to be underwhelmed by the whole experience, and utterly convinced that the GT:HD Concept demo would pale in comparison to Forza 2. I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Though the games are few and far between, the PS3 is a pleasant gadget to use, and GT:HD definitely held it’s own… I think there’s a chance that the long awaited GT5 could well topple Forza’s thrown. Then again, the mammoth deadzone in the controller could make Killzone 2 unplayable. I’ll hold on to it a little longer – PES and GTIV could well turn out to be better on the PS3 than the 360.

I was fairly excited about this new firmware update for the PS3, but it turns out to be a bit of a let down. Sure, Blu-Ray playback now supports 720p saving me switching resolutions betweem games and movies. Sure, it upscales DVDs (my Xbox360 has been doing that since day one). But what of the media streaming?

DNLA? I’d never heard of that until yesterday. UPnP? Yep, you need that too… shame it clashes with my NAT settings for Xbox360 and PS3 online gaming. So I enabled UPnP on my PS3 and router, then installed and configured TwonkyMedia’s UPnP Media Server on the Mac, because you need some form of DNLA/UPnP Media Server on your PC or Mac to make it work. Finally, I tried to stream media from the Mac to the PS3 – simple stuff like photos, mp3s, the odd movie. Did it work? Nope, but as expected, UPnP fudged up my NAT settings on the Xbox360. And I’m pretty tech-savvy. This is for the masses?

Hopefully Nullriver will update Connect360, to work with the PS3. Should we really have to buy additional software to make these “connected” consoles connect? XBMC, a homebrew application for the old Xbox, is still the best option for streaming content from a PC or Mac to the TV. Is there really anything wrong with plain old Windows or Samba File Sharing?

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.

Terminator 2 arrived yesterday on Blu Ray. I’ve been looking forward to trying out a Blu Ray movie and T2 is apparently one of the best available in terms of picture and sound quality. Certainly, you get the full 1.5Mbps DTS sound track in comparison to the 640kps Dolby Digital sound track. Video quality is also very good, you get wonderfully crisp and sharp pictures with lots of colour. You’ll spot the film grain from the original film, but that’s something that’s always going to be apparent in HD, unless the Movie was originally filmed on a Digital camera, which is starting to happen more an more, though many directors still prefer film. Don’t confuse the lines in the picture below as film grain, that’s just the result of photographing a TV screen.

The thing is, just like HDTV, the picture does look better than DVD, but it’s not knock-your-socks-off, blow-your-mind better. You won’t see the difference in video quality that you saw going from VHS to DVD, and as such I find it hard to see the masses flocking to either HD-DVD or Blu Ray in favour of DVD. Instead I see it as a format that only the most dedicated gadget lovers will buy, just like SACD and DVD-Audio, both of which ended up failing to replace CD. Still, I’d love to be proven wrong, and I’m rooting for Blu Ray over HD-DVD for no reason other than I have a Blu Ray player in my PS3. Check out the images below for a comparison (click to enlarge).