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Weekly News Roundup (2 December 2007)

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

I can’t believe we’re in December already for 2007. Where has it all gone? I mean it seemed like it was only yesterday when I was going around from shop to shop after the Christmas rush to buy myself a Wii console, and now it’s nearly a year on (and people are still going from shop to shop trying to buy a Wii console). It’s quieter week, mainly because my mind has been elsewhere (writing the PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide), so I might have missed or not cared about a few news stories here and there. Sorry about that.

In copyright news, Canada’s movie studio friendly government is seeking to implement even tougher copyright laws that will make the US DMCA look weak by comparison. Well that’s what happens when you elect right leaning governments – just look at what’s happening in France too with their newly elected US-loving President.

Moving quickly onto HD news, it’s been a week of where both HD format groups are throwing stats at each other. First, the HD DVD people say that HD DVD player sales have topped 750,000 – impressive. But maybe not as impressive as Blu-ray‘s claim that they rule in Europe and during the Black Friday sales in the US. I really need to write a summary of what’s going on in the HD wars, but from the current data, it seems:

  • HD DVD sells more standalones
  • Blu-ray sells more players overall if you include the PS3
  • More HD DVD movies are sold per player
  • But Blu-ray has more movie sales overall because it has more players, even though it sells much less movies per player
  • Movie sales are generally influenced by big releases, title such as 300, Transformers, Spider-Man 3 and Ratatouille, and the more releases a side has for that week, the more sales it generates (well, duh). It does seem that Blu-ray has more “hit” releases than HD DVD at the moment

There is finally a non-Toshiba cheap HD DVD player out on the market, not that there’s anything wrong with Toshiba players. Venturer has put out a HD DVD player based on the Toshiba A-3 for $199 – not very competitive when you look at the prices the Toshibas are selling at. I’m sure the actual store pricing will be a lot lower. While prices might not be quite competitive in the US, I’m hoping that the Venturer might come to Australia and bring prices here lower – Toshiba player prices are high here due to various reasons such as our prices being matched to European prices due to Toshiba’s corporate structure, but many of these reasons don’t apply to Venturer and Asian made players. And while not HD news strictly, many reviewers are hailing the new Pioneer “Kuro” plasma as the best TV out on the market. As an owner of a 4th generation model (the Kuro is the 8th generation model), I only have good things to say about the Pioneer plasma range. While I’m not sure about the “best in the world” rating, it’s certainly up there, although other brands such as Panasonic are not far behind. The Kuro is available in 50″ 720p, 1080p and 60″ 1080p models – if I had the money now, I would upgrade my panel to the 50″ 1080p model, 60″ if I win the lottery.

Gaming next, and as mentioned in the intro to this piece, the Wii is the thing everybody wants this Christmas, which is funny, because it’s in the same position as last Christmas. Not wanting to sound smug or anything, but if you really wanted a Wii, why wait until the Holiday gift season to get one? I’m sure there were a few available back in June if you really wanted to get one. Wii stocks are so low that even the PS3 has managed to outsell it in Japan. It is very impressive figures for the PS3, don’t get me wrong, but if the Wii’s stock in Japan wasn’t limited to 160,000 or so, it would have killed the PS3’s 180,000 sales and probably beat every other console combined. The PS3 is doing very well due to the 40 GB lower priced model (how can I argue against that when I’m one of the people who joined in with the buying) and could top the Xbox 360, but not according to Microsoft, which Sony has come out and criticized. I will have to wait and see for the final figures before choosing to believe either side. The PS3 is also a hacker’s dream because its processor is optimized for hacking like activities. I just hope the console is locked down tight security wise, because I don’t want my PS3 to help some hacker’s attempt to hack into the Pentagon or something. And the official list of updates for the Xbox 360 “Fall” update has been released by Microsoft,  and it’s a huge list. I won’t go through everything, except to say that it looks like Microsoft have beaten Sony to the punch by getting DivX and XviD support into the console first, unless Sony releases a surprise firmware update in the next two days that is. The DivX support is quite extensive, covering all the advanced encoding features like GMC, Q-Pel and B-Frames (read our DivX Setup Guide to find out what these mean), and up to 720p resolution at 5 Mbps. And AC3 5.1 audio support, as well as MP3 support, is included too. So it looks like pretty much every DivX/XviD file out there will be supported. Will this make the 360 the most popular hardware device for viewing pirated TV show episodes? That is if we still end up having any episodes to download due to the writer strike.

Until next week …

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (2 December 2007)

PS3: A week later …

Friday, November 30th, 2007

PlayStation 3As promised, this blog post will talk a little about my experience with buying the PS3, setting it all up, and the experience of my first week of using it. Regular readers will know that I already own a Wii and a 360, so gaming wise, I’m pretty covered already. Therefore, my main purpose for the PS3 remain video playback, in particular, Blu-ray playback. Before this, I was format neutral in spirit, but HD DVD only in practice. Getting a Blu-ray player, and the PS3 being one of the cheaper ones (despite being one of the best players, certainly the most upgradable and future proof), was therefore the next logical step.

I live in Australia. Melbourne to be exact. And even though the Australian dollar is at an all time high (or thereabouts), our PS3s are still overpriced – we pay dearly to subsidized people in the US, it seems. Before I buy anything, I always do a quick search online to see if there are any bargains to pick up. I stumbled upon DTV Forum Australia, a forum I have visited on and off in the past. There was a thread in there about PS3 bargains, and from the thread I found an offer for a standard PS3 40 GB with wireless controller, plus the Sony Blu-ray remote and a redemption offer for 3 Blu-ray movies (Casino Royale, Ghost Rider and Spider-Man 3), all for $11 less then the recommended retail price (RRP is $699, or $USD 620 – I told you our PS3 was overpriced). This was the best deal I could find, and so I decided to go shopping.

Joytech TriLink HDMI SwitchBut before I went, I decided to make a list of the things I will need to get the PS3 Blu-ray up and running (I don’t like pen and paper, so a mental list it was). The first is an HDMI cable, which the PS3 package does not include unfortunately – even the component cable is sold separately, which is a bit cheap on Sony’s part I might say, especially when we’re paying $220 more than our US counterparts). But since the single HDMI connector on my TV was already being used, and my AV receiver does not support HDMI, the only solution is to get a HDMI switch. I decided on the Joytech HDMI TriLink. And this of course meant getting a second HDMI cable. And unlike the US package, our PS3 package does not include a movie in the box, so I will have to get a Blu-ray movie to test the damn thing, since I did not want to wait 6 to 8 weeks for my free movies to arrive. And I almost forgot that I also needed an Ethernet cable, since the PS3 doesn’t include one of these either (but to be fair, it does include wireless network support). And I really did forget that I also needed an optical audio cable, but luckily I added it to my mental list before I set off to do the shopping. The PS3 might be a cheap-ish Blu-ray player (by our standards), but the needed accessories makes it not so cheap after all.

Buying the PS3 went somewhat smoothly. The hardest part was getting the huge box to the car, which was parked some distance away. The Xbox 360 box was large, but manageable. This PS3 box was much bigger than I had expected, and much heavier too. While the salesman was himself struggling to get the box from the back of the store to me, I had a look at the “Buy 2 get 1 free” offer they had for Blu-ray movies. In Australia, our Blu-ray and HD DVD movie prices are outrageous as well – usually $USD 35 per movie ($30 if you’re lucky). The movies in the B2G1F stand was even more outrageously priced, at $USD 45 per movie. No thanks. I will have to go to another store to get my Blu-ray movie, which I had to go to anyway for the other accessories.

So to the other store I went, and my credit card was taking a pounding by this point. And remembering a mental list when you’re carrying 5 KG boxes the size of a small car is not recommended – at one point, I had to go back to the same store twice because I had forgotten to get a few things, the second time I almost forgot another item (the optical cable again). For the record, I purchased Rocky Balboa on Blu-ray because I was interested in its AVC H.264 encoding, and also because I haven’t seen the movie before. Here’s the list of damages at the end of the day (in Australian dollars):

MoneyPS3 – $688
Rocky Balboa Blu-ray: $40
Joytech TriLink: $60
2 x HDMI cables: $60
1 x Ethernet cable: $10
1 x Toslink cable: $20

So all together, that’s $878, which translates to nearly $USD 780. If I was in the US, the whole package probably won’t cost me more than $500, $550 at most. Oh well.

The wallet bashing was over, time to get home and set it up. It wasn’t too hard, to be honest, other than the fact that I have far too many cables already going everywhere, and having more cables did not help. The PS3 setup was pretty easy, setup the HDMI output, set up the optical audio and that’s it. What took a long time was inputting the usernames, sign up details and downloading the updates, but all the consoles are like that these days.

For the past week, I’ve been testing the PS3’s video playback functions, mainly to help me write the PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide (which I’ve updated today to add instructions on how to get AC3 5.1 audio tracks, with some trickery involving MKV to VOB conversion). I’m very impressed with both Blu-ray and the upscaled DVD playback, and if not for the fact that the PS3 is not region free for either of these formats (DVD in particular), I would make it my primary disc player. But as such, my existing region-free upscaling DVD player will still have to occupy a space on the home theatre rack. In between video tests, I’ve been running the Folding@Home software to help contribute some work units to our team.

My TV (Pioneer PDP-504) has what Pioneer calls PureCinema Advanced, which is just 3:3 pulldown (24 FPS -> 72 Hz) for smooth film playback. For whatever reason, I can’t get it to work over component without glitches, but over HDMI, it works a treat. Watching a Blu-ray movie with this option turned on is really fantastic – smooth pans that you don’t see with 3:2 pulldown. I know some people hate PAL speedup, but I find it much more acceptable than 3:2 judder. Now I’ll have to go about upgrading my Xbox 360 to a HDMI capable (and quieter) model, to make HD DVD viewing just as nice.

AVCHD LogoThe next thing I want to try is to make my own AVCHD disc to play on the PS3. AVCHD is basically a mini-Blu-ray, supporting H.264 video and AC3 audio. Nero Vision supports making these types of discs, but there’s still a couple of things I need to figure out. If/When I do, I’ll write a guide for it.

So that’s my first week with the PS3. I’ve done some work, enjoyed some movies and helped out a good cause by donating the free processing power, so all in all, it’s been a good week. PS3 for upscaled DVD and Blu-ray playback is highly recommended.

Posted in High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), PS3, PS4, Video Technology | 1 Comment »

H.264 on PlayStation 3 – guide now available

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

After finally getting a PS3 last week, I got around yesterday to start testing the playback of H.264 files on the PS3, and today, I finished writing a guide for it. It is very much based on the Xbox 360 version of the guide, but with a few added things like AAC 5.1 audio, which the PS3 supports (sort of). Guide linky below:

PS3 H.264 Conversion Guide

The playback quality is excellent, and it’s fun watching the bitrate display show just how variable the bitrate is during playback. If you have an AV receiver that supports AAC decoding, or one that has HDMI input and supports PCM 5.1 audio, then you will be able to enjoy 5.1 channel audio as well.

If you don’t have any H.264 files to test playback, you can download some from our movies section – the ones marked “Xbox 360 compatible” will be PS3 compatible too.

More on my initial PS3 experiences later this week …

Update: A new version of the guide has been release, and it now includes instructions on how to get AC3 5.1 audio for those that don’t have AAC decoders. It uses MeGUI to make a MKV file, and then uses a tool called mkv2vob to remux it into a VOB file. Don’t ask me why, but it works and the PS3 plays it perfectly, even though VOB files are not designed to hold H.264 video.

Posted in PS3, PS4, Video Technology | 7 Comments »

Weekly News Roundup (25 November 2007)

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

Time again for the weekly news roundup. I’ve been fairly busy this week with a few things like looking up Blu-ray and HD DVD bargains and posting them in the blog and forum, and while I’ve been advocating HD format neutrality right here for a while now, I’ve finally made myself format neutral by buying a PS3. I will post more about my shopping experiences and my initial experiences with the PS3 in this blog later this week.

Starting with Copyright news as usual, Macrovision, the company responsible for screwing up the video signal if you did not plug it straight to the TV, has now purchased the recently hacked/bypassed BD+ copy protection system for Blu-ray in a deal worth $45 million (so that’s how much a cracked copy protection system is worth!). With DRM at an all time low in terms of popularity, it must be a big worry for companies like Macrovision which relies on the “need” for DRM for a profit. Kim Bayley, director-general of the UK based Entertainment Retailers Association says that DRM is “stifling growth and working against the consumer interest”, and I think she’s right. DRM-Free MP3s are selling very well indeed, and I don’t think music piracy has increased due to these easily copyable music files. But while the world seems to be united in fighting DRM and restrictive copyright legislation, France’s newly elected (US commercial interest friendly) right wing government wants to set up a new body which will monitor Internet usage. ISPs will monitor the activities of their users and report to the body, and if someone is found guilty of piracy, they could be banned from using the Internet. This sounds more like a fight against privacy than a fight against piracy, in my opinion. And it’s not just the French, the MPAA wants universities to help stop piracy by monitoring the Internet usages of their students through a toolkit provided by the MPAA. So governments spying on citizens, ISPs spying on its customers, school spying on their students … is it me, or does this all sound very Orwellian. Meanwhile, Hollywood is making record profits, while not paying it’s writers what they deserve forcing them to go on strike. It’s all about the money.

Onto something a bit less frightening now. In HD news, Home Media Magazine has written a story about the HD format war and the fan’s contribution to it. It’s a very interesting read, not just because I’m quoted in it, but it summarises what is going on in forums and on websites, and how the war seems to be slightly out of control at times. And the two promotion groups for the formats are not exactly helping, coming out all the time with misleading statements and fuel to add to the fire. This time, it’s Blu-ray with a series of viral ads that they’ve been trying to get websites to promote. But these ads are quite childish, petty and not all that funny (apart a scene where Betamax player is seen being thrown away into the “junk closet”, perhaps as a reminder of the fortune of Sony’s last proprietary format), and it certainly doesn’t help calm the two sides of the format war. Sometimes it’s hard to not get caught up in it (although as I mentioned above, I’m now format neutral), but in the end people love movies, not formats. But the war does bring some benefits, and there are lots of bargins to pick up during the holiday sales period. The latest one sees Wal-Mart offering the 80 GB PS3 plus 10 Blu-ray movies (worth $30 or less), plus the existing 5 free movie redemption from Sony, for only $499. It was 2 per store only, and it’s over now as it only lasted one day, but I doubt that it will be the last of the sales. Keep you eyes peeled for bargains, and just like I’ve done for the past week, I’ll be posting some of the best online offers here in this blog.

Onto gaming, in an effort to bring more developers to the Sony stable, they have now halved the price of PS3 development kits. It’s a step in the right direction, although if they truly want the PS3 to be a successful games platform, they need to do a lot more. For my new PS3, I’m going to be using it more as a upscaling DVD and Blu-ray players, rather than a games machine, which is not what Sony wants (since they lose money on each console sold). I will talk more about this later in the week, but let’s just say that my Xbox 360 and Wii, plus the good old PC, provides for all my gaming needs without the need for the PS3. But it is an excellent Blu-ray and upscaling DVD players, and even if you use it just for these functions, the price is still not too bad compared to standalones. Meanwhile, somebody has leaked the Xbox 360 Fall update list, but I’m highly suspicious of it’s legitimacy, let’s put it this way. The PS3 has also been updated again with the 2.01 firmware to fix a few issues in the 2.00 firmware. The speculation is that the PS3 will get Blu-ray 1.1 profile compatibility before the start of the new year, as that’s why Sony will release its first 1.1 movie. Another week, and another report of a multi-platform release that rocks on the 360 and sucks on the PS3 – this time for the excellently valued Orange Box collection. The developers Valve apparently decided to concentrate on the 360 version, and dumped the PS3 development on publishers EA. I know PS3 fanboys will scream at Valve for being “lazy”, but all these companies have limited resources and if the decision is between making two average versions, or concentrating on getting at least one version right, I think they have done the same thing. The alternative is to have a further 6 to 12 month delay for the PS3 version to get everything right, but I’m fanboys will be even more outraged if this had happened. It seems that the PS3 is not doing well at all in the gaming department, but if you look at the yearly sales figures for all the consoles, it’s not doing too badly. But just like with HD stuff, the console wars will bring discounts over the coming weeks. For example, this last friday, dubbed Black Friday in the US, Amazon ran some sales which saw heavy discounts for several gaming items. Again, I will post some of the better online deals when I see them.

See you in a week’s time.

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (25 November 2007)

Weekly News Roundup (18 November 2007)

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

“Roundup time, I say, it’s roundup time.”

I tried really hard to come up with a smart intro for this week, but the above was all I could come up with. I know it doesn’t even make any sense, but I haven’t been getting much sleep lately and so my brain is kind of fried. And who says this entry needs an intro at all? Almost 50% of the 4 people that read this blog say intros are not important at all, so there!

It’s been a pretty quiet week in any case.

In copyright news, the MPAA is at it again by lobbying Washington to introduce tougher anti-piracy measures. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced legislation that would help the MPAA’s cause. There’s only a couple of good guys left in the US Congress that will actually defend their constituent’s basic fair use rights. It’s a shame that US politics is so influenced by money, and this will never change as long as Hollywood as money to throw at the “problem”.

In HD news, you can now take your expensive PS3, destroy it, and turn it into a cheap toy. That’s right, take out the Blu-ray laser in the PS3 and make your own Blu-ray phaser. People who earlier purchased the Star Trek TOS HD DVD and a Toshiba HD DVD player got their own Star Trek style phaser, and even though it wasn’t self-made. I would say that if you have plans to destroy your PS3, you might as well give it to me since I’m sure I can find some uses for it. Meanwhile, in the battle of the top-of-the-line Blu-ray and HD DVD players, the result is … a draw! Reviews of the Pioneer’s DBP-94HD and Toshiba’s HD-XA2 have earned a high 91% for both players. I would really like to have the XA2 due to it’s fantastic DVD upscaling, which instantly extends the life of my DVD collection. If it drops to half of it’s current price, I’ll get one for sure.

DivX Inc has acquired MainConcept, no doubt for their H.264 technology related products – H.264 really is taking over the world, it seems. DivX HD using H.264 coming soon? Speaking of DivX, guess which video format is coming to the PS3? That’s right, DivX on the PS3 means the PS3 might just become the world’s most popular pirated movie viewer. Xbox 360’s DivX support might not be too far behind either.

In gaming news, analysts have predicted game developer THQ will now shift focus towards 360 and Nintendo development, with less focus on the PS3. Another case of money talks (in this case, the number of Nintendo/360 consoles sold – see October’s US NPD figures), and something-something walks. Does having excessive dust void your PS3 warranty? Apparently, somebody was told that this was the case by Sony tech support. How would you define excessive anyway? PS3s are finally starting to sell, as the cheaper 40 GB model becomes available. Will it finally overtake the 360 in the monthly US NPD figures? We’ll find out in another month. The 360 is celebrating the five year birthday of its Live service. Those that were lucky (or at least read this blog), would have scored themselves a free Live Arcade game (Carcassonne) on the 15th or 16th. The Fall Update, most likely coming on the 4th of December, will add downloadable Xbox 1 games (no achievement points though). Hopefully it will add some other goodies such as DivX playback to make the media extender functionalities of the 360 something of a must-have for Windows Media Center users.

Christmas is nearly here, and regardless of your religion, it’s a time to celebrate due to all the sales that will be doing the rounds. Black Friday sales in the US should see some top bargains pop up for both HD and gaming, and I’ll try to highlight some of the good ones right here on this blog.

See you all next week.

Posted in Copyright, Electronics, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | 2 Comments »

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