BD Live / Playstation 3 FW 2.50/2.52 / Live with PlayStation / Home Beta

 

Ehh, a bunch of stuff here... First have to mention that  Playstation 3 has been on fw 2.50/2.52 for about a month now, never got around to post some screenshots for this update... Quite a few features have been added, but it doesn't have big impact on home theatre area, therefore I'm not bothered with this update.

Two big features in this updates are:
1. You can now turn off PS3 or the controller within a designated period time: 10 min, 20 min, etc
2. Video can now played sequentially, and quick scene access has been added.

So much for the firmware, then move on to live with playstation, it's the new version of folding@home, it added the ability to access google news. Other than that, it's the same as the older version, but somehow I cannot see molecule folding now...

Next is the home beta, got it on my PS3 yesterday. After experiencing it with 1 night, I think it's utterly crap... First if you use component cable, you're screwed with 480p only. Then it asks for 3G of space... After going into the home beta, I found that it's just a virtual community, kind of like the one on wii. You can currently access four places (mall, home theatre, bowling, central plaza) outside of your home, and none of these are really appealing or even functioning; stores in mall don't seem open yet, home theatre - you got to watch socom free video, the same video all day long, and not to mention the subpar video quality, bowling - you can play some small games, all generic games just to wasting your time, and central plaza has nothing going on unless you want to socialize with people. Basically, home is just a big advertisement environment for SONY.

And lastly, yesterday afternoon, I just experienced BD Live, which is another disappointing experience. I got Kung fu Panda from paramount, and Wall-E from Disney. These are the two big animation features from summer this year. I watched Wall-E first, which turned out to be mediocre at the best, better than cars and the incredibles. (forgot to mention that upon inserting the disc, it wants to download a 21MB update... I think it's mandatory, so if you don't have Internet, you might be not able to watch the disc, at least for BD Live machines??) As for the BD live Disney provided, you have to go to www.disneybdlive.com to register first, which is so hard to register, took me about half an hour to finally go thru, turns out that I have a bad screen name... After registering, I found nothing interest... Plus using a remote control chatting? Way too absurd! Next, I watched Kung fu Panda, which turns out to be a way better movie. As the BD live features, it's a lot easier to use, you don't need to register... It's more like what they provided on HD-DVD. You download some content to your local storage, then view it. Currently there are only two features, and the downloads are so small, less than 2MB, which wonders me why the f*ck they just include all the stuff on the disc, it's pointless to download!!!

Some weird behavior (limitations) of PS3 AND Macross series on Japanese PS3 Video store

 

Don't know if I have ranted about this weird behavior PS3 has: if mpeg with aac audio is muxed, the playback depends on the resolution of the video. If the video has a 1440*1080 resolution, the file plays; if the video has a 1920*1080 resolution, the file is "corrupt" as reported by PS3. Guess I'll have to just wait and see if they'll fix it in the future firmware (Not likely though), but they did give me DD5.1 output on XMB and fixed playback issue for my CBS recorded files.

Next limitation I have encountered recently is the amount of external media storage devices. After I insert a fourth media storage device, the PS3 complains that it has reached its maximum media storage device, and prompts me to remove one. The exact wording is "You have reached the limit on the number of storage media device. Remove a storage media device to continue." But I didn't remove any devices, and all of them seems to be working fine, at least had no problem of reading, not sure about writing though...

Next is the news about Macross, the entire Macross series, yes including the latest Frontier, will be available for downloading on the Japnaese PS3 video store in September according to this news.

These titles:

「マクロス　ゼロ」／「マクロスF（フロンティア）」／「超時空要塞マクロス」／「超時空要塞マクロス　愛・おぼえていますか」／「超時空要塞マクロスII　-LOVERS AGAIN-」／「マクロス７」／「マクロスプラス」／「劇場版　マクロス７　銀河がオレを呼んでいる！」／「マクロスプラス　MOVIE EDITION」／「マクロス　ダイナマイト７」

Which translate to:

Macross Zero
Macross F
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross
SDF Macross Do you remember love?
SDF Macross II Lovers Again
Macross 7
Macross Plus
Macross 7 the Movie "The Galaxy's calling me!"
Macross Plus "The movie Edition"
Macross Dynamite 7

Will be available on Bandai Channel.

The article didn't say if any of these will be available in HD though.

Playstation 3 firmware 2.4x

 

I should've updated this piece of news last month, but I've taken shity quality pictures for the last couple of batches. So I don't have good pictures, I'm hesitent post them...

This firmware 2.40 was initially released at the end of June, but was pulled off a day later due to the firmware bricked a few PS3s during the update. The problem was caused by users with too many files on their hard drives. I was glad that I didn't update that firmware, as I might be a victim of that since I have tons of files, pictures, mp3s, trailers, game demos, etc on the hard drive... After about a week later, an updated version 2.41 was released, and solved the problem. About a week ago, there's another firmware 2.42 released.

Most of the features in this update are useless in terms of media playing back. However, there are three minor updates in terms of media playing back.

1. Frame and Block Noise Reduction, upconversion in all videos:

Also, there's upconversion feature for BDAV discs now. It is another useless feature as we don't have Blu-ray recorders on the market right now...

2. Mini-size control panel for music:

This is another useless feature...

3. DTS-ES and DTS 96/24 for DVD-Video and DTS-ES Matrix for Blu-ray Discs are now supported.

This is a big update for people using HDMI port and have PS3 doing internal decoding, but not a huge deal for people with optical connection...

One neat feature in this update is including a "Turn Off System" button:

Now I can finally use my SONY RM-AX1400 remote control paired with Nyko PS3 dongle to turn off the system without using the PS3 BT remote.

Other updates are game related which includes accessing XMB during game and trophies.

XMB accessing during game is a long waited update by many gamers, and now it works, but somewhat slow. The operation is not sluggish, but does take some time refreshing the icons. I hope there will be more improvement, better allocating resources for later updates.

 

SONY PS3 firmware 2.31/2.35 and SONY MDR-7506

 

I didn't update the picture shots with firmware 2.31 last month, now there's 2.35 released this week. Since it's a minor update, plus a little feature update, I just combined thses two together...

The firmware 2.3x brings DTS-HD master audio and disc auto resume feature update on audio/video side; a complete new PSN store, the capability of capturing game and uploading to youtube on the network side. Since I don't have an HDMI receiver, this update doesn't have any benefit... This is also the reason why I'm not so enthusiast about this update. On the DVD/Blu-ray resume feature, it sort of worked in firmware 2.20 with no resume if you're in the menu, now in firmware 2.35 it starts to play the first title if you stop in the menu previously... Not the ideal way of resuming, but better than starting all over again; blu-ray side, it still only support non bd-j titles and bd-j titles with pre-authored bd-j titles with resume support.

Screen capture from The day after tomorrow:

Screen capture from Ice age the melt down:

And here is SONY MDR-7506 purchased last month, got it for someone...

The back:

7506 with my V6 side by side, although the only difference between these two is the gold plated plug on the 7506.

ENLARGE

PS3 firmware 2.20 review

 

The ps3 firmware 2.20 has been out a while, but I'm just too lazy to put up this the review.

It is a pretty big update, the support of profile 2.0 puts ps3 the first machine that ever support this profile, all other standalones are still in profile 1.1 and none of those are upgradable to profile 2.0. The other big step forward is the support of subtitle for divx files, addition of a mosquito noise reduction filter for standard definition DVD, resume of DVD and none-java Blu-ray movie, and more interaction between ps3 and psp. To me, the best thing in this update is that they finally fixed the frame mixed up on my recorded OTA mpeg stream. This problem has been there the first day since I got my PS3. So I'm extremely glad to find out this fix which means I can finally streaming my recorded mpeg HD streams to PS3. But unfortunately after watching one episode of the recorded TV series, I somehow found out that PS3 might have applied some dynamic range compression to the ac3 sound track since the bass is definitely not there!!!

So let's see the various features SONY has brought us in this update:

First is the addition of the option "BD Internet Connection" under BD/DVD setting, it is the indication that PS3 has been upgraded to support Blu-ray Profile 2.0

Then, audio output can be set to PSP or PS3. In PS3 mode, to my understanding is that PSP acts like a remote control to browse the song lists without turning on the tv, and the sound still comes out from the receiver. But ironically, due to the HDMI handshaking issue, some TVs have connection issue that requires to be turned on in order for the receiver to get the sound from PS3. So this feature is pointless for those kind of combination...

Then comes the addition of Mosquito Noise Reduction filter for standard definition DVD, it is particular useful for poorly mastered material. Some people over avsforum also points out that the upscaling quality has been improved, I cannot confirm this comment.

I don't have time/device to verify how well the resume function works, but the people over avsforum has been talking about the limitation of this resume function. The general consensus is that if you just eject the disc, you'll lose ALL the memories of ALL the discs it previously remembers! The only disc I have tested is the Blue Gender Disc 1, the resume works when I stop the video in the middle, then turn off the system, I didn't go further to shut off the main switch though. The resume doesn't work when I stop the disc in the menu, when I restart, it plays fromt he beginning again... So looks like the resume function needs some more work to be perfect...

Lastly, it's the support of graphic based subtitles (XSUB and idx+sub) in divx files.

There's no support for separate srt/ssa/ass subtitle files...

The below shows how the subtitles look like. XSUB looks much like crappy DVD subtitles...

In order for PS3 to show any subtitles, you have to first mux the susbtitles into the divx files. Then turning on subtitles when playing back, the default is always off. There are two softwares that I know of that can do this muxing job, aviaddxsub orsub2divx. I've tried both software and found aviaddxsub to be a better choice, but still it won't let me configure the color and size of the outline of the subtitles.

Aviaddxsub only supports srt files, so if you have ssa or ass files, you should use subtitle workshop or similar application to convert to srt, but you'll definitely lose any animated/karaoke effects. Second, the srt files have to be ansi code. There's a detailed document here.

Aviaddxsub supports upto 8 subtitles, but in order to add different subtitles, there's naming standards, the software has poor GUI in this regard, that's what I can say...

Suppose the following naming convention:

mymovie.avi (main movie)

mymovie-1.srt (first subtitle)

mymovie-2.srt (second subtitle)

mymovie-3.srt (third subtitle)

mymovie-4.srt (fourth subtitle)

.

.

.

So you have to add 1,2,3,4... suffix to the srt file in order for the software to recognize them.

Here is the interface of the software, pretty simple to use after you figure out the naming convention:

The configuartion tab is where you need to setup the most, but they are quite intuitive to use. SUB1, SUB2... correspond to the files names above. The custom resolution is a big plus for anyone who has HD resolution divx files. Also it has the ability to break long lines rather than decrease the font size as what the sub2divx do. And it supports foreign language fonts which the sub2divx crashes every single time I try to load any Chinese fonts. The only option it is missing is the outline, you can only change the color and size of the character, but have no control on the outline, the default is black with like 1 or 2 pixel which happens to be my preference, but I would definitely appreciate if the author can add the customization option for the outline.

So overall the firmware 2.20 is a decent update, but still have a lot of room to improve. In terms of a Blu-ray player, PS3 is still currently the best choice. But in terms of a media hub, I am semi-satisfied with it's performance. If I have a choice, I would definitely get a HTPC mainly because there are still so many compatiblity issues and limitations when playing back computer based video files for the PS3.

Best rechargeable battery I've used so far - SANYO eneloop

 

SANYO ENELOOP Ready to use Rechargeable Battery - Pretty pricey compared to the generic ones I got from another retailer. But I think it's well worth it. The bundle here, a charger, 8 x AA, 4 x AAA, 2 C and 2 D adapter, bought form costco, cost for $26.99; whereas the generics ones usually costs only $10 for 12 AA. The advantages of these batteries are long lasting and high voltage. Long lasting so that energy stored don't go away over time, while the generic ones are horrible, have to charge again if not using within one month. High voltage, these go up to 1.30V, whereas the generic ones can only go as high as 1.25V. The advantage is very obvious for using with the digital cameras. It's taking forever for the Eneloop to drain, I can still take pictures after shooting well over 100 pictures!

Since we don't have any SANYO brand products before, this product has really established its quality. I'm looking forward to buy more SANYO products, maybe a rice cooker, maybe even a PROJECTOR, who knows.