PS3 firmware 3.50 adds incomplete 3DBD playback

 

In Sept 2010, Sony released firmware 3.50 to add 3DBD playback (profile 5.0). But due to the limitation of the hardware, we are really only getting “4.5” features. Here is my attempt to explain in details from an authoring standpoint of view.

In order to play 3DBD, you need an HD 3D display, active 3D glasses, and a high-speed HDMI cable (for PS3, you only need 1.3b since it doesn’t support 1.4a standards, maybe we can get an upgrade like the switch from fat to slim models which adds HD audio bitstreaming?)

Here are some Limitations on Blu-ray 3D™ disc playback from Sony:

• The 3D display of some elements such as menus and subtitles may be different on the PS3™ system than on other 3D playback devices.
  • When Dolby TrueHD is selected as the audio format, audio will be output in Dolby Digital during playback of Blu-ray 3D™ content.
  • When DTS-HD is selected as the audio format, audio will be output in DTS during playback of Blu-ray 3D™ content.

These are due to the PS3 has to focusing on decoding two 1080p HD streams simultaneously, it lacks the power to do any BD-J application and HD audio at the same time. This is only a PS3 limitation, the real profile 5.0 machines can do BD-J AND HD audio. In HDMV mode, the menu system doesn’t support real 3D “pop” visual effect, you can do 2D+z-depth value. Under HDMV mode, you can do upto 32 streams containing the z-depth. Sonic uses OSF format to include the parameters, the values can be accurate to frames. I believe sonic currently does NOT have a solution to create real 3D menus. The 2D can still be done in photoshop+designer PS plugin.

• Depending on the content, some BD-J (Blu-ray Disc™ Java*) features such as BONUSVIEW™ and BD-Live™ may not play in 3D or may not function properly on the PS3™ system.

Under profile 5.0 mode where you’re playing 3D titles, you don’t get PIP, multi-angle and BD-Live. But you’re getting a considerable performance gain. The menus get double amount of memory, which I assume to be 32mb for HDMV and 96mb for BD-J? The max bitrate increases from 48Mbps to 72Mbps. The MVC streams used can only be 1080p23.976, 720p60, and 720p59.94, no other combinations are allowed. In Scenarist BD, MVC have base and dependent clips. The base is the main stream, dependent clip is added as a subpath, kind of like PIP. The base can be used as a pure 2D playlist, the feature was disable in 5.5, but was later added back in 5.5.1. (I’m not sure why some retail disc has separate 2D and 3D discs…) The dependent information is the difference from the base, it is usually 50% of the size of the base. There are no I-frames in dependent stream. The dependent stream is put under the SSIF folder. Scenarist BD has a convenient feature where it can automatically generate 3D playlist using base and dependent stream (under a folder) without adding subpath manually. There are some extended PSR values to check 3D capability only available in profile 5.0 mode. I think someone said the SSIF structure uses a linux file system, that’s why under windows, we are getting double the size if we store the disc in folders, therefore it’s definitely recommended to store the disc in ISOs. When outputting a testing disc using Scenarist BD 5.5x, you’ll need to remove AACS in CPS unit, and using premastering - CMF to mux. Thre will be a ud.dat file under Dst0 folder, rename the ud.dat to ud.iso and burn. You can’t do fake AVCHD for 3DBD. These are the information I have gathered so far.

PS3 firmware 3.21->3.42->3.55 Sony desperately trying to prevent cracking the system, but only proved to be futile

 

I lumped these 3 firmwares into one since they pretty much are just security patches.

Firmware 3.21 was introduced on April fool’s day 2010. It was THE infamous patch that REMOVES the install otherOS feature. This also pretty much started the long battle with preventing the system from being cracked. But it only catalyzes the progress IMO since four month after, we’re greeted by some Australian vendor selling USB jailbreak device. There the firmware 3.42 was released for solely defeating this device. Not too long ago, PS3 downgrader was introduced which can be used to downgrade current firmware to lower versions to allow jailbreaking the system. And for defeating this, Sony released firmware 3.55. But shortly after Geohot the original hacker who is pretty much responsible of the removing of install otherOS feature came back with releasing PS3’s master key, which marks the day that PS3 system is totally cracked.

Blu-ray ISO Mounting, Burning and Playback Guide 20100119 Update

 

Since I’ve been fiddling around different software for the past two days, I’m semi-happy with what I got so far. I’ll just summarize my experience.
My system is still winxp SP3, it’s relatively old for multimedia purpose, but still kicking.

The Blu-ray playback software:

1. PowerDVD 8 Ultra version 2217a with HD-DVD add-on.
2. TotalMedia Theatre 3 with SimHD plugin. (TMT3 for short)
3. WinDVD 9.

I have achieved playing actual discs with all three software via a Lite-on BDROM. For playback quality, my preference is: PowerDVD (Hardware Acceleration [HA] on; well, powerDVD always turns on HA for Blu-rays, you can’t turn it off since version 8)>WinDVD 9 (HA on)>TMT3 (HA OFF). PowerDVD gives the best visual quality, but BDMV folder playback and image capture function are disabled on build 2217a; while I didn’t spent too much time on winDVD 9 since it doesn’t do anything; TMT3 can play BDMV folder directly, plus it can capture images as long as the disc has no AACS protection (can capture images from Blu-ray ISO). But TMT3’s video quality is definitely the worst among the three, even after turning off hardware acceleration; with hardware acceleration on, the video quality is even worse, any still images will show aliasing lines, and the DVD playback is totally crapped out! So for serious viewing on PC, powerDVD is the way to go, TMT3 is only good for its functions, winDVD is somewhere in the middle…

For mounting Blu-ray ISO without a physical discs, first you’ll need that famous UDF2.50 reader if you are still using winxp. powerDVD has no problem with either Alcohol 120% or Virtual CloneDrive. TMT3 don’t like Alcohol 120%. After reading around online, I think I found the explanation:

Emulation from Alcohol puts Blu-ray ISOs as a giant DVD-ROM, while from Virtual CloneDrive regards them as a BD-R; although when building the images in Imgburn, I think Imgburn still treat them as DVD-ROM.

Obtaining Blu-ray ISO:
So far, only two pieces of software are easy to use: AnyDVD HD and DVDFab HD Decrypter. AnyDVD HD can work on-the-fly, while DVDFab only works on dumping files to hard drive. After obtaining BDMV folder from the disc, the best option is to make ISO using Imgburn (I think AnyDVD HD can put ISO file directly). The reason I don’t like BDMV folder is because Blu-ray file structures are quite complicated, I don’t want to mess them up, this is especially important if you want to process m2ts in tsmuxer, eac3to later on; making an ISO will make the files read-only and not writable within the ISO so that you won’t mess up the original structure. The drawback to this is that you cannot put a srt/ssa/ssa subtitle file under the “stream” folder, load up mpc/Kmplayer/Potplayer to play the streams with subtitles. But currently the all these multimedia players are still poor at handling raw m2ts streams if there’s Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA advanced codecs, I wouldn’t worry too much of losing this convenient feature.

Before burning, to make the ISO playable in software players such as PowerDVD, you’ll need to have a complete Blu-ray structure:

BDMV
-----AUXDATA
-----BACKUP
------------BDJO
------------CLIPINF
------------JAR
------------PLAYLIST
-----BDJO
-----CLIPINF
-----JAR
-----META
-----PLAYLIST
-----STREAM
CERTIFICATE

More info HERE.

So to summarize all the above, here is the procedures:

PC:

Original Disc->AnyDVD HD(can handle BD+)/DVDFab HD->BDMV->(Complete Blu-ray structure if folders are missing)->IMGBURN UDF2.50 making ISO+MDS/BDISO->Alcohol 120% / Virtual CloneDrive mounting->PowerDVD 8 2217a HA on / TMT3 HA off (specifically used for Title/Pop-up menu captures).

PC with additional subtitle without losing menu:

It is possible at the moment with BDMV titles, some people report that they have successfully muxed in audios and subtitles into m2ts and tricked clipinf files to have a valid stream. I haven’t tried the guide yet.

PS3 without subtitle:

Mounted BDISO->TVersity with transcoding off+add BDMV folder to share->PS3 (only works on simple m2ts with LPCM, poor at handling complex Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA)

PS3 with additional subtitle:

Mounted BDISO->tsmuxer with srt subtitle/4GB cut->FAT32 USB drive->AVCHD manager/AVCHDme->PS3 (no restriction, but menu is lost).

Maximum size for blank Blu-ray discs:

BD-R
12,219,392 Sectors
25,025,314,816 bytes = 24,438,784 KB = 23,866 MB = 23.31 GB

BD-RE
11,826,176 Sectors
24,220,008,448 bytes

BD-R DL
24,438,784 Sectors
50,050,629,632 bytes
46.61 GB

BD-RE DL
23,652,352 Sectors
48,440,016,896 bytes

"If the disc is formatted with what's known as 'spare areas' for error correction etc (part of the blu-ray standard), that size will be smaller still.”

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=8315

Imgburn to turn on spare areas:

Tools-->Settings-->Write-->Prefer Format Without Spare Areas (versions after 2.4.3.0 has this on as default)

Here goes the 122509 update:

A little bit about the players troubleshooting, mainly for TMT3 going explode (causing PC immediate reboot, no BSOD, not even a chance for memory dump). So this is the third time I got hit by this, last two times I got away from it by reinstalling winxp because I did have a reason to, but this time I definitely DO NOT wish to reinstall. So I did a bit research online, and found out I’m NOT alone. The only difference is that some users were speculating about hardware+driver deficiency, while my situation is that it occurs when I installed Canopus Edius NLE on my system (so more like pure software incompatible).

Here’s the procedure I solved the problem this time:

Uninstall Canopus Edius
Uninstall Canopus codec
Uninstall TMT3 completely (manual register and folder cleaning required, see below for details)
REBOOT
Install Canopus
Install TMT3 –> Reboot –> Update to latest .160 version as of this writing –> Reboot

And miracle did happen when I did the above steps.

Details on how to clean uninstall TMT3:

Step 1: Please uninstall the program in the Control Panel. If you have other ArcSoft programs installed, please uninstall them too. Then delete the program files in "C:Program FilesArcSoftTotalMedia Theatre" folder (the installation directory).
Step 2: Delete all the files and the folders (including the hidden ones) in "C:Users<username>Application DataArcSoft" and "C:Program FilesCommon FilesArcSoft" folders.
Step 3: Double check "archlp.sys" in "C:WINDOWSsystem32drivers" has been deleted, if not, please deletes it manually.
Step 4: Clean up the registration files:
1).Go to the Vista Start menu and click in the Start Search Dialog Box, type "regedit" and press Enter.
2).Delete "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREArcSoft]" and "[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareArcSoft]" these two nodes.
Step 5: Reinstall TMT after rebooting the computer.

http://cid-6e8f6dc16096cb25.skydrive.live.com/embedicon.aspx/TheFiles/TMT_TroubleShootingGuide.pdf

Reference Links:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1118509
https://ssl.arcsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1359&PID=6030
http://www.arcsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1642&PN=3

File system:
For cars mp3 CD:

change the filesystem to ISO9660 + Joliet

Joliet is what most standalones will look for when playing MP3 / DivX discs.

Use UDF when you're burning DVD Video / HD DVD / Blu-ray discs.

 

Here goes the 01192011 update:

So at the beginning of 2011, I finally bought a Blu-ray writer - Pioneer BDR-206. Actually, I got the retailed BDR-2206, which comes with Blu-ray playback software PowerDVD and an extra case. Otherwise it’s exactly the same as the OEM BDR-206. I was a bit disappointed to find out even the 2206 didn’t include power and SATA cables. BDR-206 is more like a price-down re-release of last year’s BDR-205 rather than introducing something new. Well, there’s the BDR-206MBK which is world’s first BDXL 128GB quod layer writer… Here are some initial impression.

To go along with the writer, I ordered 5 Mitsubishi BD-RE DLs and 3 Sony BD-RE SLs on ebay which shipped from Japan, rather than going with the domestic ones which one BD-RE DL will cost a ridiculous fortune. Majority of my projects are BD50’s, I have very little use of BD25 discs.

For the BD-RE DLs, I was able to get the original packaged Mitsubishi 5 pack. The discs come with a media code TDKBLD-Wfa-000. I was a bit disappointed and was worried about the compatibility with my Playstation 3 since I read online that this specific media code doesn’t go along with the launch 60GB Playstation 3 well. But fortunately, everything went extremely smooth, I was able to play it without any problem. I’ve watched two movies all the way through without any problem. The first time of using requires a full format which takes as long as writing the discs to full which is 90 min. The data verification process takes about half of the time at 45 min. And as the instructions about imgburn above, I burned these discs with spare area without any problem.

For the Sony BD-RE SLs, I bought the re-packaging ones. These come with packaged without the case. I have no problem using these either, everything went smoothly. But I have to admit worrying about the legitimacy of these discs at first. The disc media code is SONY-ES1-002, which I believe are the same as the ones sold in US. The burning process takes exactly half of the time as BD-RE DLs since BD-RE SLs are exactly half of the size unlike DVD 5 vs DVD 9.

I’ve also burned some CDs and DVD 5s using this writer, and everything is smooth, but I’ve only got verbatim ones, can’t test anything else.

Lastly, some testings on my projects so far:

1. The projects authored in Scenarist BD has a very GOOD compatibility in PS3’s compatibility. There’s a playlist with PIP and always-on menu I had in the project, I could never get this to work in PowerDVD 10 various patches and TMT3/5, Sonic’s Scenarist QC worked to some extent, but it runs exactly as I intended in PS3! Other navigation stuff all worked correctly which exceeds my expectation. Since PS3 DVD’s playback has some quirks, I’m a bit overjoyed.

2. The current top menu audio switching isn’t very smooth, I need to change it to switch at the end of the playlist rather than switching right away.

3. The picture in the metadata, as shown above, needs to have much larger texts. The two picture size are only 640*360 and 416*240.

4. Return button might need to use a second button in BOG to turn off popup menu, otherwise the menu would stick on screen until the title is jumped.

Dec 2010 BD Purchase – impulse buy

 

    

Not much going on in December, didn’t plan to buy any BDs anyway since I got plenty stuff to watch… But the two limited editions from bestbuy is hard to resist… I got these 2 for cheap due to their price error. Hellboy II, I got hellboy I, watched it, didn’t really get into it, I hope II be at least watchable. Coraline seems quite similar in style with Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride from the Free 5 disc offer back in the days. Coraline has at least four releases now, one regular BD, one LE, one anaglyph 3D, and now a true 3D is the most recent one, the one I got here is the LE gift set version with both the 2D and anaglyph 3D

.

Product Review master post

 

HOT SUMMER - Some accessories to keep hard drive cool / OR external Rack Mounts?	PowerDVD 10 Review
Fujitsu Lifebook AH530 Review (01-16-2011 Update)	Win7 Installation Thoughts v2
Diamond USB PC to PC File Transfer Device Review	TOSHIBA Satellite L505-S5990 Notebook Review
Playstation 3 as a media hub - how good is it? Part I -- Official bluetooth remote control review	SONY RM-AX1400 Remote Control Review
Canon A560 test -- Self-made sandwich	My little gadget -- Palm TUNGSTEN E2 review
Something worth to buy -- APC UPS general review	My redemption -- HP dv2000t notebook review (Two HP bought around the same time, both died in less than one year. Lessons learned, never buy HP laptop again!!!)

 

 

Repost -- How to Make a Folded-Paper CD Case

 

It's completely copied from This page, just think it's good to put in my space for convienient location of the article and without those ads on the site...

"

Instead of paying good cash for cd cases, which eventually break and end up in a landfill, how about creating your own, unique folded-paper cd cases that are biodegradable and take up a fraction of the space?

The Props:

8 ½" by 11" paper

a cd

a computer (optional)

labels (optional)

The Procedure:

1. Center a cd, which you’ll be using as a guide, at the top of a sheet of paper, as shown.

2. Fold in sides of paper to sides of cd.

3. Center cd at the middle of the folded paper.

4. Fold bottom up.

5. Fold the horizontal creases, which I’ve identified in red, to sides as indicated by arrows, so the creases are even with sides of original folded sides. (I’ve identified the creases in question with dashed lines for illustration.)

6. You'll have a box-shape sticking up toward you after making the folds in step 5. Just fold this flap down flat as shown below.

7. Tuck the "ears" that are sticking out to the sides in between the original side folds and the fold created in step 4.

8. Slip cd into front pocket and fold down top half of paper.

9. Dog-ear the top two corners of the top half of paper.

10. Slip top half of paper into pocket.

For a personal touch, print labels and photos on the front center of paper to give your cd holder some pizzazz. A picture from a trip of a lifetime or a friend’s favorite tunes.

Print the name of that book you wrote or are working on. Any paper, of course, will do including postal wrap, grocery bags or something of the decorative variety. A sheet of heavier-weight wrapping paper with a printed label makes a great way to store and share holiday pictures.

"

Fujitsu Lifebook AH530 Review (01-16-2011 Update)

 

So I bought the Fujitsu Lifebook AH530 for $549 with a $50 rebate last week, again not for me though, it’s for my uncle this time. It’s not a too shabby deal from a Japanese maker, although Fujitsu somehow wasn’t very well known for consumer market... This one has been on sale a few times in the past two months, but somehow I missed all those. But it also means that not too many people are interested it (can hardly find any reviews online), or the manufacturer is planning to discontinue such model/configuration…

Since I’ve got a Toshiba L505-S5990 for my mom earlier this year. These two are in the same 16” class with some entry to medium level of Intel dual core processors. Of course, the T6500 used in Toshiba is a generation older than this Fujitsu which uses an i3-350M, so the comparison isn’t that fair. My main focus will be on the build quality and general features from these two brands around the same price range (when they were still on the market).

So here is its spec:

Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64bit)

Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-350M Processor (2.26GHz, 3MB L3 cache, 1066MHz FSB)

Memory: 4 GB (2 GB x 2): DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM dual-channel memory

Display: 15.6" Crystal View WXGA HD Display

Graphics: Intel® HD graphics

Hard Drive: 500 GB Serial ATA 5400 rpm hard drive

Optical Drive: Dual-Layer, Multi-Format DVD Writer

Audio: Realtek® codec ALC269 with 2-channel High-Definition (HD) audio

Communications: Gigabit Ethernet LAN, Atheros XSPAN® BGN (802.11BGN) wireless, Bluetooth (V2.1)

Ports: One 15-pin D-SUB connector for VGA external monitor, One HDMI jack, Three USB 2.0 (Universal Serial Bus) connectors for input/output devices, One LAN (RJ-45) connector; One stereo headphone/line-out jack, One stereo microphone/line-in jack

Card Slots: ExpressCard® slot (34mm / 54mm), One Memory Stick®/SD Card slot

Webcam: 1.3 megapixel with digital microphone

Battery: Lithium ion battery, rechargeable, 6-cell, (10.8V, 4400 mAh) Battery life up to 4 hrs., 10 mins.

Software

Microsoft® Office Starter 2010, Adobe Acrobat Reader®, CyberLink YouCam, Norton Internet Security™ 20102 (60-day free trial) Roxio Media Creator, CyberLink MakeDisc, CyberLink PowerDirector, CyberLink PowerDVD

Warranty:

One-year Warranty