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.

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交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report 2

First of all, the updating frequency has been slowed down. From July to the end of August, we got six extra videos, but in September, we got nothing. Now in October, we got an audio commentary for the movie. Let’s see how the implementation of this audio commentary goes.

 

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report

The disc is released by Bandai under their premium label Honneamise. So how’s the experience different from the previous US Hollywood based BD-Live? Here is the report. This post also touches upon the menu, etc, with a focus on the BD-Live features, I guess.

 

プラネテス Planetes Blu-ray Box - the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise (Blu-ray Review)

プラネテス, Planetes Blu-ray Box is the first full featured BD-J title from Bandai Honneamise, looks like Bandai has finally got the Java stuff together.

 

舞-HiME COMPLETE (Mai-HiME) Blu-ray BOX

舞-HiME COMPLETE (Mai-HiME) Blu-ray BOX is the first TV anime title released in Japan to feature Chinese Audio that I'm aware of.

 

MACROSS ZERO Blu-ray Disc Review

The second disc size is 25.6 GB, Video is 1080p 24fps, and audio is 1600K Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and 1536K LPCM 2.0. Last episode also has a commentary track but I haven't listened to it yet. The two episodes here look better than the first disc, colors are better, object and backgrounds are better defined... There is a 13 min seiyuu interview. The video is 1080i with a high bitrate transfer, but it looks rather soft, almost like from some home video.

 

FUNimation BD review Part III: Samurai 7 Blu-ray Box

The first TV series on Blu-ray by FUNimation seems a little underwhelming to me, especially for the video quality issues. I don’t think this release could justify the name of Blu-ray. I would suggest a rental first, start from episode 6 to see if the bandings are issues to you as they are very very distracting for me.

 

 

 

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – BD-Live experience report

 

So in my previous post, I’ve mentioned that this Blu-ray Disc is the first Japanese domestic released title that supports BD-Live. The disc is released by Bandai under their premium label Honneamise. So how’s the experience different from the previous US Hollywood based BD-Live? Here is the report. This post also touches upon the menu, etc, with a focus on the BD-Live features, I guess. There are two discs in the limited edition, I’ll talk about mainly disc1 which has the BD-Live on it; disc2 is just a Bonus disc which I don’t have lots of stuff to say… For the BD-Live content, I’ll put the screenshots along with disc2, you’ll see a reason why I go for this order in the end…

交響詩篇エウレカセブン ポケットが虹でいっぱい Eureka 7 the Movie Pocketful of Rainbows – The first Japanese Domestic Blu-ray Disc utilizes BD-Live

 

So per the article from AV/watch impress, Eureka 7 the Movie is the first Japanese domestic Blu-ray Disc that utilizes BD-Live function. BD-Live from this disc provides trailer downloading (currently has seiyuu stage greeting footage), subtitle downloading, chat, etc. I’m rather underwhelmed by the BD-Live functions from US Blu-ray discs, first the registration is really hard, then the contents are pretty much just advertisements. I don’t think too many people would pull out the disc just to check out the BD-Live contents.

 

Also same as Evangelion Rebuild 1.11, this disc uses SONY’s SBMV (Super Bit Mapping for Video) technology to minimize banding issue commonly seen on digital animations.

Summary of my first impression on various BD-Live from different studios

 

So now I have experienced several BD-Live titles from different studios, I think it’s time to put down something before I forgot…

1. SONY

SONY’s BD-Live has a clean interface, but not very attractive, actually it looks very retrospective… The BD-Live page separates to three columns, each column reveals a bit more details. The BD-Live account, for the first time user you have to register; however if you are a SONY rewards member, you can log in using your account info, no registration is required. SONY also gives a bit incentive to buy their titles, you can register to become a SONY Blu-ray Club member, for each title you registered, they give you 100 points (equivalent to $1). When you register 10 titles, they give you a $10 coupon redeemable only at their own sonystyle store, which has some seriously inflated prices (basically MSRP price). So combining 100 points*10 = $10 + $10 off coupon (can’t double), the best you can get is $10 for a catalog Blu-ray movie… Back to the BD-Live content, currently they offer a bunch of previews, but somehow no actual streaming videos (maybe I haven’t found that place)?

Tested title: You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (Terrible movie and some of the worst Blu-rays I’ve seen in terms of video quality)
From now on, I think all SONY’s release will be BD-Live. For older releases, you can refer to this page.

 

2. Warner Bros

WB’s BD-Live has a clean interface as well, it’s quite attractive. The BD-Live page separates to top and bottom, the bottom portion has a series of buttons, kind of like the buttons in Mac, that you do navigation, the top portion which consist most of the space displays corresponding information. Most contents are streaming video with poor quality (VC-1@ 1Mbps), shown in a very small boxed window. They delete the cache after you left BD-Live page I think. Other contents are special events, they just had a screening events with Dark Knight’s Director on 12/18, I missed that since I bought my steelbook Dark Knight from Canada Futureshop.

Tested title: Dark Knight

 

3. Disney

Disney’s BD-Live is absolutely terrible, you can’t register directly from their disc. You have to register on computer first, then log on… And the registration process is very confusing, I spent at least 30-40 minutes trying to register, fortunately I got it through, turns out that I have a bad username… The BD-Live page is in similar fashion as Warner’s, but the operation isn’t very smooth even on the most powerful Blu-ray player on the market – PS3 (maybe they just used too much Java codes..). For BD-Live contents, I don’t remember what they offered…

Tested title: Wall-E

 

4. Paramount

Paramount’s BD-Live is exactly the same as the HD-DVD version. I don’t think registration is necessary for accessing any contents. The navigation is a lot smoother than HD-DVD.

Tested title: Transformers, Kung Fu Panda, Iron man (boring movie, not sure why so many people think it’s great…)

 

Summary:

At least BD-Live is functioning on my PS3, I have heard quite a few people who can’t get it to work on their standalone machines.

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!!!

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!!!