Re: Sony PS3 as MCE extender?
- From: John Lockwood <john.lockwood@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 10:17:11 +0100
Yeah, saw the news about the 360 update shortly after I posted my message.
The 1080p support is excellent news as is the improved 50Hz support.
I am pleasantly relieved to read that the new 1080p support covers games,
DVD, HD DVD, and streaming (which presumably also includes TV from a Media
Center).
Supposedly Xbox 360 games or at least some of them, might automatically take
advantage of this improvement. Anyone able to confirm from their own
experiences?
The fiddlyness refers to additional cables (presumably also another power
supply besides the USB) and more space used on your TV stand.
The biggest outstanding issue is the still inability to do HDCP which will
ultimately make the HD DVD drive useless.
I have to say if the HD DVD drive can indeed be plugged in to a Vista PC and
used for playback it is an incredible bargain. Microsoft should be promoting
this far more heavily because this makes Vista far more attractive. Ignoring
this capability, Vista sucks and I would not even upgrade to it even if it
was free. Vista's Media Center 'upgrade' is particularly pathetic (if your
not an American).
On 31/10/06 15:42, in article #tylGrP$GHA.748@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Dana
Cline - MVP" <dcline@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yeah, I don't think Sony would be interested in making the PS3 an extender
for many reasons. There's the schism you mention inside of Sony with the
different divisions not talking to each other. There's the difficulty in
programming for the Cell processor (as the game developers are finding out).
With today's xBox 360 update, it will do 1080p. Not sure what you mean by
"fiddly" but the 360's HD-DVD drive will connect via USB and will also run
on your Vista PC...nice touch there.
Yeah, DRM would eventually be a problem on both systems, and I'm hoping that
users vote with their wallets and not support such draconian DRM. Besides,
both disk formats will be relatively moot when holographic disc storage
comes out late this year or early next...the first version will pack 300Gb
on one disc.
Dana Cline - MCE MVP
"John Lockwood" <john.lockwood@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C16CD730.16332%john.lockwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Xbox 360 is of course able to act as a Media Center Extender, indeed
at
the moment it is effectively the ONLY such device since the others have
all
been discontinued and new ones are waiting (and waiting) for Vista to
ship.
However with the Sony PS3 now very close to release it occurs to me it
would
be very nice if Sony were smart enough to consider making it also capable
of
being a MCE Extender. After all, Sony make a very attractive MCE 2005
system
(the VGX-XL2) and also a matching DVD changer (the VGP-XL1B2).
Why bother you might ask?
Well the Sony PS3, unlike the Xbox 360 has a full blown HDMI connector,
and
it also is capable of full 1080p unlike the Xbox 360 which can only manage
1080i, it also has the bonus of a built-in Blu Ray drive whereas the Xbox
360 needs an external drive (to do HD DVD) which is more fiddly.
I am also concerned that both Blu Ray and HD DVD in their draconian DRM
schemes, stipulate that HDCP is REQUIRED. HDCP is only possible via HDMI
or
DVI and is not possible via Component (as used by the Xbox 360). While at
the moment this restriction is not being enforced, they have said it WILL
be
turned on in the future. This would make the Xbox 360's HD DVD drive
pretty
useless at that stage.
Unfortunately Sony's MCE 2005 products come from a different division to
the
PlayStation and Sony have consistently shown their different divisions are
incapable of working together and indeed more often work AGAINST each
other.
.
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