Official Playstation 3 Blu-Ray player Thread (1 Viewer)

[Simon Massey]

I have to ask
Is the Japanese version any different than the US version in terms of display languages onscreen or what is included ?
Thanks

 

[Arman]

I got the PS3 20GB and am about to watch Superman Returns BD (it'll be my baby's 1st film) I bought in Target earlier. (Refuse to watch Talladega Nights - 1st should be something special )
Am also a proud owner of PS2. My >7 years old Sony DVP-S550D is my very 1st DVD player ever (still working flawlessly! Bought Ronin DVD even before I bought that Sony player).

 

[Chris S]

Finally got my PS3 in yesterday from Costco and watched a short portion of Superman Returns (plane crash scene) and downloaded a couple trailers from their online service. So far I'm loving it as a Blu-ray player. The unit is so quite and starts up really quickly. Now if I could just find some games that I like....

 

[DavidJ]

I got one yesterday at Wal-mart, but I don't have any Blu-ray titles to watch (I'm not planning on keeping Talledega Nights). There is nothing that is "must see" for me at the moment. I wish they had done better with The Fifth Element and House of Flying Daggers. I'm sure I will rent something soon. I am concerned about the clipping reports so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

For just BD movies, any reason one should consider the 60 gig version over the more affordable player?

Guys, I'm almost tempted to bite and get this thing. I could feed the 1080i signal to my 720P projector for the time being until a good 720P downscaling option becomes available.

I know it does Dolby True HD as LPCM over HDMI. Does it also decode DTS lossless or just the DTS core?

 

[David Ely]

Is anyone connecting their PS3 using HDMI -> DVI? I'm wondering if it has the same colorspace issue as the Toshiba HD-DVD player.

 

[wolfyncsu7]

It sounds like there is a firmware update coming this month that will address the clipping issues:
(Quote taken from avsforum.com)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...09#post9046609
Post #1384:
Quote:
The color space of RGB is different than that of YCrCb, so some colors coming from YCrCb may not be valid in the RGB color space, at least that is my current understanding. Therefore, when converting you have to pick a close color, not an exact one. I can't tell you how noticeable it would be.
Currently, the PS3 only offers RGB output. Since most displays expect YCrCb over HDMI, blacker-than-black (BTB) and peak white values are crushed, and some loss of shadow detail results. The updated software with YCrCb output should address this issue.

 

[Eric F]

It sounds like there is a firmware update coming this month that will address the clipping issues:
(Quote taken from avsforum.com)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...09#post9046609
Post #1384:
Quote:
The color space of RGB is different than that of YCrCb, so some colors coming from YCrCb may not be valid in the RGB color space, at least that is my current understanding. Therefore, when converting you have to pick a close color, not an exact one. I can't tell you how noticeable it would be.
Currently, the PS3 only offers RGB output. Since most displays expect YCrCb over HDMI, blacker-than-black (BTB) and peak white values are crushed, and some loss of shadow detail results. The updated software with YCrCb output should address this issue.

I've had it for over a week now and it looks great on my Samsung 56" 720p DLP. The only thing is I hope they resolve the issue so it outputs BD@720p over HDMI, instead of 1080i and having my monitor scale rescale it...Yes, it looks great, but I think native resolution would still be better.

 

[Eric F]

For just BD movies, any reason one should consider the 60 gig version over the more affordable player?
Guys, I'm almost tempted to bite and get this thing. I could feed the 1080i signal to my 720P projector for the time being until a good 720P downscaling option becomes available.
I know it does Dolby True HD as LPCM over HDMI. Does it also decode DTS lossless or just the DTS core?

I went for the 20Gb version. For movies there is no reason to go for the 60Gb version, and if ever comes a time when you need more space, Sony shows you how to swap out harddrives in the instruction manual for a larger one (without voiding your warranty).
I also have a 720p 56" DLP so was a bit dissapointed to find out it outputs BD movies at 1080i, but it still looks amazing and hopefully this will be an issue Sony will resolve in the near future.
No DTS Lossless support...yet. Sony says they will also add it later if demand is high enough, but I'm not sure why that wouldn't be the case?

 

[Arman]

I finally got the monster 60GB in BB 2 days ago.
PS3 is awesome! Blu Ray, SACD and oh video games ...
20GB is going to my brother ... now all I need is a Sony Bravia XBR or Sharp Aquous or Toshiba Regza 1080p LCD TV with 10 HDMIs .

 

[Arman]

My add-on X Box HDDVD (with King Kong) arrived yesterday. I still dont' have the premium core system (waiting for another great deal to come around again - should've bought the free Football deal in Target or with $40 coupon in CC?). I can't wait to see if it is going to be as good as PS3's magnificently stunning PQ (watched SR and XMen, played some of my SACDs and couple of games so far.) Ordered some BD and HDDVD in amazon and Buy. WOW, PS3 should be up there with iPod as two of the best and coolest gadget/electronics of the 21st century. I am definitely going to keep my 20 GB (giving it to my brother) and 60 GB PS3s. It's PQ definitely blew away or as good as the very best of the ones I've seen in my HD DirecTv lately (e.g, HP Goblet, U2 concert in Italy, The Siege, Off the Map). I'll stick to the plan of just saving the money for a 1080p Sony/Sharp 42-60" LCD TV (i.e, I would no longer buy the stand alone Sony BD and Toshiba X-HDDVD players).

 

[Scott_lb]

Got my 60GB yesterday at the Sony Playstation store at the Metreon in San Francisco. Apparently they got in a HUGE shipment as there were easily over 100 people in line and everyone got one (mostly 60GB's too). I picked up Resistance and Superman Returns (Blu-Ray) and have LXG (Blu-Ray) or order. I plan to hook it up later today to test it out. I wasn't planning on being able to get a unit until late Spring at the earliest due to my experience with the 360 last year. I lucked out and got a unit just before Christmas but had to wait outside in below-zero temperatures for well over an hour. I didn't see a 360 for purchase at a store after that point until late March. For my new PS3, I just happened to be in the city that day and happened to check out the Metreon (with the intention of playing with the new stand-alone Blu-Ray player) at the Sony Style store.

Now I can cancel my reservation for my Sony Blu-Ray player since it isn't HDMI V1.3 and the PS3 is.

 

[PeterTHX]

Has anyone been able to confirm or deny that the PS3 passes blacker than black?

Well, for DVD playback it doesn't seem to: the darkest outer bar in the Digital Video Essentials test is missing. The disc says if that happens then the player is "clipping" (crushing?) it. It still looks loads better than the Samsung. Now this may be just for DVD playback, it seems to use a different decoder for BD playback.
It's not quite true that it won't upscale anything. MPEG1 clips I had on CD-R were played in 720P mode on my TV. It will also convert 44.1KHz CD PCM to 48KHz.

 

[PeterTHX]

Another cool feature:
Annoyingly, the Samsung will either pass PCM or Bitstream thru the HDMI, but not both. So if you say put a 5.1 PCM title and switch to a Dolby Digital track, you have to rely on the Samsung's onboard decoder, which can't do different playback modes and downgrades the 6.1 DTS track on "X-Men" to 5.1. If you switch to bitstream, the 5.1 PCM tracks come out plain stereo.
Not so with the PS3!
I set my HDMI output to "Bitstream" and my Onkyo TX-SR803 receiver is HDMI 1.1 compliant. It WILL pass thru the PCM 5.1 as PCM 5.1! It will also decode the SACD tracks to multichannel PCM at 88.2KHz sampling rate! Apparently the PS3 is smart enough to know my receiver is not 1.3 compliant so it pre-decodes the SACD bitstream. I have no Dolby TrueHD discs yet, so I can't test this theory.
One reason I'm happy my receiver is allowed to decode the native Dolby and DTS streams is DTS-ES support, and THX modes available on both. THX is not supported on PCM, however it does allow Cinema Eq.
The audio menu allows you to check off all supported modes, in my case I checked:
Dolby Digital
DTS
2 channel PCM (44.1KHz thru 192KHz, you have to check all the supported modes, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 192)
5.1 channel PCM (48KHz thru 96KHz...SACD plays back at 88.2KHz)
there are 7.1 versions of the settings but according to my manual the 803 doesn't support 7.1 thru HDMI, and I'm not sure how to test that.

 

[wolfyncsu7]

Is there any downside to leaving the PS3 set to 'PCM' to do all the decoding (Is that pretty much what is going on if you do leave it set to output 'PCM'?). I may have to try what PeterTHX is saying by setting the output to 'Bitstream' if it still passes the Uncompressed PCM tracks straight through.

I just bought a Yamaha RX-V2700 which is supposed to have some really nice decoders inside for Dolby Digital/DTS and I may be better off having it do the decoding for those.

Anybody tried this with their receiver or have any suggestions?

 

[PeterTHX]

Joe, leaving it set to "PCM" means you're relying on the PS3's internal decoder and you miss out on DTS 6.1, Dolby EX, and all the internal processing (bass management, eq, etc) that your receiver supports. In my case, all of that plus THX processing. PCM 5.1 is passed thru unmolested on "bitstream"!

 

[Scott_lb]

My two cents:

As a Blu-Ray player (the primary reason for my purchase), the PS3 looks and sounds great! Also quite pleased that it is HDMI 1.3 for the passing of lossless audio formats (which will matter when I pick up a new receiver which can decode such formats). Up to this point, I can't say the same about the quality of gaming and the online experience (as compared to Xbox Live on the 360), but I'm sure things will get better with time. I had some pretty high hopes for "Resistance: Fall of Man". While I've only played it a bit (and it is indeed fun), it doesn't look anywhere near the quality of what I was expecting.

 

[wolfyncsu7]

Peter,

I will try this, but what if discs start coming out in TrueHD or Sony releases a firmware upgrade to internally decode DTS-HD MA? I'll have to go back to sending out 'PCM', right? Or is there an option for each type of soundtrack?

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Right. what would be cool is if you could designate a different protocol for each type of bitstream... or at least by category.

Such as:

Legacy DTS and DD streams: bitstream (so your decoder can do processing)

Advanced audio codecs (True HD and DTS-master): LPCM

LPCM: LPCM (naturally)

 

[Jordan_E]

Got my PS3 over the weekend and have been playing Resistance, but haven't picked up any Blu Ray movies yet.