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PS2 Getting DVD Upgrade & Progressive Video?
blues5150 writes "ZDNET is reporting that Sony is going to be upgrading the PlayStation 2. According to the article "The new design will support most recordable DVD media, including DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW. The new PS2 will also support "progressive scan", a playback method used by some TV sets for clearer images, and it will come with a built-in infrared receiver for using a remote control to control DVD playback." The bad part of all of this is that they don't have dates for availability in North America or Europe."
Sony's also getting rid of the iLink/FireWire/1394 port, some people used this for linking multiple PS2's for multiplayer.
At least mine does. Had an original one that didn't. Got this one at BestBuy about 4 months ago, and it has progressive scan as an option in the setup. It requires the use of a component cable, such as the monster GameLink(TM) 400.
Will there be an upgrade path for those of us with existing PS2's. Also I hope Sony are going to make this a PS2 - Special Edition, i.e. upgrade the CPU/graphics as well and as such they give it the ability to play new special games that won't work on the original PS2.
Now if they could have a special mode on new games that would take advantage of that cool.
Also the i.Link (firewire port is going). Only time I've seen it used is in a 3 screen display og Gran Turismo 3
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
And of course this will be another $300 for those of us who already bought the thing.
If we want the new features that is.
I'm not even THINKING about it until I hear it supports VCDs. I know the quality of a VCD is terrible compared to DVD, but a VCD is comparable to my camcorder and is sometimes the only format in which some Chinese and Japanese material is available.
I was PISSED when I tried to play a VCD of my sister's wedding in my PS2 and it didn't work.
The sickening thing is that the DVD player in the PS2 was based on hardware that CAN play VCDs, they just disabled it.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Sony SCPH 50000
I think due to the design of the PlayStation 2's highly-integrated mainboard you can forget about upgrading the video output of current PS2's in the North Ameerican and European to support progressive scan video. =(
It's more likely that we'll see new-production PS2's that will sport progressive-scan outputs using the three-RCA connector component video connection found here in the USA or the special component video connector used in Europe.
The bad part of all of this is that they don't have dates for availability in North America or Europe
From i4u:
On May 15th Sony starts selling the SCPH 50000 model of the PS2 in Japan. The biggest improvement is the support of DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R und DVD+RW. DVD-RAM. Additionally the annoying Fan noise was reduced significantly (30%). The TV Output supports progressive scan now for better screen quality on high-end TV-Sets. The updated remote control (SCPH-10420) features an eject button and can also power down the console. No date available for the US release of the SCPH 50000. In Japan it will sell for 25,000yen.
The current PS2 IR remotes require a receiver to be plugged into one of the controller ports. The receiver allows a normal controller to be plugged into it as well so you can still use both ports, though. The integrated receiver is just a matter of convenience, I would think. Having a controller plugged into the receiver makes it a little bulky too, IMO.
No. It was an add-on that went into a joystick port. Aftermarket versions had a joystick pass thru, but I don't beleive the Sony branded ones did. You could always use your remote as a controller though.
The Xbox has already been through a major hardware revision (v1.0 to 1.1) which offered many of the same improvements: it eliminated a 40mm fan from the GPU, which quietened the unit considerably, and replaced the bloody awful Thomson DVD drive with a shiny Samsung that can, for the first time in an Xbox, play CD-Rs (note that some units do still come with the middle-of-the-road Philips drive though). Oh, and it has a 20gig hard disk instead of the 8 in the original Xbox, too.
Funny how Sony made a song and a dance about it and Microsoft didn't, though. Not like MS to miss a marketing trick.
You win again, gravity!
After running Linux on my PS2, I'm positive that running any kind of video editing software on it would be a death wish.
Hell, it has enough trouble just editing stills. For video editing you need a really powerful processor, but you also need RAM, and lots of it. The PS2 only has 32 MB.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Yes but you must use one of the controller ports for the infared receiver. This one apparently will be built in.
especially in Japan where it is looked down upon. Improving the drive read ability isn't really going to increase piracy anyway, your console would still need to be chipped - and the sort of person who chips his PS2 is the sort of person who's going to have been fiddling with resistors to get it working now anyway.
Sony is probably responding to the person who's bought his lovely Vaio laptop, bought his lovely Sony DVD writer to record his holiday video shot on his Sony Video Camera and is very pissed off when his DVD doesn't work in his Sony Playstation2.
I can't speak for everybody - but when I chipped my Xbox I dropped in a big 120 Gig drive. I toyed with the idea of buying a DVD writer, but it seemed way too much trouble and expense. Much easier just to store everything on the Xbox Hard Disk and have your own Gaming jukebox.
It's less than a month to E3 and Sony will want to make any announcement about a western version of this system there, to maximise publicity.
The SCPH-50000's big difference is that it supports progressive scan for DVD playback, has an integrated IR receiver and removes the firewire port.
Games have always been able to do 480p on all consumer PS2s. Very few games do this because you need a 720x480 framebuffer instead of the usual 640x448 or 512x448. This is because the pixel clock is 1440 units per scanline in 480p instead of 2560 in 480i - you can only set whole multiples of clocks per pixel, hence the constraints. No consumer PS2 has ever had progressive scan DVD playback. Since Xbox doesn't do progressive scan for DVDs either this is a nice little sales bullet point for Sony.
Sony absolutely will not change the CPU or GPU in any way games can detect. Their whole business model is based around games having as large a potential market as possible. As soon as you split the hardware base like that you split your market. This is also why they won't add controller ports.
The removal of the firewire port is surprising to me given that GT3 uses it for system link play (and for the cool 3-monitor single player view) but I would imagine market research told them not enough people are using it for it to be worthwhile. Either that or people are standardising on USB or Ethernet.
Graham
Are you sure your PS2 ins't broken?
It is more likely a matter of preference. For example, my PS2's fan is tolerable, in general, but is clearly audible during quiet periods of movies or classical music. If your PS2's fan is really quiet, you may be lucky, where manufacturing variations erred in your favor, or its location causes the sound to be absorbed or reflected away somehow.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I bought my PS2 the day they came out, as a dual-use DVD player and console. Worked fine for about a year and then I got bit by the now-infamous Disk Read Error.
After the usual cleanings and whatnot the problem degraded to the point where I just got fed up and bought a brand new PS2. This time, I checked the model numbers very carefully. Here's what I found... there have been at least 7 revs, all with new capabilities. The first number of your serial indicates what you have:
Serial Number on rear of machine begins with:
version 1 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U1" and has 10 case screws.
version 2 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U0" and has 10 case screws.
version 3 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with "U2" and has 10 case screws.
version 4 = serial number (refer to yellow rectangle in right of image) start with 'U3' 'U4' 'U5' or a 'U6' and has a total of 8 case screws.
version 5 = model number contains the letter 'R' (refer to the red rectangle in right side of image) at the end (example SCPH-30001 R).
version 7 = 3900X is the new PS2 Version 7 (what I have)
Once you have esatblished what version you have, examine the limitations using this chart:
Version 1 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games no dvd-r,dvd-rw compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 2 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r,dvd-rw compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 3 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r, compatability, NO DVD+R, NO DVD-RW,NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 4 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r compatability, NO DVD-RW, NO DVD+R, NO DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
Version 5 - Basic playstation 1&2 Games dvd-r compatability, MILD DVD-RW, MILD DVD+R, MILD DVD+RW COMPATABILITY
SECOND GENERATION PS2 VERSION 7 - (SECOND GENERATION PS2) Basic playstation 1&2 Games DVD+R,DVD+RW,DVD-R,DVD+RW compatability
Also, the latest version (available now) does away with the 2MB code that had to sit on your 8MB card just to use the DVD remote. It also seems a bit faster to load, and the fan noise is quieter.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
v8 seemed to be a test bed for some new anti DVD-r protection. They added some extra checks for DVD media on this model (which have already been cracked by two mods).
Bottom line is that new DVD game media checks were added on the v8 console, these are most deffinatly going to roll over to the v9 if not getting improved in the process. This is to protect sony from burned games since the console will read burned media so well now.
As for progressive output, yes the ps2 had support for progressive output but in games only, DVD progressive output requires a de-interlacer which the current PS2 models do NOT sport. It is impossible for the current ps2 models to output progressive DVD movie output.
This new model will also allow the remote to turn the console on/off and eject the drive tray with a newer model of remote. The older remote requires the controller port IR dongle and does not support eject power on/off features.
As far as modding is concerned, its a wait and see situation. Hope is always there for compatability with v8 compatable mods but sony may have very well added some other sort of check.
If it supported mp3 and dvdrw then happy days. Alas it appears not
With a mod you can boot the divx player and play mp3s from there
There is a new model comming soon (unknown when) SCPH-55000 that is speculated to include a 40gig HDD and NIC (Maybe modem also?). Exspected retail price is around US $350
Yeah, it depends on what type of PS2 you have. For instance, if you have SCPH-300001, good luck with getting any DVD-R to work. I have found CompUSA brand to work. With SCPH-39001 though, a lot more options are there for you.
Uncle Thursday
---Too many posts, not enough witt.---
The problem with making it a driver update is that it's not just a matter of magically transforming the video. Creating progressive scan output requires use of one of several different possible algorithms to 'de-interlace' the video, and some methods are better for some video formats (movie, television, etc) than others. A 'generic' progressive scan DVD player could just use a single deinterlacing method, but the results could be worse than a standard interlaced player (I've heard of one Philips DVD player with just that problem). I'm not sure how easy it would be to create a 'driver' to handle all of that for the existing PS2 model.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Also, if you have 3 TVs, 3 copies of GT3, and 3 PS2s, you can hook them all up together and have all 3 tvs display for one driver. So you have somewhat of a wrap around effect (front left, front, front right).
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