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Lower-Price PS3 Mostly Upgradeable
jchenx writes "One of the biggest questions remaining after the Sony press conference and E3 last week was whether or not the core PS3 package could be upgraded to the premium one. It looks like that question has been answered. GI.biz reports that the core version can upgraded with WiFi and memory card adapters, as well as a higher capacity hard drive. However, HDMI output will be non-upgradeable."
Here's to hoping that the lack of HDMI on the low-end model will keep content providers from ever implementing the ICT flag on movies. There's a slim chance that this move by Sony will keep that from happening.
This guy's the limit!
It becomes even clearer when you compare opportunity costs. For the price of a PS3 and one game (~$660), you could buy a Wii and 10 games! (Charitably favoring the PS3 by assuming the Wii starts at $250 and has $40 games.) And to even notice the HDTV difference, you have to buy such a TV, which will cost you $1000, which could have bought 25 Wii games. (!) Yes, this ignores sales tax, but since it's an opportunity cost comparison, the conclusions hold regardless.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I guess I am missing something but why would HDMI not be upgradable. The standard XBOX 360 came with plain A/V cables that can be upgradable to component cables. I would assume that sony just like every other console has a special connection on the back where you have to buy a special approved cable that can have A/V, component or HDMI output.
Apples and oranges.
Component, RCA or VGA are all analog video connections.
DVI or HDMI are digital video connections.
You can convert from analog to analog pretty easy. You can convert from digital to digital pretty easy. You can get a cheap cable that converts from VGA to Component. You can get a cheap cable that converts from DVI to HDMI.
However, converting from analog to digital is an entirely different and very difficult matter. Go looking for a converter box that converts from component to DVI or from component to HDMI and you're going to be paying near a hundred dollars, and you may have to sacrifice picture quality.
The PS3, according to the SCEJ spec sheet published during E3, has a special "A/V Multi Out" connector on the back. You apparently plug a component video dongle into there. If Sony had wired the "A/V Multi Out" to provide digital data in addition to analog, you could plug in a dongle that converts to HDMI really cheap and be on your way. But they apparently didn't do this, and apparently they only provide analog. So you can get a cheap converter to component or RCA or VGA or whatever... but if you want a converter to HDMI or DVI, you are screwed forever, you have to go and spend another $600 on the HDMI output version of the PS3.
Similarly, it's going to be really cheap to upgrade that XBox 360 to component, because that's analog to analog. But the XBox 360 doesn't offer digital out, so you're not going to be able to upgrade it to DVI or HDMI without buying an entire new XBox 360 (assuming an XBox 360 with DVI or HDMI output even exists, which it doesn't.)
The really bizarre and crazy thing here is that Sony can't possibly be saving all that much money by doing this. It isn't that putting HDMI output on the cheap PS3, or putting digital information into the A/V multi out output that's already there, would be all that difficult. The only reason why all those analog-to-digital converters are so expensive is because they actually have to convert analog to digital, which is not a trivial act. When Sony is designing the PS3, though, they don't have to convert anything to anything. They've already got digital inside the box, and they actually have to convert it to analog before they can pump it out to the component video. Considering how easy it would have been to provide some mechanism that would allow a $500 PS3 to be upgraded to digital video output later (thus turning the $500 PS3 from the "broken version" into just the version that's missing a couple of bells and whistles) it's mind-boggling they are choosing to screw over their customers this way.