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Blu-ray Capacity Increase Via Firmware
LordofEntropy writes "Blu-ray.com reports that Sony and Panasonic have announced a new optical disc evaluation technology that increases capacity from 25GB to 33.4GB. The tech uses existing Blu-ray diodes and is accomplished via firmware upgrade. The article says it is not known if and when the upgrade will be adopted into the Blu-ray spec. However, given that Sony and Panasonic are behind it, 'it will likely happen later this year.'"
There's a little more than just a firmware upgrade involved here. This is a computationally-intensive process, which means the PS3 might be able to handle this, but the $100 player you got at Wal-Mart most certainly won't. Moore's Law means that this will become practical in the future, but this tech is definitely ahead of it's time.
It should be noted that this is an increase of 25GB to 33.4GB per layer. Double layer blu-rays are already capable of storing 50 GB.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They're calling this tech "Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation" because they couldn't get the trademark on "We'll go with our best guess what comes next."
No thanks. I'll wait for the 56K version. Oops! I mean the 56Gig version. Perhaps after formating
it might be a nice even 50Gig!
Glad I purchased a PS3 then and not a cheap Wal-Mart garbage player!
s/not know if/not known if/
Thanks.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Unfortunately, they also announced that this 33% space increase will be used by their new DECE encryption, "delivering greater flexibility, value, and security to consumers, without any extra cost, just a free firmware upgrade".
There's some logic to over-buying sometimes. PS3 has been compatible with every change to Blu-Ray such as BD Live. Some same-age players got left in the dust with that one.
Maybe even the PS3 can't handle it. After all, most of heavy work in decoding the data is not done on the PS3's copious CPU, but on the drive's dinky little processor.
Now, most drives have updatable firmware, so maybe that processor is powerful enough. The next issue becomes who's going to want to support the old obsolete products? That $99 Wal-mart player has maybe a year of firmware updates before it's obsolete and no updates will be released for it ever, even bug fixes.
That's why I recommend the PS3 as a blu-ray player, because it's going to be supported for a long time and receive bug fixes. Early DVD players often had trouble playing DVDs that were to spec, but using fancy DVD features that weren't well tested. There are probably many blu-ray features that aren't well tested either. A supported player with firmware updates will get fixes to support discs that use those features, but obsolete players... won't.
And there are a number of players already effectively obsolete (e.g., the very first blu-ray players with profile 1.0). So now if this spec is approved, will we be left with a bunch of players unable to use the new discs, forcing everyone into another hardware upgrade? Blu-ray is doing OK on its own, but forcing everyone with players to buy new ones seems like a non-starter...
Microsoft also wants to participate in Blu-ray development- I heard the next release will be capable of 2 GB.
Equally, before Christmas Walmart in some states were selling a blu-ray player for $55. You could buy a new player annually for five years and spend less than a PS3.
Of course the PS3 offers a lot more, but if you just want to watch Blu-Rays on your HDTV, over-buying is an expensive way to go about it.
So ps3 is still the best blue-ray player, the only one that will handle any kind of specification upgrade. (till they decide diodes should be purple or so)
slashwhat?
What else can be upgraded in capacity with a simple firmware upgrade
I have always been suspicious of some of those Seagate hard-drives, particularly the 1" CompactFlash style ones they used to make.
What other storage medium has been crippled for the convenience of being able to sell *exactly* the same chip/disk at different capacities with very different prices?
How far could the spec be pushed using a decent CD-ROM laser. Could you squeeze 1GB out of a CD drive that was specked to 700MB before?
How about a DVD drive, could you make a 5.5GB single layer DVD disc?
I am curious to know...
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
This is why I got a quad core for my last upgrade. When I did I heard a lot of "yeah but you'll never use all those cores anyway." And now even browsers are being optimized for n-cores. :)
Of course being a programmer helps in judging some aspects of where software might be heading...
.: Max Romantschuk
Now if they can just fix the PS3's godawful remote control (which you're stuck with since almost no universal remote supports bluetooth).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
astral here
but infact my friend buys PS3 in Ukraine about 50$ xD
And now even browsers are being optimized for n-cores. :)
For all the talk around this... I seldom see my browser consuming much CPU for any significant stretch of time. The exceptions are badly written javascript and Flash. The changes being made to browsers (re: multi core) are not so much focused on speed as stability.
Are you perhaps a Sony stockholder? If so, you must disclose that fact. // Just be remindin...
This:
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&source=hp&q=logitech+ps3+adapter&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=18080916205225775435&ei=vARFS4-7M5PT8AaiqoGEBQ&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB0Q8wIwAg#ps-sellers
will let you use pretty much any harmony with it.
One downside to the PS3 as a blu-ray player is that it draws far more power than a standalone player. According to cnet, the PS3 draws 170W, while the BD-P1400 only uses 25W.
At that rate, the player would be drawing more power than my display.
Of course, unless you watch a lot of movies the difference is probably moot,
First blu-ray players didn't start at $50, there was a time when they cost as much or more then a ps3,
Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?
For all the talk around this... I seldom see my browser consuming much CPU for any significant stretch of time. The exceptions are badly written javascript and Flash. The changes being made to browsers (re: multi core) are not so much focused on speed as stability.
I seldom see my browser consume more than 10% of the CPU, but damned if that thing isn't almost always the leader in Memory usage.
I'm sure it is so large due to caching, but I'm always urged to check what processes are running to make sure I have access to all that precious memory. Sure it isn't so precious now...Maybe it is a habit left over from the days from when you would tweak your autoexec.bat and config.sys files so that you could play a certain game.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
The consumer electronics industry lurvs Albanach.
Which would be great it electronic devices weren't banned in planes.
Nick
Ironically, people who bought PS2s to use them as DVD players back in the day were burned when it turned out the PS2 was a pretty marginal DVD player. Overlay (subtitle) support in particular was iffy on a lot of disks (flickering, improper fill, etc...).
I read the internet for the articles.
Have you tried jsnes, the NES emulator written using nothing but Javascript and Canvas? Even on a 2GHz Athlon, it runs at 40fps in Chromium but only 2fps in Opera 10.
Thankfully that banning isn't world wide last I checked.
- A Non American
It varies. I bought a bargain-basement DVD that my regular DVD player(advent) wouldn't play right, but the PS2 with the same disc played it without a problem.
There's a little more than just a firmware upgrade involved here. This is a computationally-intensive process, which means the PS3 might be able to handle this, but the $100 player you got at Wal-Mart most certainly won't.
Moore's Law means that this will become practical in the future, but this tech is definitely ahead of it's time.
Sorry, ahead of it's time?
There's some logic to under-buying too. My DVD player still plays every DVD that I've tried :)
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
http://www.smklink.com/index.php?id=NzY1
there are many others you can use. I wish someone would create one for the iPod touch of the Android platform
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Any data storage standard is a compromise between reliability and capacity. Sure, you can increase the capacity using existing hardware, but that makes it just that more unlikely that the disk will read back without errors on a different player. I already have a problem with DVDs written by a computer tracking on my DVD player, this would only make it worse. The increase in capacity ain't worth the decrease in reliability.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The only place where the tech seems viable is for PS3s and games. Sony control the firmware so they can make PS3s read any format they like. The biggest issue is not every PS3 owner is internet connected to receive updates so if they just push new disks out some PS3s won't read them. Ordinarily, they'd put a mandatory firmware update on the disk, but the disk is unreadable without the firmware... So Sony probably have to ensure that firmware is pushed out beforehand or pack DVDs in with the game with the necessary firmware.
I would guess not but since I dont have a PSP nor any interest in playing PS3 games I guess I am fine with not getting a PS3. Regular DVD quality video is fine enough for me if I am going to be watching it on a tiny portable player. I dont mind ripping blu ray to my laptop and watching it there or yes, just bring the disk, I have heard of and even seen these things you can place disks into so they dont get damaged and scratched. I think they are called "cases" but if they are unknown to you maybe they are not available where you live.
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Who says it has to be bluetooth? I'm sure someone could create a USB IR receiver that acts as a standard HID, so would work on the PS3 just like a controller. Besides, what's wrong with the PS3 BD remote? I happen to like it, and it's nice to not have to point it at the console.
In all fairness, how many upgrades has the DVD-Video spec had? There have been some encryption upgrades, but AFAIK that's it. Blu-Ray has had far more upgrades.
You don’t make any sense. The capacity of the disk is not related to the bandwidth.
Think of fitting longer movies in there that are of the same quality that the shorter movies are: The top quality that is standardized as being playable by any standards-conforming player.
Or adding more languages, saving on production costs. Or adding other bonus material. Maybe a PS3 game demo. Maybe something else.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There's also some logic to waiting until a standard actually finalizes before buying into it.
It seems like that BluRay is in a perpetual state of flux and that you would have to be a chump
to buy a player because either it will need an immediate firmware fix or some change will come
along to the spec to make your player unusable.
A cheap doorstop is better than an expensive one.
Nevermind the $100 players. What about the older more expensive ones. At least the cheap new
players might benefit from technological progress, Moore's law and cheaper components.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Except they aren't. Unless you're referring to a jurisdiction other than the US. They tell you to turn them off during landing and takeoff, but they're not banned.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
You said it. The reliable way to get content from your physical media
to your computer and then your portable player is a PC drive and the
necessary software to liberate the content.
Empty promises from the film industry don't change this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, early versions of the PS3 can't handle the highest of the uber mega high end audio formats.
The HDMI port is physically too old to pump out teh 7.1 TRUE HD LOSSLESS MASTER bullshit.
Dunno if the Slim has been updated to HDMI 1.3 a(/b?) or 1.4. The original PS3 sits at HDMI 1.3 plain and only grabs the core stream for some of the audio formats and transcodes to 5.1 DTS. You can also do bitstream / linear PCM output, but only for 5.1 (not 7.1).
The PS3 also doesn't support some of the fancier color profiles (that no one will ever use) or increased color depth (that no one will ever use).
Any chance this firmware update is first in an ongoing ploy to keep the encryption methods overhauled?
Promising to increase size and compatibility, even when the majority of people won't benefit from it, is a pretty big carrot to get Joe Consumer to flash an entertainment device. These days even my grandparents understand that having a higher version number means something good.
Waiting for the "oh sorry, your player is not compatible with this update, here's a $50 coupon towards a new one (.*.that won't read burned discs.*.)" message.
or you can get a PC, which has been able to decode blu ray without even having a blu ray player.
So maybe you don't want to overbuy.
Again as usual, it's still easier to download than buy legit.
Alternately, I have two 150+ super-awesome-featured DVD players that won't play some DVDs that my $27.99 walmart special will... as a matter of fact, I have yet to come across a disc that it won't play. Every other player I've owned/own, they had problem with at least one disc.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Question. What device do you use to watch on your tv the movies you download off the internet? what device do you watch netflix MoD?
Personally I use my PS3.
The cheapest blu-ray player I've seen that can do DLNA is $200, You can get a PS3 for $250.
Any data storage standard is a compromise between reliability and capacity.
Not really.
Seems to me I can store a LOT of data on paper.
AND it works when the power's out, work in higher temperatures, is foldable, doesn't get eaten by magnets, is easily expandable, etc.
Any data storage standard is a compromise between reliability, speed, costs, and capacity.
Costs include the price of the storage, the readers/writers, the physical storage for the device (how big it is), operating costs (power, environmental restrictions etc.), waste, etc. etc.
You could build a capable HTPC for much less than the cost of a PS3. In fact, you can get TVs that do it all over the network these days, so it doesn't really matter, the argument is still the same.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
troll.
Even with paper, readback suffers when you space the data too close together. You are correct though, the inverse relationship between higher speed and lower cost is also a factor when evaluating data storage, and for some applications a pen a paper are the optimal solution.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Ye's
But that $55 player will suck badly. The PS3 is an amazing Blu-Ray,Upscaling DVD player, thats worth the price of that alone. The fact you can game on it, stream media, got a movie store, a web TV service, web brower and a tonne of other stuff, just makes it even better..
"You *would have to* buy a new player annually for five years and spend less than a PS3."
FTFY
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
You complaining over a $15 remote? Get a life....
the Bluetooth BD remote is fantastic, it does not need line of sight, if you have it hooked up with 1970's IR devices that are a backwards step, then you can get a BD -> IR adapter. Personally I want MORE companies to adopt BD control, it's far more sensible....
If you download the [blu-ray-rip][HD], it plays in any computer...
And in other exciting news, IBM has announced a way to squeeze 96 columns onto a punched card.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Seems like a good way to get people to voluntarily cripple their players. Just a thought.
Anyone else remember the days of "MFM vs RLL"?
...every video or home theater forum is filled to the brim with complaints about all brands of bluray players and how they wont play many discs or have other showstopper issues. This is a great idea, make them even more unreliable.
DVD quality has been very good the last several years and I am more than happy with it. My bluray player sits gathering dust. I hated waiting for it to load and it ran so hot I was terrified it might cause a fire. The Samsung engineers knew this and set it to power off after 40 minutes of pausing. It annoyed me so much I went out and bought a $60 upscaling DVD player and never looked back.
Suck it bluray, I hope you die a quick death.
The Fat PS3 can decode DTS HDMA 7.1 to LPCM 7.1 quite happyily, and output it to an AMP via HDMI. It only grabs the core if you are bitstreaming via optical.
RTFA... they're using a processor-intensive program to estimate what the next bit should have been when they can't get to it.
You could build a capable HTPC for much less than the cost of a PS3. In fact, you can get TVs that do it all over the network these days, so it doesn't really matter, the argument is still the same.
well I do switch between the TV and the projector, So integrated is out of the question. also means it's got to go in the back of the room.(so no IR remotes)
But wait you build a HTPC for much less then $250???
The case alone is like $100, A bluetooth remote is another $50. Blu-Ray Drives start at $100. I'm thinking $150 for the MB/chip. I have a hard time believing you can put together a HTPC for less then $400. whereas a PS3 Slim is $250.
Sure there are ARM based solutions that cheaper, But I don't think there is a better media center Solution cheaper then a PS3.
Where are you shopping that you can build a decent HTPC that can play 1080p video files over HDMI output in a nice small form factor for under $250? Just the motherboard, processor, RAM, case, hard drive, power supply, and video card (I'm assuming a stand alone video card, but if you go for a motherboard with integrated video add the appropriate cost to the board) for pretty much anything you can build will be $300 - and I didn't include any optical drive there. And as for TVs that can do it - the price premium is generally several hundred dollars as well - and would require most everyone to trade their recently purchased $700-$2000 LCD or Plasma TV for one with the capability. At this point the PS3 at the $249 sale price point that is now regularly being seen is a steal in what its capabilities are - web browser, web video and audio player, DLNA player, blu-ray player, not to mention you can actually play a game or two on it if you feel like it sometime (many free demos on PS3 store, etc. so you don't even have to spend a cent to get dozens or hundreds of hours of casual games).
And now even browsers are being optimized for n-cores. :)
For all the talk around this... I seldom see my browser consuming much CPU for any significant stretch of time. The exceptions are badly written javascript and Flash. The changes being made to browsers (re: multi core) are not so much focused on speed as stability.
It's not meant to. Browser performance is not measured in 'average' CPU usage, but 'latency'.
This basic misunderstanding of performance is why us developers know what processors to pick, while everyone else looks at the task manager of an idle machine as evidence that its processor is obviously sufficient! 8)
> That's the best you could come up with in 3 minutes?
That's what she said!
Apparently they modified this algorythm specifically for lower computational power. From the patent application:
http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20090611ptan20090147648.php
"Hence, an improved Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation, such as for an optical disc reader, would be advantageous and in particular a system allowing for increased flexibility, reduced complexity, reduced computational resource demand, increased applicability and/or improved performance would be advantageous."
'Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?'
On the other hand, when your plane lands in the 'wrong' country, don't even think about buying a regioned disk to take home to the PS3 (which is, like most players, Broken By Design and incapable of playing it). Of course, if you'd bought one of the cheapo supermarket models that has multi-region BD playback (they do exist), then...
Optical is rubbish? Maybe if you don't care about archives. Yes, archival CD and DVD (and now Blu-Ray) media exists, and it's not cheap, but is guaranteed to have a century-plus shelf life after writing to it.
Nothing else comes close in terms of longevity or durability. Magnetic media degrades over time. Solid state storage eventually loses its data, and IIRC on time scales far shorter than a century.
Also, most solid state memory cards are tiny because of the applications/devices they're used in. They get lost and broken easily. Optical discs are actually an ideal size for handling and storage, and offer enough surface area on both the top of the disc and the carrier to print or write a fair amount of information about what's on that media.
Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?
I vigorously dispute the "more importantly" clause.
That's a strong point in favor of DVDs, and a strong incentive for me to put off getting a BluRay player for a couple more years.
You could build a capable HTPC for much less than the cost of a PS3.
Wrong.
In fact, you can get TVs that do it all over the network these days, so it doesn't really matter, the argument is still the same.
That's true, but then you end up paying extra for your TV, and you have to deal with a convoluted and inferior interface.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Exactly. DVDs are a stable format that do exactly what they need to.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Linear PCM is the proper and prescribed way to get digital audio out of a Bluray player. That's how the spec is designed. Like nearly all Bluray players, the fat PS3 has always been able to take DTS Master Audio, Dolby True HD, or whatever format and "unzip" them to multichannel PCM. The only exception is older DVDs released in DTS 6.1 or 7.1 (*NOT^ Dolby Digital, which works fine). In those isolated cases, bitstreaming would be superior if you had a 6.1 or 7.1 system.
As for bitstreaming, this is a recent phenomenon, basically invented Dolby, DTS Labs, and the companies that make AV receivers. Basically, it's an excuse to sell you a newer receiver (or possibly, a newer Bluray player). Regardless, the PS3 Slim can bitstream DTS Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD, but doing that disables player sounds and commentary tracks, which should indicate to you that you're not doing something Bluray's designers originally intended.
Ultimately, none of this should matter, since Blurays have enough storage space that the authors could conceivably just dump a raw PCM soundtrack on the discs without any compression. But again, they have to have a reason to keep you upgrading, and audio formats are one way. ;)
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
'Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?'
On the other hand, when your plane lands in the 'wrong' country, don't even think about buying a regioned disk to take home to the PS3 (which is, like most players, Broken By Design and incapable of playing it). Of course, if you'd bought one of the cheapo supermarket models that has multi-region BD playback (they do exist), then...
I'd like to take this time to point out that that the PS3 is the only modern console that doesn't use region lock out.
But you don't get the movie extras nor even subtitles usually when "do[ing] it all over the network these days".
But why is it written in JavaScript and not Java (or another JVM language) in the first place? For an emulator that runs in a web browser, you probably want a platform that's easier for the computer to execute efficiently. This includes static typing, for which JIT methods are better known.
That's why I recommend the PS3 as a blu-ray player, because it's going to be supported for a long time and receive bug fixes. Early DVD players often had trouble playing DVDs that were to spec
My slim PlayStation 2 (NTSC U/C), made by the same division of the same company, has trouble playing DVDs that are to spec. The DVD Wobbl and Bob is encoded for all regions with PAL video, but the PS2 can't rescale the 720x576 at 25fps video on the disc to 720x480 at 30 fps; it just gives up and says "TV system doesn't match."
More accurately DVD's are the run out technology of optical media. The crunch is on for manufacturers to make the most of optical media plants and optical readers. As the price of flash ram continues to fall and the storage capacity increases, it means the end of old fashioned can't fit one in your top pocket (let alone fitting a whole bunch of them) storage media.
The squeeze is really on to get what profits are left in the optical media format, before solid state flash et al wipes them out. So stick with DVD as the media of choice to run out the end optical media and make the switch over with organic solid state printed chips (watch out for them though, as they can quite readily incorporate processing power within the storage medium). To be blunt, blu-ray is the SVHS of optical media.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Split it. 600 MB goes on the first disc; 400 MB and some parity goes on the second. There; you've just recorded a 1 GB file to CD-R.
"You could build a capable HTPC for much less than the cost of a PS3.
Wrong."
Hah! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man you're so full of shit. My CURRENT system can work as an HTPC, with medium gaming capability, and it only cost me $150 to build.
Capable of 1080p HD? Shit, my PENTIUM FOUR is capable of doing that, at 2.0 GHz, with 512MB RAM and a proper video player. That machine is probably worth.. $75 now?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
but is guaranteed to have a century-plus shelf life after writing to it."
Which is why some of my discs have this strange thing eating away the metal backing on the disc, burned once, put in a case, and never touched again. That data is irrecoverable.
Even when it's not touched, it's shit. Until they lose the need for a reflective backing, it will always suck.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Not on its games, but it still respects regions on DVD and Blu-ray video discs.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Sorry, which part of:
did you find difficult to understand?
In December, a PS3 cost about $350, while Walmart would sell you a Blu-Ray player for $55. So, exactly as I said - "if you just want to watch Blu-Rays on your HDTV, over-buying is an expensive way to go about it." (I've added some emphasis for you this time).
As for bitstreaming, this is a recent phenomenon, basically invented Dolby, DTS Labs, and the companies that make AV receivers. Basically, it's an excuse to sell you a newer receiver (or possibly, a newer Bluray player).
Funny, I thought it was the opposite—a way to provide surround over optical without buying a new receiver, since optical doesn't have the bandwidth for surround PCM.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
+1 "Oh Snap!"
Funny, the end-user reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Why do you say it will suck? Is it because you've seen one and it was bad, or because you simply don't believe a $55 blu-ray player can be any good? Oh, and it also does up to 1080p upscaling of DVDs.
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=123984
Not quite 249, but close: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173003&cm_re=ion-_-56-173-003-_-Product
Like nearly all Bluray players, the fat PS3 has always been able to take DTS Master Audio, Dolby True HD, or whatever format and "unzip" them to multichannel PCM.
No it hasn't, it was a firmware update (v2.3) that included support for DTS HD-MA decoding on the fat PS3
Not as precious as it used to be but if you are still stuck on 32-bit desktop windows (for whatever reason) then you are limited to 4GB of address space (which generally translates somewhere between 2.5GB and 3.75GB of usable ram depending on what other hardware you have taking address space). Even if you are using a 64-bit OS your motherboard often puts fairly low limits on how much ram you can actually use.
And what is worse is that when something causes the browser to be swapped out and then you touch a window that hasn't been touched in a while it has to swap all that memory back in before the browser will respond again.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's not meant to. Browser performance is not measured in 'average' CPU usage, but 'latency'.
And in my experiance the biggest performance issue with firefox isn't really all that related to the CPU and the second biggest is only tangetically related to it.
The biggest problems are
1: firefox is a ram-hog, combine that with an OS that likes to swap out ram that hasn't been in use for a while to increase disk cache size or so (both windows and linux like to do this) and if you leave you browser unused for a while or run other ram hungry applications it will be extremely slow when you come back as it drags back in hundreds of megabytes from swap.
2: firefox is single threaded so if one window has some slow javascript running on a time (/. i'm looking at you) it can slow the whole browser down. Likewise if something is being swapped in (see above) ALL the browser windows grind to a halt.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I think you've hit upon why Blu-ray sucks.
The entire point of a standard is that it's supposed to be, you know, standard, not subject to upgrades every year or two that destroy a significant chunk of your investment.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"You could build a capable HTPC for much less than the cost of a PS3.
Wrong."
Hah! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh man you're so full of shit. My CURRENT system can work as an HTPC, with medium gaming capability, and it only cost me $150 to build.
Capable of 1080p HD? Shit, my PENTIUM FOUR is capable of doing that, at 2.0 GHz, with 512MB RAM and a proper video player. That machine is probably worth.. $75 now?
Does it have bluetooth and HDMI out?
maybe I'm old school, but back in my day a STANDARDIZED SPECIFICATION essentially means that everyone got together, said what they wanted the new tech to accomplish, the engineers had many a heated debate on the exact methods as to how it was going to happen, the marketers figured out how it was going to be sold, the accountants begged the engineers and marketers to do it cheaper, and when all was said and done, there was a new technology that was a STANDARD. A piece of hardware/software that was certified to read and/or write content written to that spec was the end user's assurance that their content would play back on their hardware, period. Vinyl records started as mono, and they played back on every Victrola of the day. Whether I play a record back from the 1920's on a similar vintage Victrola, or my 2008 vintage Numark TTX turntables with brand new Shure Whitelabel cartridges, the record will play, end of story. The reverse is also true; all of my vinyl pressed in the last few years will play back on a record player that rolled off the assembly line during the Harding administration. A CD pressed to Redbook audio spec* today will play back on a CD player from 1985. This is how standards work. If the most recent disc labeled to conform to the Blu-Ray spec does not play on EVERY Blu-Ray player that has been certified to also conform to the Blu-Ray spec, then one of three things must be true: 1.) The disc isn't to spec and shouldn't have been certified, 2.) the player isn't to spec and shouldn't have been certified, 3.) the Blu-Ray spec is incomplete at best and broken at worst. Vinyl, 8-Track, Cassettes, VHS, CD-ROM*, 3 1/2" floppy, and for the most part DVD-ROM* have gotten along just fine without firmware updates, else we are talking about a moving target, which is the very situation that specifications are written to prevent.
*For these, I am referring to commercially stamped media, not CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, etc. designed for consumer use.
Adding bluetooth costs five bucks. Most people don't need HDMI out; most of us could use VGA, because most of us who actually have a TV fancy enough to have HDMI have one with VGA or DVI-I on it. Your comment is lame.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The other mitigating factor is just about every Region locked Movie I've run into is PAL.
I have gotten a few NTSC-j games though that required a mod chip to play.
----
God this thread makes me feel like a sony fanboi.
So will that PS3 Blu-Ray player work with 3D Blu-Ray discs?
Do you hear that sound Mr. tlhIngan? It is the sound of inevitability, it is the sound of your PS3 Blu-Ray compatability death. :)
Or you could just slap in a $60 card and get DVI and full hardware accelerated decoding. And computers are REALLY cheap for off lease now. As you can see here they have models starting at $39.
For a nice pretty black one that would make a good HTPC you could get this which at 3Ghz is more than plenty for 1080p. I have sold a few of these to customers and they are compact, quiet, easy to work on, and built like tanks. Just add a capture card and mediaportal and you will have a nice HTPC.
So if somebody wants to buy a Ps3 for playing games and have BD as a bonus, cool. But buying one just for a media center does seem like extreme overkill to me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why?
Sorry, which part of:
did you find difficult to understand?
In December, a PS3 cost about $350, while Walmart would sell you a Blu-Ray player for $55. So, exactly as I said - "if you just want to watch Blu-Rays on your HDTV, over-buying is an expensive way to go about it." (I've added some emphasis for you this time).
But it's not $350 vs $50! That's like trying to compare Apple to Caviar.
a ps3 slim is $250
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=210189764&listingid=64256146
a DLNA Blu Ray player is $175
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882005044&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Blu-Ray+Players-_-LG+ELECTRONICS-_-82005044
So it's more of a $50-75 premium, not $300 like you state. I personally think the extra features are worth $50. I'm not sure It's worth a $100 premium.
There's a little more than just a firmware upgrade involved here.
Are you sure? Hardware manufacturers have a history of creating FOO of capacity X, then downgrading it via firmware to capacities X-Y and X-Z (where Y and Z are greater than zero but less than X). This way, they can only spend money for creating one type of item, but offer lower price points. Maybe they had the larger capacity all along?
Another way of looking at it: if I am not waiting any significant amount of time for a web page to load (and I have not been for years now); and that the experience holds true for my quad-core laptop and my Atom processor netbook, then a given application's performance is not visibly affected by presence or lack of CPUs.
Splitting up the application into multi-CPU friendly executables won't change my perception of performance as a user - since it's already as fast as it can be.
Again, though, this is why the move to multi CPU is not focused on performance for web browsers, but stability. This isn't to say that there won't be any perf gains, but that that's not the primary benefit to expect from such re-architecture of this kind of application.
Have you tried jsnes, the NES emulator written using nothing but Javascript and Canvas? Even on a 2GHz Athlon, it runs at 40fps in Chromium but only 2fps in Opera 10.
Seriously? That's like saying "I know you say you have enough horsepower in your Toyota, but have you tried drag racing against a GT 500 with it?"
Then again, I think it's ridiculous when adobe auto-installs an updater app that "only" takes up 20-30MB in the background. I'm often torn between "well, memory really IS cheap" and "get off my lawn and take your gigabytes with you."
Which is why some of my discs have this strange thing eating away the metal backing on the disc, burned once, put in a case, and never touched again. That data is irrecoverable.
Uh...were they archival media like the person you're replying to mentioned?
Even when it's not touched, it's shit. Until they lose the need for a reflective backing, it will always suck.
Only if the reflective backing is made of a material that oxidizes. That's why archival media uses gold. If it doesn't oxidize, it lasts. Yes, it's expensive and there's no reason you'd want it for most uses. However, if you do want an archival solution that will last you a century, these really will work.
There are scores of TVs that include HDMI and not VGA.
guaranteed to have a century-plus shelf life after writing to it.
Guarenteed by whom, and what makes you sure that guarantee will be upheld in 20 years?
I actually have the cheap as shit Nyko remote I'm using with my Harmony. Just had to train it off the remote's buttons, and it's all good.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Thats a silly response
PS3 can't transfer Bluray disks to your device for offline usage. anymore than a
PS3 can stream over the internet to your PSP, but how many planes has Wifi available
A PC can transfer movies to my $20 mp4 player or Iphone, iPod
First blu-ray players didn't start at $50, there was a time when they cost as much or more then a ps3,
Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?
This is a key feature, because it is definitely worth buying a PS3 for the ability to watch high definition blu-ray media on the small, low-resolution psp screen.
Yes, the firmware update for 3d support, for both models, has already been announced for 2010.
Zotac IONITX-A: ~$120
M350 mini-itx case: ~$60
1GB RAM (plenty for a HTPC): ~$20
El cheapo small HD: ~$50 (use an external drive for your media, which most people have lying around somewhere)
Total: $250
If you want an IR receiver and a bluetooth dongle with that, add another ~$50
'The other mitigating factor is just about every Region locked Movie I've run into is PAL.'
That's another win for (at least one of) the cheapo players. You get a built-in NTSC/PAL standards converter.
And then what, you put that $75 pentium-4 PC inside your A/V cabinet or what?
While I agree that you can build a decent HTPC for around the cost of a PS3, you have to admit that a desktop-PC is not the same as a small form-factor HTPC right?
the video card would be accelerating it, I know for fact 1080p will play about 1fps on a p4 3.2ghz without acceleration. add in a recent video card with video decoding acceleration and it's smooth as though.
Have you ever typed something in to the address bar of Firefox as a temporary way to paste, select all, and copy, which converts it to plain text formatting, so you can paste it into a Microsoft tool without having to undo hundreds of unwanted formatting changes applied automatically?
I forget that a keystroke in the 'not quite awesome but kinda neat' bar locks up the browser as it slogs through a SQLLite database of every site I've ever been to, to see if any fo them contain the single letter in the URL, title, or HTTP response keywords.
It's a nice feature, but my point is browsers are getting more convenient, and requiring more power as they do. It wouldn't make sense to use something as simple as IE 4 in this era, with our computers able to run 100 instances of it and break a sweat yet be unable to access any useful features of the web like mortgage calculators and mouseover animations written to the ECMA standard... the power is there, so we use it, someone abuses it, and more powerful computers come out.
Nah, you probably use Opera and have no idea what I'm on about. Point is, the web will continue to get more complicated, especially with HTML 5 and more legitimate uses of Flash, and Microsoft joining the SVG group. You're soon going to need that optimization just to get by.
You're determined to compare a high spec blu-ray player with a PS3.
I said "if you just want to watch Blu-Rays on your HDTV" and if that's what you want there were, and probably will be again shortly, blu-ray players for under $60. That's where the premium becomes hundreds of dollars.
I didn't at any time say the PS3 wasn't a good solution. What I did do was point out that if you just want to watch your movies, overbuying to future proof is a very expensive course of action. It's much cheaper to buy a decent yet cheap player today and upgrade later.
If we can throw something new and exciting into existing players with a firmware upgrade instead of making everyone buy new players and disks, that's a good thing, no?
Maybe I'm new-school, but that process took a lot of time and held up time to market, where people with extra money to spend can enjoy the technology and manufacturers can get feedback before starting on a standard. Electricity delivery was not standardized first, there were competing implementations. MP3 had a de-facto standard, but competing encoders and players took a while to play everything (ever had to "uncook" an MP3 because it had that sizzle to it? That's oldschool).
Look at HTML5, or W3C. IF they did standards first then implementations, we'd be in the stone age of browsers.
All I'm saying is it might have worked well in the past, but it didn't always work that way, and we move faster today. Oh, I'm also saying that standards are becoming rather complicated. Putting a physical object into a groove might seem esoteric for some of the geek crowd, but it's a fairly simple concept and easy to provide backward compatibility.
And last, Audio CDs were invented in the 60's, refined through the 70's and released in 1982 to the public. Three years later, the players would have had their bugs shaken out, as well as lots of test material. Plus they didn't have software bugs to speak of - either it would play, pause, ff, rw, skip, and stop, or it wouldn't, so it's easy to test and certification was hardly needed. BluRay is vastly more complicated. Anything we invent today is going to be vastly more complicated than in those bygone halcyon days of standardization bliss. If ISO can't even do its job, your way of doing things is screwed. Not that it should be, it just is.
Say what you will about its failure and how Bluray was the future...but you know what? HD-DVD worked. Bluray is nothing more than Sony's revenge over the Betamax fiasco.
forget that a keystroke in the 'not quite awesome but kinda neat' bar locks up the browser as it slogs through a SQLLite database of every site I've ever been to, to see if any fo them contain the single letter in the URL, title, or HTTP response keywords.
I've got a few thousand bookmarks and keep history for an indefinite period (6 mos maybe?), and I actually don't have this problem. I'm not doubting that you do, but it sounds like we're definitely having different experiences with it. (And amusingly - yes, I have used the address bar for that purpose a time or three. More often then Run dialog though.) That said: the multi-core oriented development doesn't seem to be focused on such things as that -- which are by their nature linear tasks.
As far as browsers getting more powerful and convenient -- well, we'll see what HTML 5 brings. But it seems to met hey've hit a plateau -- sure, people are finding new(ish) things to do with them, but for all that none of the sites I use require a fraction of what my computer is capable of. Even when I have 30 or 40 tabs open. (I hate doing that too - because inevitably I never get back to all of them once I have that many open...)
That aside: when you get to the point where you're writing truly taxing things for a web browser... perhaps you'd be better off taking advantage of a more rich platform API such as Java or Python, or even .Net.
Web browsers do make a decent platform for development -- but only decent because even after 20 years of practice, I believe only one browser is 100% standards compliant . Quite unlike other platforms, which were designed from the ground up to be consistent and permit developers to disregard trivialities such as underlying OS.
Using a browser for something truly complex is a lot like using an egg beater to stir your soup. Yeah, it works - but there are much better ways.
In the 1920s compensation curves on records had not been standardized.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Sorry that is NOT to spec for NTSC DVD. About the only HxW issue I ever see in testing is that some NTSC DVD players do not display the half height (240) format properly. Usually the image is squished on the top half of the TV. Fortunately VCD was never popular in NA so it is very rare to encounter a DVD that uses VCD-ish MPEG2 video.
Personally I waited and bought the first Panasonic DVD player that did not have any bugs. All previous players from every other vendor had audio, subtitle, VM, and chroma filter issues. That $800 DVD player was the first that really worked with everything. It still works. To this day I run into DVDs that do not work right is some of my other cheap DVD players.
Great, now my boss will be asking me to increase our microcontroller's ROM size with a software update.
Sorry that is NOT to spec for NTSC DVD.
It is to spec for PAL DVD. Unlike an Apex DVD player I own, my PS2 fails at converting PAL to NTSC even if the disc is marked for all regions.
Funny, I thought it was the opposite--a way to provide surround over optical without buying a new receiver, since optical doesn't have the bandwidth for surround PCM.
You're entirely correct with regards to optical, but I was talking about audio sent via HDMI. It doesn't need to be bitstreamed, there is plenty of bandwidth to send the full PCM soundtrack.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
The PS3's CPU "is" used during blu-ray playback, which is why the PS3 has very very good BD-J performance. How many standalone blu-ray players have a 3.2 GHz hyperthreaded, with altivec CPU with 7 powerful SPE's with cycles to burn.
Ah, revisionist history is the most convenient kind. Please allow me to interject.
Vinyl, 8-Track, Cassettes, VHS, CD-ROM*, 3 1/2" floppy, and for the most part DVD-ROM* have gotten along just fine without firmware updates, else we are talking about a moving target, which is the very situation that specifications are written to prevent.
For years, vinyl records had varying speeds, playback methods (constant vs variable linear velocity), and even after the standardization on 78 RPM, different countries ran slightly different speeds, and later 45 and 33 1/3 RPM became the "new" standards.
Vinyl weight and size, and groove depth, width, and angle, all varied, and, as a result, so did the needles and turntables required to play them back. Different recording shops and players had different equalization strategies to eliminate buzzing and popping inherent in vinyl technology. This persisted through the 40's as companies fought for control of the industry. Finally, standards were agreed upon in the US in the 50s, but for the most part, they didn't take worldwide until the 70s.
So if your point was that the records will play*, where * means they may have the wrong equalization, pitch (sometimes even depending on where in the record!), and may render your player and/or record inoperable or at least noticeably damaged, then you are correct. But it hardly stands to your point on standardization.
But wait, there's more!
Redbook was actually a good example. It's a standard that's been adhered to very well worldwide over the years; it was the *answer* to the fiasco that was vinyl. It took major cooperation from the world's biggest entertainment corporations. There are some examples of discs out there that break the standard and therefore do not bear the compact disc certification logo; they're as strict as they should be.
However, companies tire of this aging standard and its limitations on their ability to make adjustments (likely to reduce consumers' freedoms). Also - if there's a good, solid standard, how are the companies going to make money? Their business is to sell the same material over and over again, and without new, improved specs (and ways to stop consumers from circumventing the industry's desired processes), they'd have to resort to (gasp) doing work and making something new that's worth buying (see: the debates on copyright extensions). So they came up with a way to make it work that is relatively clear - a version numbering system. Will my TV work with this bluray player over HDMI with this cable? Sure, if they both have HDMI 1.1 - as clearly indicated on the packaging. Will this disc's extra features work on my player? Sure, if my player is bluray 2.0 compatible. etc.
And because I'm feeling nitpicky:
"8-Track, Cassettes, VHS, CD-ROM*, 3 1/2" floppy"
* I'll admit that I don't know about 8-track.
* Cassettes had major technological changes (like the different metal technologies, Dolby Noise Reduction; sure they were intercompatible, but if your specs didn't match up, you weren't getting the right sound).
* VHS: see Hi-Fi, S-VHS, differing tape lengths that would tangle up your heads if your VCR didn't have powerful enough motors, etc.
* CD-ROM: again, point well taken - the CD was the good example here
* 3 1/2" floppy. We went from 400k to 800k "double density" to 1.3MB "high density", all requiring completely new drives.
Check it all out on wikipedia or your favorite credible source.
Targus Bluetooth adapter and HDMI on the video card, yes.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The PC sits behind the 32" 1080p LCD it's connected to. :) The joys of non-CRT screens. There's room for two full towers behind my TV in its little stand. You wouldn't even notice it unless you looked behind the TV, the stand just blends in with the case.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You know for a fact nothing. The minimum x86 requirements for mpeg-2 1080p video decoding are a P4 2.0 GHz. I got lucky and managed 20fps with my 1.8, but I have a 2.8 with hyperthreading now and it doesn't even skip, pulling a full 60 fps easily at 1080p, using crap onboard intel video, with a DVI-HDMI adapter.
Let me guess, you use VLC for video playing? That would explain half your problems. I used to love VLC, until I tried HD video on it - it just chokes. Zoom Player wins.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Mine were gold master archival discs used in music studios - what's eating it is a bacteria, I've already made cultures of the stuff. There are corresponding pits in the plastic that tell me I've got some kind that screws up both metal and plastic.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Magneto optical comes close and is likely much better.
actually it was mplayer, only ever used vlc on windows which I haven't touched in over a decade now. All I will say is the 3.2ghz p4 (with hyperthreading) I have sitting in the corner disagrees with you. Used Xine also but similar effect.