PS3 To Gain Support For 3-D Movies On Blu-Ray and YouTube

An anonymous reader writes with news that Sony is planning a firmware update for the PS3 to enable 3-D playback from Blu-ray movies and YouTube. The update is scheduled for September, and support for 3-D photos will come later. Sony's Kaz Hirai spoke recently about how the PS3 was designed with these kinds of upgrades in mind. "Given how fast technology turns over now, we knew going in that we had to pack a lot of horsepower into the PS3. Four years ago — when you look at the console's power and its retail price — a lot of people were critical with the fact that there was so much packed under the hood. Now we're especially pleased to be introducing things like Move and 3-D gaming because we're able to show tangibly why we released the PS3 with the power it has, and why it makes so much sense to future proof a console." Sony also updated its PS3 Terms of Service to warn against too much 3-D viewing.

Comments

More 3-D madness.

[Yamata no Orochi]

Why this push for everything to be 3-D? It was a stupid novelty years ago, and its no less stupid now.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[betterunixthanunix]

At least they are trying to do something to make paying to see the movie worthwhile. They could just focus on bankrupting college students as a business, and not even bother to create an incentive to go to the theaters.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[commodore64_love]

Electronic companies want to continue the economic boom they experienced with the analog/SDTV to digital/HDTV transition. Now that it's complete, they need a new carrot to dangle in front of consumers, and they think 3DTV is it.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[c0lo]

Now we're especially pleased... because we're able to show tangibly why we released the PS3 with the power it has

Sony also updated its PS3 Terms of Service to warn against too much 3-D viewing

Sort of saying: "We are sooo pleased we are now able to sell you something that will harm you, without investing any further", eh?

Re:More 3-D madness.

[SquarePixel]

And it was not stupid, just old and bad technology before. He is probably thinking the old red-blue glasses. 3D viewing has improved a lot in the recent years, and for example gives a totally new feeling with games. If you have tried Left 4 Dead with NVidia's 3D Vision Kit and a 120hz 3D capable monitor, you know what I'm talking about (it is a lot scarier too).

It really gives a completely new feeling, when done right, and remember this is all along the path for technology that can render the environment completely and realistically around us, with a complete feeling of "being there".

Re:More 3-D madness.

[NoPantsJim]

I think at the very least part of it has to do with piracy. I remember years ago when hddvd and bluray were first hitting the shelves they were heralded as the end of piracy. The logic was no one would be able to pirate a movie that clocks in at 40-50 gigs. Of course, thanks to h.264 and other codecs, downloading 1080p copies of movies is pretty trivial.

I suspect that studio execs are sitting around assuming no one will be able to figure out how to pirate 3-d movies. Of course, there are probably people much much smarter than they are trying to figure out how.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[jagsta]

I'm assuming from your comment you haven't sampled what gaming in 3D looks and feels like? I've only been able to watch in game footage from a couple of the demo titles (Motorstorm, Super Stardust HD and WipeoutHD) so far, but I can say that for both of the racing type games the effect is excellent and for me at least really contributed to the level of immersion. I think sports titles, and FPS really will be enhanced by this. I personally am not so enthusiastic about the 3D TVs (casual viewing in 3D isn't really going to work I think), but I can't wait for the 3D projectors to be launched, i'll be upgrading my projector as soon as a good model which is 3D capable is available.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[Joe Tie.]

It still gives me a headache.

And putting pressure on the remains of my foot hurts. Congrats, like me you're a cripple. The main difference is that I don't begrudge people who can walk from enjoying it. Be glad it's such a minor disability, could be a whole lot worse than having some movies be unavailable.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[Animaether]

Why this push for everything to be 3-D? It was a stupid novelty years ago, and its no less stupid now.

*shakes his cane*

sonny, my computer only has two speakers attached to it - I don't know why you youngsters insisted on this, this.. surrounding sound.. it was a stupid novelty when I was a kid, and it's no less stupid now! Now get offa my lawn!

Except... I can still watch the movie with either its included stereo track or the mix produced from the surround tracks. Why would I complain at all?

So it is with (stereoscopic) 3D as well - don't like it? Don't watch it - there's certainly zero -technical- reason you can't watch just the left view, just the right view, or a per-scene decision (not specced, afaik) of which view to take. And you can do this on that 20" CRT you picked up in 1992 that only takes composite input, rather than having to endure HD video and suffering the consequences.

In other words.. what is your complaint about, exactly? How is this push for 3D affecting you?

Why this push for everything to be 3-D?

Part money (see other replies), part because they can, part because they should - this goes mostly for movies.. it's much easier to start with a 3D pipeline than trying to make a 2D movie 3D - and part because consumers want it; when people themselves are getting 3D TVs / displays, it follows naturally that they might want to take 3D pictures - thus SONY's new batch of P&S cameras doing the stereo thing as part of its panorama sweep mode and other manufacturers coming out with cameras with 2 lenses, for example. It may be one of those things where a product is made that people didn't even know they wanted, but such it is.

It was a stupid novelty years ago, and its no less stupid now.

I disagree.. not with the stupid novelty part so much - that's a subjective thing; I've always rather enjoyed stereoscopic content and am a stereoscopic photography amateur myself (2 separate, synced, cameras for greater depth perception control) - but with the idea that it's no less stupid.

It was a lot more stupid in the 80's as there was no reasonable viewing medium outside of the theater - and very often that was a special theater as well. The only way to view at home was with red/green, red/blue, orange/cyan, etc. filter glasses. That was a heck of a lot more stupid than the full color experience you can have in the home now with shutter / polarized glasses or even lenticular / parallax barrier displays. The only thing that came close were the ViewMaster reels - and those were still images with relatively poor resolution, rather than animated content - let alone interactive content.

3D isn't a short-lived fad - it may be a niche feature (just like surround sound), and you may not be a part of the group who enjoys that particular niche feature, but to say it's no less stupid now than it was years ago would be ignoring the vast technical improvements and consumer-level availability that exists during this current push which were all but non-existent during any previous pushes.
Whether it will be a longer-term fad if it turns out consumer uptake does end up on the low side - most likely due to the "I don't want to wear 'funny' glasses" effect - is another matter. Part of me hopes it will be - perhaps they'll re-focus their efforts on True HDR displays instead ;)

Re:More 3-D madness.

[TexVex]

The best 3D to date is with active shutter glasses.

No, the best 3D is with circularly polarized light (which works even if you tilt the glasses off vertical, unlike linearly polarized systems). The glasses are super cheap plastic. There is no need to blank each eye in turn for half of each frame, so there is a lot less flicker. (And flicker sensitivity isn't so much a matter of framerate but of how much of each frame is black; stereoscopic systems require 50% blankness.)

I know LCD displays are all linearly polarized. Can they be made circularly polarized instead, with rows or columns alternating polarity?

I know movie theatre screens can reflect circularly polarized light without changing the polarization, so it can work with projection home theater. But, what about DLP displays? Can the screens pass circularly polarized light with polarization intact?

I for one am not interested in home 3D that uses shutter glasses, but I'd definitely be interested in one that uses polarization.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[pushing-robot]

3D video is nothing more than two 2D videos which alternate every other frame. It's trivial to create or decode; in fact, there are several ways you can do it:

• Put the left and right frames next to each other into one big video frame, or...
• Interleave the left and right frames into one stream with twice the frame rate, or...
• Multiplex the two streams into one file, or...
• Store the streams as two separate files.

You can actually encode and watch 3D video today, if you have the hardware. The only reasons you're not seeing tons of pirated 3D video is because the hardware is still relatively rare, the files are naturally larger than 2D versions, and player software makers (VideoLAN et al.) haven't agreed on which particular method listed above to standardize. As soon as there's a common format that works in popular players, pirated 3D video will be all over the place.

But any studio execs who thought 3D video would somehow end piracy would have to be complete idiots.

Re:More 3-D madness.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if it works for majority of the people, then the problem is in you.

But does it run Linux?

[betterunixthanunix]

It used to.

Re:But does it run Linux?

[nschubach]

There were at least 6 suits filed: http://www.maxconsole.net/content.php?40318-Sixth-PS3-Other-OS-lawsuit-filed-against-Sony

force-retire the Father of the Playstation?

[commodore64_love]

>>>"Given how fast technology turns over now, we knew going in that we had to pack a lot of horsepower into the PS3."

So why did Sony force-retire the Father of the Playstation, Ken Kutaragi? It sounds like he was visionary enough to "pack a lot of horsepower" into the PS3 for future growth. But instead of rewarding him, you put him out to pasture. Seems rather cruel.

Re:ps3

[SquarePixel]

This is not the usual ancient red-blue glasses, it's for 3D TV's with active shutter glasses. You cannot just feed the video stream normally.

Also, it's not just for 3D movies, it's for games too.

Whoopy fucking do

[Chrisq]

Whoopy fucking do. Booting foreign operating systems is out, 3D is in. Totally repositioned as a toy.

Now your rootkit comes in 3 D I M E N S I O N S !

[elrous0]

See THE HORROR of Sony's control freaks in 3-D!
Witness the heavy hand of DRM in its FULL GLORY!
Experience the fear of another PS3 feature being pulled in ALL ITS DEPTH!
Watch as the Japanese come RIGHT OUT IN THE THEATER to take over your console industry!

Awesome!

[zmollusc]

I shall rush out and buy a PS3 just as soon as I forgive Sony for the cd rootkit, and for removing linux option for PS3. This is assuming PS3 is still available, it may be the PS72 by then. And that is also assuming that Sony haven't pulled any more annoying stunts.

Re:10%er?

[bsDaemon]

I heard they have zombies in Haiti and sometimes in New Orleans. However, your mileage my vary.

Re:HDMI 1.4

[pnewhook]

Does anyone know how is Sony supporting 3D BluRay on the PS3 when it requires HDMI 1.4? As I understand it, HDMI 1.4 is not a simple upgrade; it requires new generation transceivers on the source device which obviously can't apply to PS3s going back to 2006.

Likely they are only implementing the 3D portion of the spec, not the other stuff like audio return, ethernet or 4k resolution. Changing to 3D would only require an update in the refresh rate to 120Hz which they could probably have planned for when they designed it.

You forgot something

[NotSoHeavyD3]

If I remember correctly he also designed the sound chip in the SNES

Re:Kutagari's Console Hardware Dominance

[commodore64_love]

>>>PS3(3rd fastest),

I don't know what alternative universe you live in, but this isn't even close to true. PS3 is the least popular of this generation's consoles (3rd place), and its number of units sold (about 30 million) is no better than what the Gamecube or Nintendo64 sold during their five year spans.

>>>Created the top selling console in history, the 145 million worldwide selling PS2
>>>Destroyed piece of crap HD-DVD format with Blu-Ray

AND he also created the top-selling PS1 (130 million). That's all true. They should have treated Ken better, rather than force him into retirement like an old unwanted dog. I hate when corporations treat human beings like "human resources".
.

>>>* Bitter Dreamcast fanboy
>>>* Bitter Xbox fanboy
>>>* Bitter HD-DVD fanboy

Fanboys are typically people too poor to own more than one console, hence they defend whichever one they've got. Since I own one of each (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft), I am a "fanboy" of none of them. They're just pieces of plastic to me. In other words you guessed wrong.

When?

[Megane]

Real soon!

Fix the Damn Original Units

[BigSes]

It'd be nice if they would actually get around to admitting the YLOD overheat problem with the older 40-60-80 gig units is a manufacturing error (its obvious upon disassembly that the thermal grease is improperly applied and of low quality) and fix them. Hell, even Microsoft admitted to and addressed the RROD problem, taking steps to properly assist those who suffered from it.

Re:10%er?

[elrous0]

Those aren't zombies, they're black people. And please stop shooting them.

Re:Another worthless firmware...

[HTH NE1]

Some of us never let them take OtherOS away. My unit still has the capability (but as yet unused).

Of course, that didn't stop Sony from making accepting updates mandatory. But as long as I leave it disconnected from the network (and don't load any disks that contain auto-apply updates), my unit's resale value is preserved. I only ever bought two games for it anyway and my display isn't 3D-capable.

I'm still looking to the hacking community to reverse-engineer these updates to enable their new features while keeping OtherOS intact.