I do remember running PMS once to see if it worked, mostly because I was trying to help a friend stream media to his PS3. I'm pretty sure I got my PS3 to see it, but I don't remember if it liked my encoding any better.
It's not really a big deal, I'm OK with my MythTV setup.
Can't get it to switch on and off with the Harmony, no. But the rest, yeah. I did this before they had a Harmony->PS3 bluetooth adapter thing - I got a Neko USB remote for the PS3 and had the Harmony learn it's codes.
With the bluetooth adapter I'm assuming you can turn the thing on, too. Possibly.
Yup. Reserving judgement on that until the whole steam thing gets going. I have some reservations about it. One of the main advantages of consoles is standard hardware. If you can just throw Steam on whatever you want, well, it's going to be as horrible to support as Windows...
I/do/ think actual gaming performance will be fine. There's a lot of voodoo in there.
As for why someone would want a PS4... well, the alternatives in the console world are an xbox one (which is also crazy) and a steambox (not actually available). In non-console, well, some of us like to throw a game in, sit on the sofa and play. That's not practical with a PC unless you use a gamepad which makes you lose the keyboard/mouse advantage, plus is not supported by many games.
I have one of those USB remotes you plug a dongle into the PS3 for. It was way cheaper than their bluetooth remote and I could program my Harmony to emulate it.
I have a feeling THAT won't work anymore, either... I am starting to dislike the whole PS4 idea just based on the FAQ...
I've never been able to get the PS3 to play my remote media (or even the same media off a USB stick). It won't even recognise my MP3 files.
Getting it to work with my Harmony remote was a pain in the butt, too. This was before Harmony released the bluetooth bridge which I refuse to use on general principle.
The media center capabilities of the PS3 never worked for me. It can see my media servers but can't see any of the videos. "Sure," you say, "videos are all kinda weird codecs." And you're right, I don't expect Sony to make something that'll play MKV files. click on Music, and go into a directory with thousands of MP3 files, and it can't see THOSE, either. It wants a very, very specific format for those MP3 files which Google has NOT helped me figure out!
I have a dedicated media center PC. It's small, quiet, is controlled by the same remote as every other media component (which BTW is a pain to do with the PS3!), streams 5.1 audio and 1080p video (sometimes at the same time) and can play just about any format I throw at it. And it's kinda fun (: Now if you'll excuse me, I have another blu-ray to rip.
Two things about this that worry me. Well, 2 and a half.
The whole no MP3/audio CDs/DLNA thing, yeah... that COULD potentially be fixed and Sony have addressed peoples' concerns about it. That's my half thing.
What worries me more is that no current bluetooth headsets nor PS3 controllers will work on the thing. I can see absolutely no reason for that other than Money Grab. Yeah, the PS4 controller has more features, but those things are overpriced half-way to hell and many of us have multiple PS3 controllers. I do not see a reason for the thing not to just go "some features may not be available".
Even more worrying is the default inclusion of a 5400RPM SATA II harddrive. Yeah, it's user-replaceable, but here's my issue.
Sony have been claiming that this thing would "ourperform" PCs. Even high-end ones. Most people were sceptical of this but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I still think it could equal a decent PC in/gaming/ performance.... but it's clear that to Sony that means only when you're ACTUALLY playing the game - not when you're booting up, loading a game, loading data, load/saving games... anything that's not actual gameplay.
And that's one of the most annoying things about the PS3. You can (and I have) replace your HDD with an SSD, and it can throw data at the PS3 extremely fast, but the PS3 just can't process it fast enough, so performance improvements are negligible.
This extremely outdated tech included in the PS4 by default make me think this will still be the case with the PS4.
Now naturally I have not tried a PS4 yet, so I might be very wrong. I really hope I am. But right now I've put the PS4 firmly on the "wait a few months" list, and quite likely on the "lets see how the whole steam box does" list... and even possibly on the "Ok lets reevaluate getting a gaming PC in the living room" list.
Here's my thing. I live in Minneapolis (more or less) and I can get consistent download speeds of 3 megs per second. Is it the fastest in the world? No. Is it MORE than enough? Yes, it is. So I don't have gigabit fiber to my house. So what? Sure, it'd be nice, and one day it'll get here and be considered slow. I can live with that.
I'm just saying we shouldn't be all surprised by this list.
Funny thing, when I lived in Israel the fastest "internet" you could get was a 33.6k modem, and even that couldn't stay online for more than a couple of hours, and the absolutely BEST ISP had ONE T1 line to the actual internet...
Be a pretty boring list if the top ten cities were in two countries.
Just cause something started at one place doesn't mean other places can't make it better. ESPECIALLY smaller places. The infrastructure in the US sucks, and we all know it. I don't see why we're at all surprised.
There are close to 200 countries in the world. The US is mentioned one time in a list of Top Ten and somehow that's not enough? Please. There are at least 190 countries that don't even have ONE city mentioned.
I've occasionally had mice in my house. They've never done any damage and the cats/dog eventually get them.
One time there was (I assumed) a mouse that was just ripping things up and eating them, getting into (never opened) things of dog/cat treats, and being smart enough to stay in the cabinets.
Eventually I made a makeshift trap (i.e. a big enough box) and caught it myself and the first thing I thought was "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT???" It looked like a mouse and a mole had a baby. I guessed that it was a shrew for some reason. Then I let it go in a park.
My dog loves shrews. She hunts them relentlessly. She likes rodents in general but shrews seem to be her favourite. There was a week last winter where she was eating two or three of them a day. It's disgusting but hey, she's a dog.
The funny thing is shrews fight back. Of all the rodents she's hunted over her long, illustrious life, shrews are the only ones that ever bit her back. Well, that snapping turtle got her but she wasn't trying to eat it, she was just curious. And she only got too close because I was patting it so she thought it was safe.
(yes I know it's a different species of shrew, but that's less funny)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure you can get them to mail you a disk which will activate those features.
I do agree it's silly that they need to be activated, but it is a one time thing and there is a workaround for requiring an internet connection.
Sony have confirmed that this is coming in a future update, if that matters to you.
Eh. I have a media center PC (running an old version of MythTV, when it was still good). I wanted to get the PS3 to do that because, well, it's there.
I do remember running PMS once to see if it worked, mostly because I was trying to help a friend stream media to his PS3. I'm pretty sure I got my PS3 to see it, but I don't remember if it liked my encoding any better.
It's not really a big deal, I'm OK with my MythTV setup.
Can't get it to switch on and off with the Harmony, no. But the rest, yeah. I did this before they had a Harmony->PS3 bluetooth adapter thing - I got a Neko USB remote for the PS3 and had the Harmony learn it's codes.
With the bluetooth adapter I'm assuming you can turn the thing on, too. Possibly.
I'm told it needs a specific bitrate and may have problems with some encoders.
Remember, these are the people who once made an MP3 player that could only play ATRAC and not MP3...
Yeah. I'm curious to see how it'll do.
Yup. Reserving judgement on that until the whole steam thing gets going. I have some reservations about it. One of the main advantages of consoles is standard hardware. If you can just throw Steam on whatever you want, well, it's going to be as horrible to support as Windows...
I /do/ think actual gaming performance will be fine. There's a lot of voodoo in there.
As for why someone would want a PS4... well, the alternatives in the console world are an xbox one (which is also crazy) and a steambox (not actually available). In non-console, well, some of us like to throw a game in, sit on the sofa and play. That's not practical with a PC unless you use a gamepad which makes you lose the keyboard/mouse advantage, plus is not supported by many games.
They started SACD, too. What's your point?....
I flew to Brazil earlier this year... there were a LOT of electronics in the overhead compartments...
I have one of those USB remotes you plug a dongle into the PS3 for. It was way cheaper than their bluetooth remote and I could program my Harmony to emulate it.
I have a feeling THAT won't work anymore, either... I am starting to dislike the whole PS4 idea just based on the FAQ...
I've never been able to get the PS3 to play my remote media (or even the same media off a USB stick). It won't even recognise my MP3 files.
Getting it to work with my Harmony remote was a pain in the butt, too. This was before Harmony released the bluetooth bridge which I refuse to use on general principle.
The media center capabilities of the PS3 never worked for me. It can see my media servers but can't see any of the videos. "Sure," you say, "videos are all kinda weird codecs." And you're right, I don't expect Sony to make something that'll play MKV files. click on Music, and go into a directory with thousands of MP3 files, and it can't see THOSE, either. It wants a very, very specific format for those MP3 files which Google has NOT helped me figure out!
I have a dedicated media center PC. It's small, quiet, is controlled by the same remote as every other media component (which BTW is a pain to do with the PS3!), streams 5.1 audio and 1080p video (sometimes at the same time) and can play just about any format I throw at it. And it's kinda fun (: Now if you'll excuse me, I have another blu-ray to rip.
Two things about this that worry me. Well, 2 and a half.
The whole no MP3/audio CDs/DLNA thing, yeah... that COULD potentially be fixed and Sony have addressed peoples' concerns about it. That's my half thing.
What worries me more is that no current bluetooth headsets nor PS3 controllers will work on the thing. I can see absolutely no reason for that other than Money Grab. Yeah, the PS4 controller has more features, but those things are overpriced half-way to hell and many of us have multiple PS3 controllers. I do not see a reason for the thing not to just go "some features may not be available".
Even more worrying is the default inclusion of a 5400RPM SATA II harddrive. Yeah, it's user-replaceable, but here's my issue.
Sony have been claiming that this thing would "ourperform" PCs. Even high-end ones. Most people were sceptical of this but I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I still think it could equal a decent PC in /gaming/ performance.... but it's clear that to Sony that means only when you're ACTUALLY playing the game - not when you're booting up, loading a game, loading data, load/saving games... anything that's not actual gameplay.
And that's one of the most annoying things about the PS3. You can (and I have) replace your HDD with an SSD, and it can throw data at the PS3 extremely fast, but the PS3 just can't process it fast enough, so performance improvements are negligible.
This extremely outdated tech included in the PS4 by default make me think this will still be the case with the PS4.
Now naturally I have not tried a PS4 yet, so I might be very wrong. I really hope I am. But right now I've put the PS4 firmly on the "wait a few months" list, and quite likely on the "lets see how the whole steam box does" list... and even possibly on the "Ok lets reevaluate getting a gaming PC in the living room" list.
That's a much more eloquent way of saying what I was trying to say, yes (:
I think it'd be nice if Americans in general were more OK with NOT being #1, and look at it as an opportunity for improvement.
Here's my thing. I live in Minneapolis (more or less) and I can get consistent download speeds of 3 megs per second. Is it the fastest in the world? No. Is it MORE than enough? Yes, it is. So I don't have gigabit fiber to my house. So what? Sure, it'd be nice, and one day it'll get here and be considered slow. I can live with that.
I'm just saying we shouldn't be all surprised by this list.
Funny thing, when I lived in Israel the fastest "internet" you could get was a 33.6k modem, and even that couldn't stay online for more than a couple of hours, and the absolutely BEST ISP had ONE T1 line to the actual internet...
Be a pretty boring list if the top ten cities were in two countries.
Just cause something started at one place doesn't mean other places can't make it better. ESPECIALLY smaller places. The infrastructure in the US sucks, and we all know it. I don't see why we're at all surprised.
There are close to 200 countries in the world. The US is mentioned one time in a list of Top Ten and somehow that's not enough? Please. There are at least 190 countries that don't even have ONE city mentioned.
Does it have an option to accept cookies for This Session Only yet? That's the only reason I haven't switched.
I've occasionally had mice in my house. They've never done any damage and the cats/dog eventually get them.
One time there was (I assumed) a mouse that was just ripping things up and eating them, getting into (never opened) things of dog/cat treats, and being smart enough to stay in the cabinets.
Eventually I made a makeshift trap (i.e. a big enough box) and caught it myself and the first thing I thought was "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT???" It looked like a mouse and a mole had a baby. I guessed that it was a shrew for some reason. Then I let it go in a park.
I have already instilled in her a fine sense of irony. I think that's pretty good.
Hey, she's a dog, they look like rodents to her.
My dog loves shrews. She hunts them relentlessly. She likes rodents in general but shrews seem to be her favourite. There was a week last winter where she was eating two or three of them a day. It's disgusting but hey, she's a dog.
The funny thing is shrews fight back. Of all the rodents she's hunted over her long, illustrious life, shrews are the only ones that ever bit her back. Well, that snapping turtle got her but she wasn't trying to eat it, she was just curious. And she only got too close because I was patting it so she thought it was safe.
(yes I know it's a different species of shrew, but that's less funny)