7.0 - Life with the Sony PS3
7.1 - Travails
7.1.1 - Networking
Last night (December 21st, 2006) I set up my brand new PS3. This meant integrating it into a fairly extensive media system.
My system consists of a 720p-capable component projection display of 17 feet diagonal, a 120 watt x 7 Denon receiver, standard CD, MD, DVD and VCR, hi-def DSS satellite with DVR, PS2, XBox, XBox360, and a Gamecube. I have all the switching gear required, and a wonderful viewing space with plenty of comfortable seating. My media system is, to me, pretty much just what I want. 1080p would be nice, but as the projectors are about five grand, I'll keep waiting a while. I figure under three grand is about right for a solid 1080p projector. I'll let the early adopters force the prices down for a while longer — 720p is really very good looking, and I am very satisfied with it.
What with all the hardware, you'd think that the physical installation, the wiring and so forth, would go smoothly, and indeed it did. The problems began once the machine was turned on. I have both 10/100 wired and strong wireless networks available; rather than running another cable to the PS3, I thought, "why not go wireless?" The wireless connection in this location is provided by a Mac Mini that does duty as a media librarian (see my review of Delicious Library). So the machine is nearby and has long established its ability to connect to a fair number of devices. It talks to Sony PSPs, my MacBook Pro, my old Win98 laptop with a WiFi network card, my sweetheart's WinXP notebook, and my friend Evan's macbook.
With that long lead-in, I'm sure you've already guessed that the PS3 refused to talk to the WiFi network. The obvious settings just would not work. Eventually, I had to turn on a PSP, write down the network setting it had been sent by the network, and then copy them into the PS3. Then it worked. The only thing I changed was the IP address; the PSP was set by DHCP to 10.0.2.24, and I set the PS3 to 10.0.2.25, which I knew to be vacant at the time. With a hard-coded IP address, there is a potential for problems unless the PS3 is the first machine turned on; I'll just have to keep that in mind. I did also try the wired network, and that worked fine right out of the box.
Once connected to the network, the PS3 downloaded an update, and pumped itself up from version 1.1 to 1.32; that was fine with me. I really like the idea that these expensive devices can fix bugs, add features, tweak settings and so forth as the manufacturer gains more experience with the unit. The download went fine, and the installation went fine. Can't ask for more than that.
7.1.2 - Display Resolution
I purchased "Fall of Man" and "Fight Night" as starter titles, and a Blue-ray disk entitled "Kingdom of Heaven" which I had seen and knew to be a well done movie with visuals that would complement hi-definition playback. The games looked very good, just as good as the XBox360 does in HD, and I was very satisfied with that. But the Blue-ray playback would not stay in 720p. The PS3 was set to 720p, and the games were 720p, but any time the actual disk playback began for the movie, the PS3 would switch to either NTSC or 480p, depending on the settings in the preferences. It outright ignored any instruction to play at 720p. As it turns out, this is the way the PS3 worked: It simply didn't "do" 720p.
Now, I had understood that with component cabling (not HDMI, which I'll address a little further down the page) I would not be able to get 1080p, because manufacturers were "afraid of piracy." That wasn't a huge concern, as my projector is 720p. Buying the PS3 was a strategy that (I thought) would get me a Blueray player as well as a console; that's how I justified the very high price of the console. I paid $30.00 for the Blueray disk in order to have a hi-def experience; what I got was no better than my standard DVD player, which outputs progressive scan images from standard DVDs.
Sony created the Blueray format. I was entirely unwilling to give them a pass on this. 720p should work. It didn't. So, the next item on the list is a HD player (the competing format to Blueray) and until, or unless, Sony updates the console to do 720p, all my HD movie purchasing will be HD. I can't do anything directly about this kind of corporate stumbling, but as a consumer, I can, and will, "vote with my wallet", and Blueray just lost this consumer... flash forward to mid-2007 and update 1.80 of the PS3 software, and 720p now works over component at last.
7.2 - The problem with HDMI and 1080p
First of all, HDMI is designed to enable HDCP, which is a copy protection scheme. I'm against copy protection. I buy all my DVDs, CDs and games, and I don't lend them out. This is the correct stance for a consumer to protect the intellectual property purchased. I do not accept that it is ethical for the media suppliers to intentionally restrict playback on devices s I own. So for the time being, I'm sticking with component. They can't copy-protect component without breaking every television out there, and to do that, they'll need to get a lot more HDMI capable systems out; my refusal to purchase one delays that just a little bit.
But there are problems. The media manufacturers, in an act of collusion with the hardware vendors, have created a situation where the hardware will not play back movies over 720p through a component connection. You may have heard that component "isn't capable" of 1080p, but as an engineer, I can assure you that this is utter bunk. We regularly put much higher definition signals through analog cables than can be found in a 1080p signal. No, the limitation is entirely artificial, and entirely unethical.
Now, as I mentioned above, I have a 720p system anyway, so there really isn't much reason today for me to worry about HDMI limitations. But at some point, I'll be buying a 1080p capable projector, and it is my somewhat forlorn hope that manufacturers will abandon this ridiculous and unethical stance against component mode playback of 1080p resolution material.
In context of this plot to limit playback capabilities, you can imagine that I'd take a pretty harsh view of the PS3's limit of not 720p, but 480p. That's just unacceptable no matter how you look at it. Sony's fumbled the ball again. I am delighted they fixed it with a downloadable update.
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