Hacking Microsoft’s Xbox became the latest craze amongst the gaming gurus. But it wasn’t just about pirate games. Those wonderful nerds turned the Xbox into a fully fledge media center PC and with a few minor (and more importantly cheap) modifications, its potential was shown in full glory. With such a huge internet following, the likes of Xbox Media Center (XBMC) became a phenomenon - a must have addition for all Xbox owners. In fact despite being freely available, XBMC is the most complete, the most slick and the most powerful media center software I have ever used. And I’ve used a few. The only major thing missing was High Definition playback.
So the next generation machines with HD capability surely must have the potential to become must have addition to the video-philes arsenal? A Media Center PC for a fraction of the price and without the hassles that plague those machines – noisy, prone to crashing and overheating. We take a look at the Blu Ray capable Sony Playstation 3 to see if Sony’s realized its true potential.
Multimedia Specs Highlight:
Ethernet (10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, 1000BASE-T) x3 (input x 1 + output x 2) Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.0 (EDR) Screen size: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p HDMI: HDMI out x 2 Analog: AV MULTI OUT x 1 Digital audio: DIGITAL OUT (OPTICAL) x 1 CD Disc media (read only): DVD-Video: DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW Blu-ray Disc media (read only): BD-Video: BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE
Video Playback
On the surface the PS3 is a Media Center dream. With Blu Ray capability, the machine is capable of High Definition playback and the large standard hard drive means you won’t be opening the case. But my dreams of transferring DVD backups to the PS3 have been dashed. It seems Sony in its infinite wisdom (and no doubt in its vested interested in the movie industry) has not bestowed the PlayStation 3 with the popular DivX and Xvid playback. Such a shame given that the Blu Ray specification is based on MPEG4 encoding and should therefore theoretically be standard on a PS3.
There are ways to play video content, but they either involve installing Linux on your PS3 or converting the video to PS3 Video 9. You can find information for installing Yellow Dog Linux (a version of Linux designed for PS3 and endorsed by Sony) at their official website - http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/. PS3 Video 9 is freely available from http://www.redkawa.com/videoconverters/ps3video9/.
Installling Linux turns your Games machine into a fully fledges PC (you can even add a USB keyboard and mouse). But this isn’t really what we wanted. In fact Linux can be a pain to install and even this geek became frustrated by getting Linux to play nicely with be HDTV. So much so that I managed to screw up the entire installation in a few easy steps. So although DivX playback is possible, it’s not really available to the casual user and certainly doesn’t provide the user friendly interface if XMBC running on the Xbox.
In fact both of these are really compatible with what I’d expected the PS3 to be capable of. Which is curious given the other capability of the PS3 – importing music from a CD.
Importing Music
Importing a CD’s is everything you’d expect. Insert the CD and the PS3 will do everything for you – look up the CD in an online database, import music to the library, and label each by Album, Artist and Song. Well it’s not that simple, but that’s the principal and pretty much the entire process takes just a few clicks. So why couldn’t Sony do the same for DVDs? I can understand the need to protect their Blu Ray encoding, but DVD protection was cracked long ago and let’s face it, it’s yesterday’s news.
But even here there’s weaknesses. It may well be easy to import, but compared to the likes of iTunes and yes, even Windows Media Player, it’s certainly basic. No visualizations, no album artwork and a rudimentary playlist and interface make this a very standard offering from Sony on the PS3. Yes, the interface needs to be simple, but simple doesn’t always mean basic.
Pictures
And this is where finally the PS3 scores points. It’s easy to import pictures from a camera straight from the memory card, which are then grouped by album and date. But the really funky offering by Sony is the photo book, which displays your pictures falling into an album. Probably not alone worth the price of a PS3, but a decent novelty.
Wasted Potential?
So there it is. So much wasted potential. Doesn’t even begin to touch the power of XBMC despite having a much improved platform. Admittedly XBMC was created by a hardcore group of coders and modified and refined over the years – but it’s still freeware built on a bespoke platform. Surely Sony could have invested more in the multimedia capabilities of the PS3. Surely they’ve managed to waste all that hardware? Maybe we’ll see homebrew software in the future? But why should this be reliant on a group of people hacking the PS3. Surely this is Sony’s responsibility? Sony, would you please stand up to the challenge?
