The Most Accurate PS3 Ad

[Perseid]

I think the choice of Blu-Ray may ultimately be what causes the PS3 to win. Blue Dragon is 3 dual layer discs. And this is still quite soon after the 360 launch. And there are games where you can't just tack on more disks. I know GTA4 is going to be cross-platform, but what about the next game? What if Rockstar needs 12GB? That will make it a defacto PS3 exclusive because it simply won't be possible on anything else.

[metaleggman]

One of the nice things about the PS3 and even the 360 is that because of their power, the companies can compress the HD videos really tiny with robust compression algorithms, something that the last generation consoles can't even keep up with. This means less space and more video, considering the storage! Same goes with sound.

Really tiny and playable on the current gen, huh? I'd like to see it. CPUs already getting hammered on 1080p with current compression techniques.

Lol, are you serious? I have a single core 2.8Ghz P4 and I can play 720p WMVs and Xvids. There is no way that the triple core power PC on the 360 or the Cell on the PS3 would be getting hammered doing 1080p. Hell, and this is a prebuilt, meaning there is all sorts of crap running in the background, with only 512mb of RAM and onboard Intel Extreme 2. No GFX card. Plus, I doubt there has been all that many games actually having 1080p FMVs, considering few games even run native 1080p on the 360 or PS3.

[ImportBoy]

I think the choice of Blu-Ray may ultimately be what causes the PS3 to win. Blue Dragon is 3 dual layer discs. And this is still quite soon after the 360 launch. And there are games where you can't just tack on more disks. I know GTA4 is going to be cross-platform, but what about the next game? What if Rockstar needs 12GB? That will make it a defacto PS3 exclusive because it simply won't be possible on anything else.

Then they use two dual-layer dvds for the 360 and PC release? There is really no reason why you can't tact on more discs for any game - yeah swapping discs might get annoying but it can be done.

Lol, are you serious? I have a single core 2.8Ghz P4 and I can play 720p WMVs and Xvids. There is no way that the triple core power PC on the 360 or the Cell on the PS3 would be getting hammered doing 1080p. Hell, and this is a prebuilt, meaning there is all sorts of crap running in the background, with only 512mb of RAM and onboard Intel Extreme 2. No GFX card. Plus, I doubt there has been all that many games actually having 1080p FMVs, considering few games even run native 1080p on the 360 or PS3.

I think he means rendering the actual games at 720p and 1080p. What does the 360/PS3 version of Oblivion run at? That is one of the most resource hogging games for the PC today. I think it comes down to now how good the developers can program these games run with the limited RAM on both system - such as uses the hard disk for cache, constant streaming, etc. Both systems should have shipped with 1GB of shared RAM to be competitive with the PC years down the road.

Which brings me to another slightly off topic question. Since the PS3 and 360 both have hard drives is there any option to install games to the hard drive (of course still having to put the disc in to play)? Seems like a dumb feature not to offer if the user has the space.

[metaleggman]

I think he means rendering the actual games at 720p and 1080p. What does the 360/PS3 version of Oblivion run at? That is one of the most resource hogging games for the PC today. I think it comes down to now how good the developers can program these games run with the limited RAM on both system - such as uses the hard disk for cache, constant streaming, etc. Both systems should have shipped with 1GB of shared RAM to be competitive with the PC years down the road.

I hope so, as that would definately make sense. I remember when the 360 and the PS3 were being shown off, someone threw out a number saying ~60% of the processing done on the 360 and the PS3 is merely to ouput in HD. Pre rendered video? Naw.

Which brings me to another slightly off topic question. Since the PS3 and 360 both have hard drives is there any option to install games to the hard drive (of course still having to put the disc in to play)? Seems like a dumb feature not to offer if the user has the space.

I would think next genereation would be a more likely time to utilize such a feature. Why? Because even now, hardly anyone actually uses all of the HDD space on their 360s or PS3s, so in the 8th gen of consoles, there will prolly be at least 300GB HDD if not more. I think once we consumers get our hands on such large HDD for our consoles, it'll be better for that.

[neohx_7]

One of the nice things about the PS3 and even the 360 is that because of their power, the companies can compress the HD videos really tiny with robust compression algorithms, something that the last generation consoles can't even keep up with. This means less space and more video, considering the storage! Same goes with sound.

Really tiny and playable on the current gen, huh? I'd like to see it. CPUs already getting hammered on 1080p with current compression techniques.

Lol, are you serious? I have a single core 2.8Ghz P4 and I can play 720p WMVs and Xvids. There is no way that the triple core power PC on the 360 or the Cell on the PS3 would be getting hammered doing 1080p. Hell, and this is a prebuilt, meaning there is all sorts of crap running in the background, with only 512mb of RAM and onboard Intel Extreme 2. No GFX card. Plus, I doubt there has been all that many games actually having 1080p FMVs, considering few games even run native 1080p on the 360 or PS3.

Yes, I'm serious about 1080p video hammering the CPU. I can play Doom 3 on my PC at 1920x1200 45-60 fps but not high bitrate 1080p movies. Why are you so damn annoying bringing up 720p WMVs and Xvids which even the XBMC can handle? Do some research and try to play some >9000kbps 1080p x.264 clips on your current PC. These are only barely handled by Core 2 Duos with a good decoder and the PS3 and especially 360 cpus are becoming outdated by the hour. We were talking about space issues and you claimed playable tiny sizes for HD video. I'm not sure what you meant by tiny, but x.264 codecs used on HD-DVD/BluRay get movies from ~30gb to 8gb with some quality loss which is still not tiny imho, but will give the PS3 an advantage for games with like 45 minutes of 1080p FMV. I'm totally guessing it's possible looking historically at video compression that future codecs that compress HD even further into the realm of tiny will be too much for the PS3 or especially 360 to handle, but with BD space those codecs won't be as necessary. In your reply you talked about doubting that games will use 1080p FMVs, so why did you bring up the tiny codecs thing at all? I'm not an expert on this subject but at least I'm very informed on it and I'm posting because so many of your posts have this false bravado which makes me I guess I fell for the trap.

[metaleggman]

If you claim to be so well informed, then use the magical resources you boast about and show me some links. I mean, you claim to not be an expert in the subject yet you seem to act like it.

Btw, I share the same feelings about your own posts.

[racketboy]

http://www.2pstart.com/2007/02/21/play/

[lordofduct]

I'd like to say that there aren't many video games that would use the VC-1 OR h.264 codec for the FMV files... it isn't like you need VC-1/h.264 to get a 1080p picture, it is used do to the great compression algorithm it utilizes to keep the picture looking amazingly crisp and fluid if you have the power to decode it (RAW image capture would look just as beautiful, but takes up about 100MBs+ per second of video).

For playing movies that are usually contain real life humans and scenery with natural colours spreading across every shade of colour visible by the naked eye if not further this fidelity in colour, brightness and .. whats that freakin' word... when colours bleed against each other... starts with a V? what ever.

When playing such high fidelity images the h.264 is your best bet of file size to picture quality out there. And is a great choice for things like movies.

FMV on the other hand is usually pre rendered 3D graphics for a video game. The last time I remember seeing real life actors for a video game was the damn Sega CD! It isn't common (especially because it increases production costs to film such scenes with actors that perform well, and not make it look cheesy). What good is the h.264 codecs going to do for these files? The colour range of CGI isn't as broad as natural colours. It isn't necessary as the gains vs. cost of production are huge and no developer in their right mind would do it.

Mpeg2 1080p would do just damn fine for this job and Mpeg2 1080p decoding is a very light job for the processor in comparison to it's full capacity. (xvid and standard WMV is not in this comparison as they are very light weight, lossy compression techniques usually not utilized by in game FMVs). As well the video can be compressed further with other proprietary codecs that are easy to decode and support 1080p resolution that aren't as intensive as VC-1/h.264

Metaleggman may not be informed in the area of VC-1/h.264, but his comment about compression algorithms is true. If you just avoid the VC-1/h.264 codec you can create light weight compressions algorithms (or codecs) that are easy to decode and keep the high resolution and only lose quality in areas that it doesn't really matter (i.e. shrinking palette ranges unnecessary in CGI graphics).

As for when the two machines, XBOX 360 and PS3, want to play back VC-1/h.264 codec at the 1080p resolution. It has already proven capable as there have yet to be complaints of incompatability with the VC-1/h.264 HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays on the market (there are a few, like X-Men 3, U2 Rattle and Hum). When playing a movie the machines shut down all other processes and stress all its power on performing this job (unlike a PC which still has to run all apps and OS while decoding the video). They also use the GPU for acceleration in both the 360 and PS3. And they fair pretty well (sometimes better then some standalone players... of course as more high end players are built this will decrease)

Tell ya what, here is a review comparing the 360 and PC with playback. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2890


Footnote:
VC-1 and h.264 are two different codecs utilized in high fidelity, high definition video compression. Similar in quality, different in algorithm, similar in processor intensiveness. h.264 is more intensive in some sakes, and with Blu-Ray and it's large size disk, higher bitrates under h.264 can be utilized increasing power needed.

[Mozgus]

Duct, I'd need Super Combo Mega Gulp just to get through your posts alive.

[lordofduct]

Do I pack to much information in my posts?

Sorry... I do that a lot.