The PS3 slim as a Blu-ray player covered in the Engadget review
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Aug 27th 2009 3:29PM
posted Aug 27th 2009 3:29PM
posted Aug 27th 2009 3:29PM
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I was considering selling my 60Gb for the slim, but thats just too much work to get TrueHD/DTS HD MA icons on my Denon 1910. I really couldnt care less about backwards compatibility.
Exactly what I thought.
As if bitstreaming is better than LPCM, which it isn't by the way. If your receiver is doing fancy stuff with your audio, it shouldn't matter what kind of input it's given since it's all digital anyway.
Maybe it would matter if the PS3 started applying it's own crazy transforms and algorithms on Blu-ray audio, but as far as we know, that's not happening.
Just set your PS3 to bitstream LPCM. The PS3 decodes the codecs into LPCM, and passes it through to your reciever.
The sound will be just the same as if you could have it passthrough the audio codecs.
But what about the pretty DTS HD an Dolby HD audio lights .. it annoys me on my Onkyo 606 doesn't display them but i get that they are the same .. but the non lights sub consciously make me miss them : )
It is still not a reason for me to pick up the SLIM
http://Drshocker.com
I might eventually sell my 60GB to someone that wants backwards compatibility, but not until this first wave of slim frenzy abates.
Bitstreaming TrueHD and DTS-MA is nice, but using 50% less power than my 60GB is even better.
Is the Slim going to have an IR sensor or do you still need another solution? I'm considering ebaying my 18 month-old BR player for this.
Heard there is no IR sensor for the slim either
Ben, can you confirm with Ross if streamed m2ts files with DTS-MA/TrueHD audio will be treated the same way and bitstreamed to the receiver?
This would be huge because it would allow perfect 1:1 backups of only the movie for playback on PS3 slim.
Currently, the only lossless audio you can stream to the PS3 is LPCM. This is a software issue rather than a hardware limitation (LPCM is actually higher bandwidth) so it's doubtful that the Slim alone will fix this. Maybe with OS 3.0 Sony will add support, but it's a long time coming.
Your other stopping point would be most Warner titles, since those are typically VC-1, and you need a WMV container to stream VC-1.
You can use tools like eac3to (PC only) and tsRemux (Mac/PC) to re-encode the audio and remux. But that's nowhere near the 1:1 you're looking for.
-Pie
Rather then get another PS3 I think I may add a Popcorn hour C-200 with IR for blu-ray iso support. If the support really exists.
But I already have a blu-ray drive to put in the C-200.
I ordered my C-200 today .. i already use the A-100 for .. M2TS playback from my BD's .. But the .ISO support drove me over the edge to get it .. i will update you as to if the .ISO support is good or not .. but i have no idea when i will actually get it .. i will do a update/Review at my site .. and i hope Engadget HD does a good one as well
http://www.drshocker.com
Wow 29-35 seconds to video? Amazing since a HTPC starts MKVs in under a second.
amazing since you can almost go from off to streaming netflix in that ammount of time on my 360.
Exactly. You may understood my point that old-style discs not only seem prohibitly expenisve but also that they load MUCH SLOWER than the alternatives. Such as video on demand on the 360 via netflix, vod via netflix on HTPCs or MKV backups/rips/whatever source on PC are so much much faster than blu-ray or disc players in general.
Especially when you include the fact that mkvs on HTPC don't come with all the fun 4-minutes of movie-previews on a movie you've just rented/bought that you know you'll have to watch over and over again as your traditional player won't let you skip them and HTPC's mkv's don't come with 30 seconds of warnings about how you'll be going to jail for 10 years and paying up to $500,000 if you pirate this video. In addition, its really easy to skip forward 2 minutes in an mkv past the studio logos if you really want to. I usually don't cause I feel it sets the mood for the movie.
Uh, comparing to loading of an HDD isn't exactly fair... at all. Compare it to how long it takes you to get a DVD up and running, and it's much closer.
HD-DVD took more than a minute to boot and load initially. It never caught up with the PS3. Other BD players are slower, with the LG being one of the first to surpass the PS3 in BD boot speed.
-Pie
@EatPie
Uh, starting sentances with Uh doesn't make your post sound that Uh intelli-Uh-gent. ;i)
In the case of VOD, there is more than just the hard drive involved in beginning a stream. There's your ping time, the time it takes to establish the connection to the downloaded content such as going through authorization like passwords, etc and then downloading the first x amount or x percent required by buffering.
Regardless, the original point of the original post still remains untouched. Blu-Ray is very sow to start a movie compared to the many alternatives out there like VOD, MKVs, dvd, etc.
In Blu-ray's defense, its probably trying to get through its own massive layers of drm and it is working with Java which traditionally has been extremely slow in almost any instances I've ran into it. IE, when I use emule(c++) versus edonkey(java), my cpu usage is way less and the program responds quicker) while emule provides more features and does more.
I can't believe it loads Blu-rays SLOWER than the previous model.
Incredibly disappointing.
I wouldn't trust those figures until I knew the methodology involved. For example, was all the BD-J data cleared out before doing tests? The old console might have cached stuff because the disks had been played before and the new one hasn't. The 2.80 firmware is probably non-optimal for the new models too so really the test should be reconducted when the 3.0 firmware appears in a week.
I wouldn't expect the speeds to get that much better even with firmware 3.0 though. Sony's PS3 in one form or another has been out for over 2 years now and they have literately had two years to try to reduce the loading times required on the ps3 to start playing a blu-ray movie. After two years, the speed has not decreased that much from day one. Granted, movie-playback compatibility has increased grealty with profile 2.0, etc. Somehow, I don't expect them to unlock the key to getting video form a blu-ray disc to start playing almost as fast as it would on say a PC or other sources overnight now that the slim has been released.
Its possible the slower start up times are due to the ps3 going into a power-saving mode which reduced the audible noise level by under clocking components to only what's needed to play blu-ray movies thus explaining the lower power output, lower noise level but unfortunately higher start times as the ps3 may be under clocked by say 5-10% if that much power was extra and not being used by blu-ray playback.
As you say, there may be things about the slim's behaviour which could non-optimal in firmware 2.80. This is why I think it's better to wait and see since FW 3.0 is only a week away. Perhaps they are underclocking the CPU, or maybe the HDD / BD is spun down too quickly, or a host of other things that momentarily affect an event such as a disk being inserted and played. Say for example, the BD in the slim spun down after disk insertion and then has to spin up but the old PS3 just kept on spinning the whole time. There could be things like this that can be resolved with some minor tweaks.
Bitstreaming is nice, but it's still not enough to make me believe that the PS3 Slim is the best low-end Blu-ray player. Check out my review for a more home theater-centric point of view:
http://alwaysgoright.com/2009/08/why-the-ps3-slim-still-kinda-stinks-as-a-blu-ray-player/#more-714
I think if you absolutely need a blu ray player first that the PS3 isn't the best. It lacks a display or IR port for one thing. However if you need a rounded multimedia system capable playing DVDs, BDs, streaming content, music, games, browsing and more besides then you really can't go wrong for the price.
No Backwards Compatibility so I need to keep my PS2 plugged in and take up another input.
No infrared sensor so I can't program it into my Logitech Harmony.
These are small things, but ....c'mon....Sony....