CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Moose · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 788 Location: Minnesota

Well, gosh darn - I was thinking about going for that one. A decent deal considering what PS3's are going for nowadays. But in the end, still not cheap enough for me. Maybe next year.

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

What about this sh*t ?

http://www.gamersreports.com/news/4433/phil-harrison-talks-ps3-rfom-1080i-scaling-no-plans-to-fix/

oliverg · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:29 am Post subject:

That lost post Tom, a bunch of children that don't know the first thing about what they are talking about.

"The PS3 only outputs Dolby 2.0, that's a FACT!"

"The PS3 doesn't know how to up or downconvert"

Idiots. Anyone that spells ridiculous as "redeclulous" .. seriously

Ridebreck · Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 9:57 pm Post subject:

The PS3 arrived today. It appears to be intact. The unit powers up, but that's as far as I could test it at the office. I did notice though that there is a ton of dust in the vent on the bottom front of the unit. Hopefully I can manage to get most of it with the ol' Hoover. They must move a pretty good amount of air in order to cool this little beastie down. I've downloaded the latest firmware as well, but It's unclear to me whether you can update it via a disk or whether you have to use a flash drive, CF, or SD card. I guess I'll find out tonight. I'm planning on performing a full reset to clear anything that the previous owner did to it, then update the firmware.

Wish me luck!

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

Um, I d/l the update and installed it directly from the d/l--which I figured it stored on the internal hard drive. How did you d/l the firmware?

**kal** · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 2:47 am Post subject:

Yeah, don't bother downloading the firmware from somewhere else. Just turn on the PS3, plug it into a network or enable wireless networking and go and choose the "update firmware" option and it does the rest.

Kal

dc_pilgrim · Joined: 31 Oct 2006 Posts: 225 Location: PA

If your ps3 isn't on your network you can d/l to a thumb drive - but you need to put the files in the right directories. I am pretty sure the instructions are on the official playstation site.

Ridebreck · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 2:20 pm Post subject:

I downloaded it at work from Sony's site. It was about 118MB or so if I recall. On the site it tells you to make sure that the directory structure is set up just right. You just create a top level directory titled "PS3" and a sub directory titled "UPDATE" and place the file in that sub directory. I burned it to a CD-R and it worked like a charm. You just select "update from media" in the PS3 menu and it found it right away. Badaboom, badabing, it was done. I'm now running v1.93.

I stayed up pretty late last night getting familiar with the menus, cleaning off unwanted stuff from the previous owner, setting up the wireless connection, etc. The only thing that I can't figure out is why the downloaded movie trailers only play in 2-channel audio. I'm hooked up via optical to my receiver and the output is set to bitstream. Games and the POTC BD all play in multichannel 5.1, but no dice with the trailers. Any ideas?

Overall, I'm really impressed with this machine. I'll be even happier once I get the IR remote dongle that I ordered so that I can use my Harmony with it. Using the game controller to navigate movies just doesn't quite feel right.

Ridebreck · Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:37 pm Post subject:

Well after a bit of research, it appears that regardless of what you do, you're simply stuck with 2-channel audio for playing trailers and other video files off of the HD on the PS3. I really hope that they change this with a firmware update down the road. I mean, what's the point in having all of this media center functionality and hi-def doodads if you're going to limit playback on everything that's not on a disk to 2-channel?

Oh well, for now it's time to see if I can apply some ProLogic IIx to get some fake multichannel from it. I've never actually tried that before.

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

That really does suck.

Ridebreck · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 2:17 am Post subject:

Actually, it's all good now. I had completely forgotten that I had Prolog IIx on this receiver. One push of the button, and I've got multichannel audio for the trailers - even if it is simulated. I also had a go at copying trailers to the PS3 HD from a CD-R just now. Worked like a charm. Now I'm really pumped because Sony only has a few current trailers on their site. I had about 20 trailers downloaded from Apple's site on my PC. I just used QT Pro to export the files as MP4, saved them to a folder called "VIDEO" (I believe that was the name), and burned that entire folder to a CD-R. The PS3 saw the folder right away and copied the trailers to the HD, and added them to the videos list. They played with no problem at all.

Tonight I'm going to try and figure out how to customize the icon for each trailer. Right now, all of the ones that I just copied from the disk actually have the moving video as the icon. I may keep it that way because it actually looks pretty damned cool, but I still want to know how to customize them. Supposedly, you can select an individual still frame from the video as the icon.

Man, this machine is pretty damned fun to use.

oliverg · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:05 am Post subject:

Don't you just change the sound output type from LPCM to bitstream auto? I can't remember the exact setting but its not the default

Default only decodes as 2.0 channel on my receiver but the other setting decodes as 5.1 (AC3 perhaps)

Or you can use your receiver like the OP to force a surround mode

Ridebreck · Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 12:59 pm Post subject:

From everything that I've read so far, the PS3 will only output 2ch audio when playing video files from the harddrive. I'm using the optical output and have set the PS3 to output either Dolby Digital or DTS bitstream, but still only get 2ch audio. BD disks and games are fine and output multuchannnel audio. It's just something with the internal video. Like I mentioned though, with Prologic IIx enabled, the trailers sound pretty good so it's a likeable workaround for me.

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

For trailers, maybe, but not for general media-center use. I wonder if they're doing this on purpose for DRM-type limits, or if there's just a screwup somewhere?