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back to article Sony pledges Blu-ray Profile 2.0 PS3 update this month

Sony has announced a PlayStation 3 firmware update that will bring support for the Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0's BD Live online interaction technology to the games console. The update, due later this month, will take the PS3's firmware to version 2.20, Sony said. BD Live mandates an internet connection and 1GB of local storage …

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  1. DrXym

    Who really wants "live" content?

    BD Live is going to be as pointless as internet content was in HD DVD.

    Most discs won't bother with at all, and those that do will probably just direct you to a generic studio portal or store where you'll be lucky if you can download a handful of trailers. If a disc does more, it won't be much more, probably amounting to some internet enabled games, or twitter like blogs, some token additional content that could have been stuck on the disk or whatever.

    Chances are that if you have an internet connection that you already have a PC that can do all of the above and much more, so what's the point?

    I can only see BD live becoming a compelling feature if studios cultivated loyalty by offering a free "show/movie of the week" downloads or similar for their users, but what are the chances of that happening?

    I am more interested to know what happened to mandatory managed copy and when the PS3 is going to offer the facility to transfer a portable copy of a movie to a PSP. Now *that* will be a useful feature.

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  2. Mark
    Gates Horns

    Later this month??

    You mean in the next 10 days....

    I just hope the fix the broken WMA streaming, that's been broken since firmware 2.10. That is my biggest issue. Everything else streams fine and plays fine locally, but High bitrate WMA11 files always cut out. It's a well documented problem, that Sony have yet to acknowledge, let alone fix.

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  3. Joe K

    Mosquito noise reduction??

    What could that mean, the PS3 is quiet enough, i certainly can't hear anything when a movie is playing.

    The other stuff is good, though i wish Home would hurry up!

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MKV Support!

    great .. but where is the mkv support that everyone wants :(

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  5. TimM
    Coat

    Stop and play

    Hang on! I recall many a Blu-Ray fan having a go at Tosh's HD DVD players for not having this facility, and yet here's the mighty PS3 only just getting the feature (along with long overdue profile 2.0).

    Pah!

    ;-)

    Anyway. The usual "who needs it, blah blah, etc" to follow.

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  6. Neil
    Dead Vulture

    @Mosquito noise reduction??

    Doh - this refers to removal of "noise" (artefacts) from the video, not reduction of audible noise generated by the PS3 during operation!

    As for the interactive content - so not interested. PIP might be useful for the very few times that I actually watch ant of the commentary tracks.

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  7. Matt

    @TimM

    Well, what do you expect, it is a "who needs it" feature. I certainly wouldn't criticise another product for "missing" this. There may well be things to criticise the PS3 for, but this?

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  8. Jim Cosser

    Interactive content

    Why do I have a feeling this is going to be more irritating than useful?

    Also what happens when companies forget to renew their domains and the naughty people get hold of them? Can we expect PS3 Targetted malware? or just porn ads on our Blu-Ray discs?

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @MKV Support

    "great .. but where is the mkv support that everyone wants :("

    I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone wants that.

    I've watched a lot of movie files on my machine, and you know what, I've never come across an MKV file yet.

    I thought I'd heard of all the random formats out there, and fought battles to get some of them to play in the past, but MKV? I had to look the damn thing up on wikipedia (So my information is 100% correct of course)

    Or are you just trying to poke fun at the usual collection of people clammering for OGG support, that usually post comments to every AV piece of kit mentioned on el reg? (I think I've encountered maybe 3 OGG files so far in my life, MP3 seems to do it for me) If so then Ha Ha, well said, otherwise, please, stop this nonsense.

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  10. Jay
    Gates Horns

    @Mark

    wma files are evil anyways Sony is just trying to save your soul.

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  11. Highlander

    Mosquito Noise Reduction

    Refers specifically to a technique that removes 'noise' from the video image. Basically compression artifacts that are hard to remove with traditional noise reduction are eliminated by Mosquito Noise Reduction. This will help DVD and to a lesser extend BD image quality. It will be interesting to see if this NR makes it to DivX and other video formats that the PS3 handles. Even better would be if this makes it into the PS2 game play on the 20, 60 and 80GB models. Their already good upscaling could be further improved by this.

    It was inevitable that Sony would support Profile 2.0 in the PS3, one of the aspects of BD Live is the ability to include a mobile version of the main feature on the BD disk for transfer to a portable player such as the PSP. With each major update Sony really is improving and extending the relationship between the PSP and PS3 systems, so much so that the PSP is becoming far more valuable to PS3 owners that it was before.

    Without turning this into a fanboy flame fest, I really do have to wonder why the PSP is still not seen as an incredible value proposition when taken against the far more limited function of the DS. It's not like there is a lack of games any more.

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  12. Andy Bright
    Alert

    I'd use it..

    This applies to turning the machine off and coming back to watch the movie a few days later (I suppose that could be a few months later, but most people would probably get irritated by that).. For example you turn off the player at night and resume watching the movie the following morning.

    PS3s, like everything else, will already pickup where you left off as long as you don't turn it off. Even normal, everyday DVD players can do that.

    However I certainly wouldn't criticize a product just because it couldn't do it. It's hardly a show stopper. Most people are competent enough to select a scene and continue from there.

    I like the mosquito noise thing, I just wished it really applied to mosquito noise. I'm already impressed by the PS3's DVD upconverting, far superior to my DVD player that also has that feature. If you didn't notice any difference when they implemented that a few patches back, chances are your TV was doing it for you already. Some do, and probably make a better job of it too. That was a bit of a poor decision when they originally released the PS3, after all the technology has been around for years and the "other" console could do it. You know, the noisy one that flashes it's lights at you every six months.

    The other thing - online adverts, sorry I mean links - no thanks. Yes what we need is a facility for click-ads in our movies, with handy links to movie merchandise or websites advertising sponsorship tat. Why not go the whole hog and just run banner ads through the whole movie?

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Erm, shouldn't this update

    also add support for the forthcoming PS3 PlayTV which I'm hoping is coming out at the end of this month? That's my big wish.

    Wha's da skinny on dat, el Reg?

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  14. jai

    bravia theatre sync?

    i'm also hoping the the theatre sync feature will be made available to the ps3 soon - if not in this next update then the one after?

    having a sony telly, stereo and ps3, it'd be nice to have them all fully linked and talking to each other

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Still waiting for the killer feature...

    When can we expect to get the most impressive feature of all... the ability to pop in a disc and play the movie instantly. No copyright warnings or annoying menus (press the menu button when you actually want them), just the actual thing we're buying the disc for in the first place!

    I was shocked to see What Hi-fi magazing quoting Blu-Ray movie loadings times in the 2-4 minute region... what on Earth is the player doing?

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  16. Mark
    Gates Horns

    @Lars Janssen

    My PS3 boots and plays the movie in about 15 seconds. By far the fastest player on the market.

    There is a setting that allows Autoplay on the PS3, you pop the movie in, and it plays. It's in the System Settings.

    P.S Firmware 2.20 with BDLive, is now Live...

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  17. N

    Copyright warnings?

    Every DVD I've seen with these is an original - the ones without are copies.

    Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder about getting fake versions of my DVDs so I don't have to sit through stupid frickin copyright notices!

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  18. Dick Emery
    Coat

    Where have you been?

    "Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder about getting fake versions of my DVDs so I don't have to sit through stupid frickin copyright notices!"

    Just rip them and burn them to blank DVD's. It's not exactly difficult to do and for many single layer movies oyu can do it both cheaply and losslessly. Hey presto movie only with nothing else to clutter it up! Coat because when you buy it you 'should' be allowed to make a backup copies legally.

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