Playstation 3: Blu-Ray, Media Server, And Legos, Oh My!

OK, so I'm not exactly what anyone would call a "gamer". I've got nothing against video games, I'm fairly partial to a good hockey or racing game, but the last game console I owned was the original NES back in like 1988. And even then, I think I only ever amassed a whopping 4 games for it.

Imagine Sara's surprise, then, a couple months ago, when I mentioned that I might be interested in "saving up my allowance" (I'm not sure why I'm using quotes, that's literally what it was. Yes, I have an "allowance", no laughing.) to buy a Playstation 3. My rationale was that since Blu-Ray had finally won the HD format war, converting over to Blu-Ray for movie purchases from here on out should be fairly safe, and since the Playstation 3 costs the same as the cheapest standalone Blu-Ray players, why not go ahead and buy the one that can also provide gaming ability. Not to mention the fact that the PS3 has already gone through a couple generations of design tweaks and bug fixes, and already had the infrastructure in place to provide automatic firmware updates, should they be necessary. Rock solid argument, if you ask me. Sara seemed fine with it, neither really put off nor excited, which I took as a landslide victory for team Tedo!

(Note: my actual motivation for wanting a Blu-Ray player so soon was simply because I refuse to own Ironman in anything less than Blu-Ray. That movie was so friggin' awesome, anything less than 1080p would be a travesty.)

So, after waffling a couple months over whether or not I really needed a PS3, last week I finally decided what the heck, lets give it a go, and ran over to Best Buy and snagged one of these bad boys. I got it home, got it set up in about 2 seconds (gotta love HDMI and wi-fi!), and then sat there for about 10 minutes reveling in the absolute beauty of this machine. As an EE, I have a particular affinity for solid, well-built hardware. Even Sara displayed some interest for a few moments, which became fleeting, however, as she realized that she "can't play Mario games on it." Apparently if you can't role-play as a plumber running around squeezing coins from bricks, its not worth the time of day!

First, I had to try out the obvious, the reason I had bought thing in the first place: a full-blown high definition movie. Along with my purchase, I had bought Harry Potter 5 on Blu-Ray. I had already owned this movie on DVD, but found the DVD transfer to be absolutely horrid, so I had this unofficially penciled in as a prime candidate for Blu-Ray purchase should I ever get a player. As expected, the picture was INCREDIBLE. I've had cable HD programming for the past year and a half or so, and the picture has always been outstanding, particularly for sports, but this was still noticeably better. I never wanted to see that much detail of Dudley Dursley's ugly mug. My decision to get this over a standalone Blu-Ray player was looking pretty good!

Next up, some video games. As mentioned above, I'm not a huge video game fan, but I do like me a good NHL game. So, along with the unit, I picked up EA's NHL 2008. I had played EA's line of NHL games throughout the 90's for the Sega Genesis and for PC, and they had always been regarded as the best hockey video game out there, so I figured why stray from what I know. Holy frijoles, this game rocks. Its hard as hell at first to figure out their new "skill stick" feature, with which you use the right joystick entirely for deking, handling the puck side to side, and taking various styles of shot, all while using the left joystick for directional skating and shot placement. My brain just about seceded from the Union Of Tedo's Head while trying to sort out simultaneously controlling two joysticks, not to mention the other buttons that are used for poke-checking, changing lines, and 2 different types of passes. Luckily, though, one of the coolest features of this game is that it has a practice mode, under which you can select all different types of drills to run: team practices (5-on-5, 5-on-0), skating drills, shooting drills, all types of odd-man and even-man rushes, etc. I spent a couple days working in this area, slowly figuring out how to set up one-timers, deke the goalie, line up a guy on defense and throw a check (this sounds easy but is actually tough to do without overskating your guy!), etc. Anyway, after these practice sessions, I'm proud to say that playing as the Red Wings against the Blackhawks in Rookie mode, I can totally kick the computer's ass : - )

In addition to the NHL game, I also picked up the Lego Indiana Jones adventure game. I'm not really into shoot 'em up or super serious games, I'm more interested in stuff that's more along the "fun" line, and I had heard good things about this one. Plus, I knew Sara's penchant for bashing things in the eternal hope of collection coins, so I figured this might fit the bill. As it turns out, this game is pretty fun! It seemed fairly aimless for the first level or two, as Sara and I felt it out and tried to figure out exactly what was going on and what was the point. But after playing it a few times now, and more importantly after Sara now diligently reading through the instructions, I fully expect this game to provide a lot of pretty fun game play. As you pass through each level, there is a LOT that you simply cannot do yet, you have to continue on and accomplish certain things first. As you continue on and fulfill the stages of the 3 Indiana Jones adventures (we're not speaking of the 4th), you can accrew whatever abilities, tools, or personnel you need for going back and revisiting the things you had to pass over before. This is probably a fundamental characteristic of these adventure type games, but being one who has simply not cared about video games for the past 20 years, I find this pretty cool. And, the REAL surprise of this whole little experiment is the shocking discovery that Sara is far more prone to video game addiction than anyone could have possibly predicted. Needless to say, she has found bashing Lego structures/people/plants with a shovel has proven to be just as worthy a method of collecting coins as bashing bricks with your head : - )

I was thoroughly pleased with the performance of the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player and a video game console, and thus felt that the choice to get this over a standalone player was already justified, regardless of how much use I got from the PS3's other features. One of those features, however, is actually pretty cool and might get a fair amount of use, and that's the ability to stream content from a "media server". There are many programs out there, free and not free, that can be used to stream files from your PC. You load this program, you point it at a directory where you happen to store video, audio, pictures, whatever, and then other devices such as a PS3 have this media available to them. I personally tried 3 different programs: SimpleServer (free), Nero Media Home (technically not free), and TVersity (free). Here is what I found:

• SimpleServer: Well, it lives up to its name, its very very simple. Just add the files, give the share a name, and go. The PS3 had no problems finding the share or playing the files, it was pretty painless. The SimpleServer GUI was incredibly slow, though. First, it took several hours for the program to initially process my music directory (6900+ songs). Plus, once it was added, the interface would lag insufferably anytime I tried to select a song to do anything. Also, I believe this program was lacking any kind of auto-update, so if I added any new music to the repository, I would have to manually add it to SimpleServer. This is not cool. (I must admit I do not know for sure that this was the case, as the interface was far to slow for me to deal with. But from what I saw, I believe this is the case).
• Nero Media Home: This one had real potential, but for now I will have to throw this one in the "low down damn dirty shame" pile. Nero features a utility called "Nero Scout". You give Scout a list of directories to monitor, and it will periodically recursively scan these looking for added or removed files, so it can update the listing it makes available. OK, one point for Nero. Plus, this program had an option to start the server automatically when the computer is turned on, logging in NOT REQUIRED. Very nice, another point to Nero. However, when I added my music directory, it literally took Scout 18 HOURS to perform its initial scan. Take one point back. From the PS3 side of things, when I browsed through the music, the album art embedded in the mp3's was visible next to each song listing. Nice, one point back to Nero. Actually receiving and displaying the artwork took FOREVER, though, and anytime I chose a song to play, it would literally sit there for about a minute before the song would play. Skip to the next song, and same thing, sit for a minute or so before any audio. This kind of lag is simply atrocious, minus several thousand points from Nero. Maybe there is a setting I had that for some reason was causing this issue (if anyone knows, let me know!), or maybe they'll have a bug fix or something in the future. If so, I would love to give this another go. But until then, this one is just a low down damn dirty shame.
• TVersity: The GUI for this one originally turned me off, but in the end this one seems to perform pretty darn well, and has a fairly easy to use interface. This program also features a setting to start the server automatically when the computer is turned on, again no logging in required. Plus, with TVersity I could specify when and how often to re-scan the directory looking for file changes. Very nice indeed. Also, adding my music repository was MUCH faster with this one. I didn't accurately time it, but I believe it took less than an hour (like maybe 30-45 minutes?) to initially scan and index my entire directory. At the PS3, all music was available immediately when I selected it to play, no lag whatsoever. The only slight downside is that TVersity does not seem to make the album artwork available like Nero did. This would be a nice little feature, but I think I'll live.
  

Anyway, after selecting TVersity, I've found this link between the PS3 and the media server to be pretty damn cool, and even a little useful! As I assembled a love seat and couch upstairs in our loft area (gotta love and hate Ikea) this past Saturday, I had my entire music library at my finger tips, streaming effortlessly from the den below. That night, Sara and I perused through some photo albums, zooming in and scanning across photos in whatever manner lent itself to maximum hilarity (this will surely end up being a fantastic and incredibly simple way of viewing slideshows with friends or the fam when they visit). I have not yet tried streaming some video, I'll get to that this week, but at the moment I have no reason to believe it should be any trouble. In a nutshell, this media server function is pretty cool so far.

OK, well I've sung the praises enough. There must be something to complain about! Well, OK, there are a couple things I will mention:

• No stereo fill: I will admit, I was slightly disappointed that the PS3 does not seem to support any kind of "stereo fill" or "channel fill" function when playing back stereo audio. For those unfamiliar, this means that if you are physically set up for a multi-channel format (such as Dolby 5.1 or 7.1) but are playing a source with only left/right audio (such as a CD or mp3), a device that supports stereo fill will play the left channel through all left speakers (front, surround, and back), the right channel through all right speakers (front, surround, and back), and will mix the two channels for the center channel speaker. This a very nice feature. My stereo receiver does this. If I'm watching a DVD (or now Blu-Ray!) or if the cable content happens to be surround sound, it will play it as such. If I'm playing a CD or if the cable content is stereo only, it will go ahead and play that content through all the surrounding speakers. Its great. The PS3, however, always outputs a multi-channel audio output, so my receiver always sees it as surround data, and plays all channels out their respective speakers. The problem is that if the PS3 is playing stereo audio, it ONLY puts that audio in the left and right channels, and it simply plays silence (or no data at all) through the other channels. My receiver has no way of knowing this, it is simply playing multiple channels like its being told to do. The PS3 itself needs a setting to tell it, "hey, for a stereo source, play left out ALL left channels, play right out ALL right channels, and mix it for the center channel". It has to be done at the PS3. The nice thing is that, if Sony decides to support this, it should simply take a firmware update to add. So there is hope.
• The heat: There is no getting around it, this thing is hot. And I mean physically hot, when the PS3 is on and the fans kick in, the area a few feet in front of the unit is noticeably warmer. Now, how much is still uncertain. The past few days, our A/C unit upstairs has been on the fritz and needs an evaporator coil replacement this week, so it is possible that the PS3 is spitting out a bit more heat than usual due to this unusual circumstance. But, my guess is that the thing will always be a bit warmer than most devices. Nothing a firmware update can do about this. (Keep in mind, I'm comparing to other home theater type equipment. Its still not as hot as a reasonably powerful PC.)
  

Anyway, that's what I've experienced in my first week with a Playstation 3. Bottom line, this thing is pretty impressive, and promises to be loads of fun.

So when does Ironman come out???