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MS Skips the HD Format War, Goes Straight to Digital Distribution?

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Internet, Rumors, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace,

Description Rumors are circulating that, in addition to playing HD-DVD movies, the Xbox 360 will soon be a digital entertainment hub for downloadable video content. This sounds like something that would take a lot of time and infrastructure, but who knows - those are two things MS definitely has in spades. Plus, by avoiding the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war, Microsoft could puts Sony in a tough position. Either Sony has to start offering downloadable movies as well (thus cutting into their hopes for Blu-Ray), or the Xbox 360 just starts looking a little stronger in the features list.

SHSIBAE has learned that Microsoft will begin offering downloadable HD movies later this month. At launch time– rumored to be around Nov. 22–over 1100 hours of video will be available to rent or purchase through an XBOX 360 connected to XBOX Live. Feature length movies will require a ten minute caching period before viewing, which should be just long enough to make some popcorn, grab a beer, and find your favorite blanket.

We’ll definitely be looking for some sort of non-denial denial from Microsoft, but it never hurts to dream, eh? The idea of downloading movies to your Xbox 360 and watching them minutes later sounds amazingly sweet.

Read More | MaxConsole.net

Gallery: MS Skips the HD Format War, Goes Straight to Digital Distribution?


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Wait For It… PS3 Loads to be Slower Than Xbox 360, Says Math

Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Hardware, PlayStation 3, Rumors, Xbox 360,

PS3 On Side It’s been a few hours since we’ve heard some new bad press rumblings about Sony’s seemingly ill-fated PS3, so let’s fill that void… This time, it’s not-so-unbiased blogger Ozymandias, a.k.a. gaming strategist for Microsoft Andre Vrignaud. He reports on some technical details of the PS3’s Blu-Ray drive, pointing out that its read speeds, even for standard DVD discs, will be slower than those on the already-released Xbox 360.

Says Ozy:

At GDC Europe last year Sony mentioned in their presentation that the PS3 Blu-ray drive would have sustained peak transfer rates of 36 MBit/s (4.5 MB/s) at 1x speed. Since then it appears that the drive has been upgraded to a 2x drive, which would enable transfer rates of 9 MB/s. Assuming a full 50 GB Blu-ray disc, at this speed you’d need just over 90 minutes to read the entire disc through memory. Of course, you can’t fit all of that data into system memory at the same time, so you’ll either be streaming a great deal (hard even with faster optical drives) and/or caching data to the hard drive. There’s a reason the PS3 is so expensive - once Sony committed to Blu-ray as a corporate strategy, they were also forced to bundle the hard drive in every box to help mitigate slow disc data transfer rates.

For comparison, the Xbox 360 uses a 12x DVD drive, which can load at about 16 MB/s, making Microsoft’s read speeds about 2x greater. In recent days, this has lead to an online blogging argument, between Ozy at MS and Mark Deloura at Sony, about the importance of this comparison. Still, they seem to agree on the fundamentals of the mathematics.

Says Deloura:

“Admittedly, Blu-Ray looks dicey from several non-capacity angles. Blu-Ray movies require a 1.5x Blu-Ray drive, or 54Mbits/second. Sony announced that PS3 uses a 2x BD drive, which is 72Mbits/second or 9MB/second. The Xbox360 uses a 12x DVD, which should give it about 16MB/second. That is significantly faster for games and will result in shorter load times. And that 12x DVD drive should be a whole lot cheaper. (Note that the PS3 drive will do 8x DVD, and even that is faster than 2x BD.)”

First the official Playstation magazine editor states she doesn’t want the PS3, now former Sony execs are agreeing that the PS3 is too slow?? What’s next—Kaz Hirai admitting that Dead Rising is his favorite game ever?!?

Gallery: Wait For It… PS3 Loads to be Slower Than Xbox 360, Says Math


Sony Shows Off PS3 Blu-Ray Playback

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: PlayStation 3,

PS3 Blu-Ray

At a recent Blu-Ray demonstration in Japan, Sony showed off a little of the interface and video playback for the Blu-Ray capabilities of the Playstation 3. Famitsu managed to get a shot of the interface, and it looks largely like an expansion of the PS2 DVD playback UI, or perhaps an enhanced UMD playback UI from the PSP. Sony is apparently shooting for 75 Blu-Ray titles within the year in Japan, and average retail is targeted at 5000 Yen, or about $42 US. Sony also discussed the BD Java features of the player, as well as the Internet-based BD Live content.

Read More | Famitsu

Gallery: Sony Shows Off PS3 Blu-Ray Playback


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