Playstation 3 (PS3) News

PS3 Multimedia Details

posted by rohit at 2006-10-19 15:10:55 PS3 Multimedia DetailsIGN We previously described most of the functionality available from the PS3's Cross Media Bar (XMB) interface. Impress offers a few new details. Selecting the "Display Settings" icon from the settings menu gives you access to a menu for chosing your display connection. You can select from "Component or D Cable," "Composite or S-Video," and "AV Multi or SCART." The system displays clear images indicating which plug is which, so beginners shouldn't have too much trouble in getting set up.

The PS3 is capable of selecting resolution for you automatically. However, if you want to select your own resolution, you can chose from 480p, 1080i, 720p, 1080p and "custom." We're not sure what the last one is just yet.

You also have full control over the form of audio that the PS3 outputs. From the Audio Output section of the menu, you can select from Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1 and AAC, as well as Linear PCM with 2ch, 5.1ch and 7.1ch available in 44.1kHz, 88.2kHz, 48kHz and 192kHz. You can also set this to automatic in case you're not interested in the details. You have three audio cable options available: HDMI, optical and AV Multi.

To set up Blu-Ray playback, you go into the BD/DVD section of the settings menu. Here, you can select the disk's menu language and the default audio and subtitle languages, which isn't anything new if you've used a PSP or one of the Japanese-only PSX systems before.

Good news for those worried about the slow start-up times with current next generation optical disc players. The PS3 loads up a Blu-Ray movie fast. Impress sampled the US version of Fifth Element (Japan won't take shipment of its first commercial Blu-Ray movies until early November) and found that the PS3 took less than 10 seconds to start up the disc after it had been selected from the video section of the Cross Media Bar.
[...]
In addition to video playback, Impress was also able to sample the PS3's music features. The system can rip CDs to MP3, AAC and ATRAC3 formats, allowing for bit rates of up to 352 kbps. The PS3 is also capable of going online to read into the AMG music database in order to get track information.

One of the cool things about multimedia playback is that the PS3 can play back external files. By connecting a PSP to the PS3 via USB, the music, movies and images that are on the Memory Stick loaded into the PSP become accessible from the video, music and photo menus on the PS3. It's unclear if this is the case when the two systems are communicating via Wi-Fi. Read More...