There’s an article in Design News
PS3: Fast and Cool
http://designnews.com/article/CA6406738.html?nid=2321&rid=1205974513
I’ve had mine now for about 3 weeks. It is an impressive machine. It
does get warm and it draws a lot of current (I have it on a MONSTER
power line filter with voltage and current meter).
I am disappointed that when playing regular DVDs and PS2 games, the PS3
does not do any up-onversion, it instead passes the signal as plan old
480. But when playing Blu-Ray and PS3 games, it is impressive.
However, the Blu-Ray movies are not as vivid as I expected (say as
compared to hi-def off-air television or my up-converting DVD player).
Perhaps this is because the encoding of the movies is not at a high
level (yet). The sound from the PS3 games and Blu-Ray movies is very
impressive. If I notice anything that’s different, it is the sound more
than the video. My TV is 1080 HD. The web bowser is very bad. I am
not impressed that the PS3 is an entertainment center. Hopefully a
future firmware upgrade will fix all this?
I have not loaded Linux on it yet. I am trying to find time among the
other projects that are demanding my time.
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 10:59:17AM -0700, Steven Bible wrote:
I am disappointed that when playing regular DVDs and PS2 games, the
PS3 does not do any up-onversion, it instead passes the signal as
plan old 480.
It’s actually worse than that. The internal video scaler the PS3 uses
for PS2 games has problems. When playing a PS2 480i game on a PS3,
the resulting image can actually look noticably worse than playing
the same game on the same display with a real PS2. PS2 games that
natively support 480p are okay on the PS3, but not 480i games (which
is the vast majority of them). The PS3 also doesn’t support rumble
signals with PS2 games and PS2 controllers. And of course there’s no
card slot in it for PS2 memory cards (though there is a USB adapter
for that, sort of). I’ve had a PS3 for over a month, but it’s not even
hooked up right now because I’ve mostly been playing PS2 games and
they just work better on PS2 hardware.
The PS3 also has problems with USB driving wheels for PS2 games, so
Gran Turismo 4 and its expensive steering wheel don’t work together.
Ironically the same wheel does work on the PS3 with the Gran Turismo
HD demo, but without any force feedback which is nearly as bad as
the GT4 situation. I think there have been reports of force feedback
working in other non-Sony properties; there’s speculation that
restricting rumble/force could be an intentional decision on Sony’s
part due to the Immersion patent situation.
The web bowser is very bad.
I used it once to post to a message board just to prove it could be
done, and even with a mouse and keyboard attached it was a horrible
experience. Trying to do the same with a game controller would have
been the stuff of nightmares.
The PS3 online store was also a confusing mess the last time I tried
to use it; hopefully they can at least get that thing fixed
eventually.
-Dave Dodge