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Gadgets DivX Playback Coming to the PlayStation 3
Marcus Yam (Blog) - November 13, 2007 3:08 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 51 comment(s) - last by EclipsedAurora.. on Nov 15 at 5:44 AM
PlayStation 3 will soon support DivX video playback

The PlayStation 3 is a media hub like few others. It can handle high-definition movies, upscale DVDs, read pictures from memory cards, not to mention play PlayStation games. And it seems that soon the PlayStation 3 will gain the ability to playback DivX-encoded media.

DivX Inc. today announced that its video technology will be integrated into the PS3, adding to the over 100 million DivX Certified products shipped into the market.

"We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to bring DivX to PS3," said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. "Our technology will expand the multimedia functionality of PS3 by enabling users to enjoy access to the broad library of content in the DivX digital media format."

DivX is currently working to certify its software on the PS3 and current PS3 end users will be able to add DivX functionality to their systems via a separate system software update at a forthcoming date.

Furthermore, game developers are now able to utilize DivX's decoder technology in the latest version of the PS3 Software Development Kit. Of course, with the whopping 50GB made available to developers thanks to Blu-ray Disc, one has to wonder if video compression is yet necessary.

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Just Divx or Divx HD?
By Mitch101 on 11/13/2007 4:28:53 PM , Rating: 3
Will this be Divx only or will it support Divx HD? If its can do Divx HD then I might consider a PS3.

Can you stream media to the PS3?

I wonder how Microsoft will respond to this? This is a big announcement.




RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By SirLucius on 11/13/07, Rating: 0
RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By Torched on 11/13/2007 5:18:08 PM , Rating: 5
PS3 is a DLNA device and can play a stream from any DLNA server. So yes it is built in as of FW1.8 I believe.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By Torched on 11/13/2007 5:18:56 PM , Rating: 2
RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By SirLucius on 11/13/2007 5:33:00 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah I realized that was poorly phrased. I meant that Sony doesn't provide it's own streaming software similar to TVersity. You have to go to third parties.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By Torched on 11/13/2007 6:40:41 PM , Rating: 2
WMP11 with the latest updates works as a DLNA server. You just need to own a licensed copy of Windows.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By SirLucius on 11/13/2007 6:48:24 PM , Rating: 3
The problem with WMP is that it doesn't support formats like FLAC and ogg. Certain video formats aren't supported either. Most people over at the Playstation forums use TVersity because it supports all media. You're right though, I forgot that WMP does work.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By MGSsancho on 11/14/2007 5:18:25 AM , Rating: 2
installing dbpoweramp fixes the flac and ogg issue, yet the point of third party software withs the argument =/


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By Funksultan on 11/14/2007 7:38:26 AM , Rating: 2
Lucius, the PS3 fully supports streaming.

I think the feature you're referring to is "transcoding", which is the realtime conversion of one format to another, and serving of it.

Streaming just means fostering a stream of data (in this instance, video).

TVersity rocks, as does Nero Home. Still, DivX support is gonna be great. HD is implied, as it's just a resolution. There's nothing else mysterious about "HD", we're just talking about lines of resolution. :)

D


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By rmaharaj on 11/14/2007 10:19:44 PM , Rating: 1
It's not implied - many set-top DivX Ultra certified devices do not support DivX files with resolutions in excess of 480p. Thus, I would not consider a DivX-certified device to support HD content unless it is explicitly stated.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By FITCamaro on 11/13/2007 4:53:56 PM , Rating: 2
According to the net, Divx support might be coming to the 360 soon as well. So I may not need to buy a PS3. :)

Of course now it's looking like TVersity can accomplish everything I want anyway. Will be looking into this when I get home tonight.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By sibbor on 11/13/07, Rating: -1
RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By MGSsancho on 11/13/2007 6:36:02 PM , Rating: 3
ehhh with out tvversity the ps3 is crap for streaming. audio is fine and video, only mpeg2 (which tvversity transcodes every video file to and sends it as mpeg2) and some mp4 files play on it. it really isn't that useful. unless you enjoy tie up the resources on your comp and saturating your LAN (~70mbs when you set tversity to 1920x1080). for some yeah i guess great awesome. but the quality is dismissal even with a HD source. its nice to watch your videos on a big screen yeah i admit. but not that great.

I dont use a 360 so i cant say on its media playback capability. but the product list its a media center extender, interesting.

but personally, the PS3 for media is a joke. great for dvds, bluray, and mp3s. i haven't tried flac, ogg, ac3, aac, or wav. im sure wav will work but i have not tried it so i can not vouch for it. anyways thats my experience. oh and i would not call the PS3 silent.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By aos007 on 11/13/2007 7:13:13 PM , Rating: 2
I've been using TVersity and yes, there's just too many problems right now. It crashes left and right, though there's a new update as of this morning I haven't tried yet. Also, as you say PS3 also isn't silent enough for critical music listening, though it's good enough for casual.

However, the photo support is really excellent. And music support could be considered acceptable. It's only video that right now can at best be considered beta.

Network bandwidth isn't really a problem - the PS3 DOES have a Gigabit network jack and it really does work as such.

It's better for media playback than Xbox360, there's no contest there (noise factor for 1st gen of both alone is enough to make a decision). But I still keep a HTPC next to my TV - which can be made silent or nearly silent and yet have more power than either.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By mars777 on 11/13/2007 7:30:56 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
PS3 also isn't silent enough for critical music listening


The 40GB version is less than 30dB so it should be much more silent.

It's a bad that it doesn't play PS2 games but... for me that isn't important...


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By FITCamaro on 11/13/2007 7:54:27 PM , Rating: 2
I just set up TVersity. Streamed my media just fine and the quality was the same as the actual file. And they were direct from DVD rips and converted to Divx. Had to let it buffer for a few seconds but after that, was good to go.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By sibbor on 11/14/2007 4:43:07 AM , Rating: 1
A PS3 can happily stream directly from Windows Vista, due to the Windows Media Connect. It also works with WMP11, just like the Xbox 360: "To share media from your PC running Windows XP to your console, you must have media sharing software installed. Currently available media sharing software includes Windows Media Player 11, Zune, and Windows Media Connect." (Source: www.microsoft.com)

A friend of mine was visiting my place with his PS3. He plugged it into my network. Guess what? My two computers, both Vista driven, was found by the PS3 and put into a list of "streamable units"... I think it was the same list as where you browser for files or so... Can't recall it correctly.

Either way, he was able to stream w/o installation of TVversity - which I/we havn't even tested.

And yes, the PS3 is silent compared to a lot of "media hubs" and consoles out there. And this is the old model; the new 40GB model with 65nm Cell... it should be even more silent!


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By FITCamaro on 11/14/2007 9:35:12 AM , Rating: 1
As far as noise is concerned, I really don't know what people are talking about with the 360 being noisy. Unless you're watching your video with the sound muted, you can't even hear it. Yes the DVD drive can be a little loud but again, unless there's almost no sound, you can't hear it.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By BZDTemp on 11/14/2007 12:35:11 PM , Rating: 2
Either you're deaf or have the 360 in a different room :-)

Seriously - my 360 is so loud that I find my self turning up the volume to drown the noise and that's even when playing racing games.

Looking at how the things is build and comparing it with the PS3 it is clear why the 360 is loud.

- The DVD drive in the 360 must spin faster than the Blue Ray one in the PS3 to deliver data at a acceptable speed.
- The PS3 uses a huge fan so it can run much slower and fan noise raises exponentially with fan speed.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By darkpaw on 11/14/2007 4:17:27 PM , Rating: 2
Is this something limited to the older 360s? Mine is also very quiet. Seems to be a little cooler then my PS3 as well *or maybe the 360 is just trapping more of the heat*.

If I run my PS3 for a long time, the whole area around it gets quite warm.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By aos007 on 11/14/2007 6:10:37 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps if you watch a lot of action flicks and listen to loud rock. Or you're accustomed to a custom built PC with lots of loud fans. If you listen to something that is not permanently loud, the fan noise of the Xbox360 will be very obvious. The optical drive is in another league altogether. Perhaps you got one of the rare models with quiet DVD drive or a console with the new chip - but out of all consoles I had Xbox360 is only quieter than the original Xbox. My replacement console (RROD replacement) is no better than the old one. I do have the model with the loudest optical drive - but according to polls I've seen, those are present in largest numbers anyway.

Now for the disclosure, at night I can hear sound of even a quietest 3.5" hard drive in a fanless PC from 10' away unless it's suspended in the case. I also routinely replace video card heatsinks with bigger and quieter ones. And I mostly listen to orchestral music so I'm "trained" to not miss the minute details. But my hearing is actually damaged.

I love Xbox360 from the architecture standpoint and of course games, but it's not fit for a media center for a music or video connoisseur. Well done support for lossless music codecs (and various video codecs and containers) is needed for that as well as support for multiple content sources (e.g. NAS). PS3 doesn't fit the bill either right now. Both of them support a little bit of this and a little bit of that but nothing that would really let me rip all of my CDs to a NAS device losslessly and have the thing effortlessly and reliably browse it and play it. It's fun to play with for a day or two but then you invariably have to revert back to using a HTPC. It's the only thing with enough flexibility to handle everything, but then of course it has its own issues such as using a 3-feet interface (kb+mouse) in a 10-foot setting.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By theapparition on 11/14/2007 7:14:42 AM , Rating: 2
Lack of IR remote compatibility kills it for serious AV enthusiasts.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By sibbor on 11/14/2007 12:50:17 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah? Why's that? I think the Bluetooth remote is much neater then having a old crappy IR remote.
Sure some IR remotes can be handy to control a bunch of electronics at the same time - but hey a real Hifi enthusiasts enjoys having LOTS of remotes, OK? ;-)


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By Alexstarfire on 11/13/2007 5:30:57 PM , Rating: 2
Why didn't it support this from the beginning? I mean, you could install an OS on it since it came out, and DivX plays on just about any OS. Is it because the CPU involved doesn't have the same features as my desktop CPU?


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By darkpaw on 11/13/2007 5:40:23 PM , Rating: 2
Quick answer - because Sony hasn't gotten to it yet.

I think the primary focus was PSP integration, but now that thats pretty much done I think they are focusing on the media playback features.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By deeznuts on 11/13/2007 5:49:55 PM , Rating: 3
Also licensing/contract/backoffice issues? It's not as simple as let's just add it. There is a lot of things that go on in the background for deals such as these.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By OxBow on 11/13/2007 5:42:15 PM , Rating: 2
You can stream to a PS3, it is fully compatible with Windows Media Server. It can also then stream that information to your PSP over the net.


RE: Just Divx or Divx HD?
By BZDTemp on 11/13/2007 6:11:10 PM , Rating: 2
As the others say you can stream without problems. You can also just plug in a USB drive (disk/stick/whatever) and play from that.

Also worth noting is that Sony lets you change the disk drive without having to buy one in a special super over priced enclosure like the one for the 360. Sony even describes how to do it in the standard manual and software tools to do backup and migration are also provided. In other words you can put in a 300 GB disk in the PS3 or even hook up a 3.5" 1 TB disk using a special cable.


3 Words.
By Funksultan on 11/13/2007 4:22:27 PM , Rating: 2
Thank you Sony.




RE: 3 Words.
By walk2k on 11/13/2007 6:15:46 PM , Rating: 5
- signed, pirates everywhere.


RE: 3 Words.
By Polynikes on 11/13/2007 6:27:06 PM , Rating: 2
I was going to say something along the lines of I bet Hollywood will blame a future increase in movie pirating on Sony for including DivX support in the PS3. :)


RE: 3 Words.
By SavagePotato on 11/13/2007 6:50:24 PM , Rating: 2
That for some reason reminded me of the old kids in the hall sketches where Mark McKinney would play the devil and someone would end up proclaiming thank you satan! somewhere in the sketch.

Like the one where Bruce Mccullough was a satan worshiping shoe salesman.


RE: 3 Words.
By walk2k on 11/13/2007 9:50:43 PM , Rating: 2
30 Helens agree.


RE: 3 Words.
By theapparition on 11/14/2007 7:12:29 AM , Rating: 2
I agree,
I'd just like to point out that this is good news about Sony. Why am I pointing this out?
Because every time there is a negative article about sony, the fanboys come in and scream that DailyTech is biased, they hate Sony and never publish anything positive.

Give it a rest will ya. Good news gets reported, along with the bad. Unfortunately for Sony, they've just had a string of bad press lately.


RE: 3 Words.
By mindless1 on 11/14/2007 10:16:36 PM , Rating: 2
I think you mean Sony has had a lot of bad decisions, or do you know of other companies displaying decapitated goats and rootkitting customers? The exploding batteries we can overlook because they only failed to recall them after they knew about the problem then replaced them, instead of waiting until after someone ended up dead from an accident.


Bring H.264 next please!
By flukey on 11/13/2007 4:30:46 PM , Rating: 4
This is awesome news, but I also want H.264 support...




RE: Bring H.264 next please!
By deeznuts on 11/13/2007 4:38:40 PM , Rating: 2
Hmm, I'm not a video code expert at all, but it already has h.264 support? I used meGui and now Handbrake to convert them to such.


RE: Bring H.264 next please!
By sibbor on 11/13/2007 5:13:40 PM , Rating: 2
According to IGN the PS3 already supports H. 264:
See http://ps3.ign.com/articles/742/742009p1.html


RE: Bring H.264 next please!
By MGSsancho on 11/13/2007 6:38:54 PM , Rating: 2
the PS3 will play any format found on a bluray disc and a DVD. thats it and mp3s.

so thats basic h264, vc1 and mpeg2. hs64 is actully mpeg4.10 but yeah the ps3 does basic mpeg4 too


RE: Bring H.264 next please!
By Marlowe on 11/13/2007 7:05:00 PM , Rating: 2
I hope it will support WMV, XviD and 720p + 1080p x264 vids in mkv cabinets!


RE: Bring H.264 next please!
By MGSsancho on 11/14/2007 5:22:40 AM , Rating: 2
stop making me have wet fantasies >.<


RE: Bring H.264 next please!
By aos007 on 11/13/2007 7:18:42 PM , Rating: 2
Seriously man, it supports H.264 even with the earliest firmwares, and one of the spring ones added the high profile support. I did a bunch of encoding for the hell of it when I bought my quad core CPU. As long as you set up the encoding flags properly it'll work. In fact it supports majority of options anyway, the only thing to make sure is to not exceed level 4.1 or 4.2. It's the PSP that's pain to set up the flags for, PS3 is not very picky.


Xbox 360 Rumours
By peter7921 on 11/13/2007 5:30:40 PM , Rating: 2
This makes me hope the 360 rumors of Xvid support are true. I mean now that Sony supports it, MS is going to have to respond with the same.




RE: Xbox 360 Rumours
By Scabies on 11/13/2007 6:02:44 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I mean now that Sony supports it, MS is going to have to respond with the same.

At first, I was going to ask why sony's move mattered to microsoft. Then I remembered I own an HDMI 360


RE: Xbox 360 Rumours
By EclipsedAurora on 11/15/2007 5:44:45 AM , Rating: 2
I remember I need to pay for another HDMI x360 while it still unable output multi-channel audio and new age HD audio codec!

Probably m$ may need to charge us for a Divx support!


sheesh
By EnzoFX on 11/13/2007 8:39:38 PM , Rating: 2
I think those asking for FlAC, ogg, etc, can't seem to realize that most people never deal with these formats, audiophiles are not the majority. I consider myself a bit of one, but i know how rare support is. Afterall, the ps3 is more of a mainstream product, a true audiophile would probably go with an entirely different setup. We're talking small single digit percentile here... Sony will be smart to support divx, xvid, common formats, anything else is just not likely, Though i'm sure it'd help sales, however insignificant.




RE: sheesh
By mmntech on 11/14/2007 3:51:56 PM , Rating: 2
Ironically, the PS1 is considered by some to be an audiophile CD player.
http://www.digg.com/hardware/Playstation_1_is_an_a...

You can run Ununtu on the PS3 for to play FLAC and Ogg. Not sure if they've got the audio fully working yet though.


RE: sheesh
By Brockway on 11/14/2007 7:35:31 PM , Rating: 2
Audio works fine on YDL 5.0.1. It picks it up right off the hdmi cable without any extra setup. Without access to the graphics acceleration though, 1280x720p files don't play right. Anything SD plays fine though.


NIce
By SirLucius on 11/13/2007 4:20:48 PM , Rating: 3
Glad the PS3 will finally get DivX support. While TVersity works great for streaming and converting media, it would be nice to plug one of my external drives into the PS3 and watch DivX movies right off of it. The next thing I'd like to see is some FLAC and .ogg support.




RE: NIce
By FITCamaro on 11/13/2007 4:31:59 PM , Rating: 2
Well. With that Sony has finally made me want to buy a PS3. The game list is less than spectacular considering I have a 360.

Bravo Sony. I knew you had it in you.


it's free
By Suomynona on 11/14/2007 6:36:59 AM , Rating: 2
Great news. I hope it will be for free
More Info will come
http://PS3Divx.com




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