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Re: [News] A Wii Bit of Optimism, PS3 Goes for the High End

Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [ Mark Kent ] on Saturday 14 April 2007 08:26 \__
> 
>> Mark Kent <mark.kent@xxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>>> Sony to discontinue lower capacity PlayStation 3
>>>> 
>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>>| "This is based purely on consumer and retailer demand, which favored
>>>>| the 60-gigabyte model 10 to 1," said David Karraker, a spokesman for
>>>>| Sony, the world's top video game console maker.
>>>> `----
>>>> 
>>>> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070412/tc_nm/sony_ps3_dc
>>>> 
>>>> John Romero says only Wii will survive
>>>> 
>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>>| "My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and XBOX
>>>>| 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether.
>>>>| The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn?t pretend to be
>>>>| a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers. The
>>>>| hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new
>>>>| PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the
>>>>| whole house over wifi, even the video signal."
>>>> `----
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38862
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Err, you won't get the video signal over wifi...  perhaps he should
>>> stick to writing software...
>> 
>> I should probably qualify this a little further - apologies for
>> responding to my own posting...
>> 
>> Whilst you /might/ get a usable video signal over a wifi channel, the
>> bandwidth required for moving video is huge.  A typical PAL colour TV
>> signal requires about 6MHz, and it is a stream, which means that it
>> cannot tolerate interruptions of any kind.  Wifi, on the other hand, is
>> designed for moving files and messages, not streams, and it is designed
>> to share that bandwidth between multiple peer devices, which means that
>> interruptions are common and part of the design.  Furthermore, Microwave
>> Ovens operate in the same band, as well as a lot of other radio
>> services, so interference is commonplace.
>> 
>> The best way to move video is over a piece of wire (copper or glass).
> 
> 
> Satellite TV has the same issues. Sometimes at the gym the signal is totally
> lost for 1 minutes or even 1 hour. It cannot be trusted when it comes to
> business-crtitical stuff, e.g. Bloomberg, CNBC.

Indeed it has some similar issues, including rain-fade, which is
particularly nasty, and the singular fact that digital coding is less
robust than analogue, too.  If you can find one, you'll see that the PAL
transmissions degrade steadily, becoming randomly noisy, whereas the
MPEG2 signals suffer bit-errors which gradually exceed the error
correction capability, then you get block-errors, and then the decoder
gives up.  At this point, the PAL system is probably only, say, 60-70%
degraded, and will continue to work through much less good conditions.

The down-side with analogue transmission is that multiplexing is much
more difficult, so sharing bandwidth less effective.

On the other hand, the satellite system is not competing for the
bandwitdh in a CDMA fashion with other wifi devices, so it is rather
more reliable than wifi is for such transmissions.

> 
> 
>>> The PS3 *is* a PC-like platform, of course, which he also seems to fail
>>> to recognise.
>>> 
>> 
>> I suspect that in order for the PS3 to make a serious dent in the PC
>> world, the GPU will need to be accessible from the linux side.
> 
> 
> I think they may be working on that. This generation has got years to go and
> they only utilise about 16% of the CPU's capacity at this stage, IIRC.
> 

I recall seeing that somewhere, too.  Still, I think that once you get
accelerated video working on the linux side, the PS3 will be very hard
to touch.  The problem which Sony will have with this is the standard
disruptive technology debate, which is do they wish to have the
linux-side apparently compete with the console-side by supporting eg.,
Quake3 directly.  Personally, I think they should do it /now/!

-- 
| Mark Kent   --   mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk          |
| Cola faq:  http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/   |
| Cola trolls:  http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/                        |

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