PS3 Media Player Blitzes Blu-ray Specs

By Richard Leadbetter Published 2 July, 2009

1080p60 playback? Digital Foundry plays.

A couple of days ago, I noted on the Digital Foundry Twitter feed that enterprising coders had found a way to make the PlayStation 3 significantly outperform the Blu-ray spec by enabling video playback of 1080p material at 60 frames per second. The average Blu-ray movie runs at 24FPS while the system's 1080i conformity gives it a notional top-end of 30FPS. But PlayStation 3 goes way beyond that, seemingly without breaking a sweat.

The story kicks off with the release of the Sanyo HD2000 camera. Capable of recording 1080p60 video directly into MP4 files, enterprising souls on the Doom9 video forum set about getting clips from this camera to play on standalone BD players, despite the fact there was little hope of it actually working. However, for a while now hackers have been working on reverse-engineering the AVCHD format – the consumer-level sibling to full Blu-ray used by a multitude of HD video cameras. Coder "DeanK", author of the MultiAVCHD authoring tool found that with some effort, clips from the Sanyo camera would work within his tool when played back on PS3.

Seeing as my company creates a 1080p60 capable capture system, this proved to be intriguing for me, especially seeing as we can produce this exquisite level of video, but have no consumer-level platform on which to play it! The PS3 XMB held some promise, but despite some efforts at 1080p60 encodes to promote WipEout HD, actual picture quality was distinctly mediocre and higher-end encoding would cause plenty of hiccups. Using DeanK's tools, I found that the PS3's Blu-ray/AVCHD decoder had a clear performance edge over the XMB, allowing for smoother playback of more ambitious files.

'PS3 Media Player Blitzes Blu-ray Specs' Screenshot 1
'PS3 Media Player Blitzes Blu-ray Specs' Screenshot 2

The demo in action on my own PS3. The system's stats option shows you how much bandwidth is being used at any given point.

The encoding required is somewhat specialist and I had to get it done out of house, but regardless, there's now a downloadable demo you can try for yourself – assuming you have a 1080p screen of course. So, if you have 857MB of bandwidth to spare, go here, download, unzip and copy to a USB flash drive (burning to optical disc won't work without patching some files) making sure that the AVCHD folder is on the root of the drive. Put the drive into the PS3, click on the AVCHD icon on the XMB in the video section, sit back and watch Capcom's excellent Devil May Cry 4 intro play out at native 1080p running at 60 frames per second. The video itself was captured by our TrueHD system hooked up to an i7 PC with a top-of-the-line NVIDIA GTX295, allowing us to run the game effortlessly with all settings maxed out.

For content producers eyeing up PS3 for further Blu-ray defying tasks, it has to be stated that there are limitations. Some of the key techniques h264 implements to exact maximum quality use way too much processing power to be effective running at 60FPS in this extreme resolution. At the same time, the AVCHD and Blu-ray standards have inherent limitations in themselves compared to the full unfettered power of the core compression technology. Bottom line: you need to throw a lot more bandwidth at the problem to maintain picture quality, and in the case of pristine game video, you need a ton more compared to the average "real life" camera shot. Even the download here could do with a fair bit more bandwidth to match the original capture.

Regardless though, it remains the case that for PS3 to be able to do this at all is an excellent achievement, and brings home a hugely important factor about the console's long term future. In the fullness of a time, a smaller, slimmer PS3 will be one hell of a powerful – and hopefully cheap – media player, also capable of playing some damn good games too. With DivX adopting the Matroska (MKV) file format for its HD files, realistically it's only a matter of time before PS3 offers native support, making the console invaluable for playing just about any kind of media thrown its way.

Update: The PS3 certainly is full of surprises, and looks like I'm a bit ahead of my time with this demo. Turns out that while 1080p60 decoding is supported, the PS3 then goes about forcing the image to work only on a 1080i display. Force 1080p, and it then upscales the "nerfed" image! It took a while to figure that one out, especially as it defies logic: the PS3 is in effect adding to an already massive CPU burden by going through this bizarre process. So, for the time being, the raw video is supported but the displays are not... once there are more cameras like Sanyo HD2000 on the market, expect this to change.

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (44) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • #1 3 years ago

    i really am lost. In summary for lay mans terms is this important and if so, how so?

  • rhubarbandcustard #2 3 years ago

    I found myself becoming more and more confused by technology.

    Why would 60 fps be of any importance in movies when movies are shot at 24 fps?

    I have read the article, but could anyone explain it in layman's terms please?

    *** in one sentence, no more than 20 words, 400 characters maximum or your answer will be disqualified ***

  • collateral89 #3 3 years ago

    the ps3 has potential to be great

  • spongebob #4 3 years ago

    So, wait a sec! Your company makes capturing solutions? I wouldn't if it wasn't for Richard mentioning it IN EVERY ARTICLE EVER.

  • consignia #5 3 years ago

    With DivX adopting the Matroska (MKV) file format for its HD files, realistically it's only a matter of time before PS3 offers native support, making the console invaluable for playing just about any kind of media thrown its way.

    Just because it will be able support MKV, doesn't mean it will be able to play everything contained with in it. For a start, I don't believe it supports OGG audio format nor will likely support the mulitude of subtitle types.

  • TheWretched #6 3 years ago

    OGG has inherently nothing to do with Matroska... one is a container format and the other is a codec...

  • consignia #7 3 years ago

    Yes, I know. My point was that there are many MKV videos out there, and if Sony turned on support tommorrow, many wouldn't play due to the PS3 not supporting many of the pontential contained codecs. The article seems to imply otherwise.

  • mashk #8 3 years ago

    What's the point?

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #9 3 years ago

    I see the diital foundry showing itself to be quite pointless once again as another article is met with massive apathy.

    Maybe you should just treat everything like the game reviews and put an abitary score at the end that we can all scroll straight to and argue over! :)
    Edited by 1 at 02/07/09 @ 09:37

  • Darren #10 3 years ago

    Since BD movies play at 24 fps because that's how they're meant to be viewed then I really don't see what's so special about 60 fps playback for videos unless it's for viewing 1080p gameplay footage that's running at 60 fps. I'm sure everyone will be clamouring for those... ;)

    It's certainly not going to be of any use for viewing movies which are shot at 24 fps and even if games contained pre-rendered 1080p clips, why waste disc space and time rendering the cinematics at 60 fps when 24 fps will suffice?

  • BOFH_UK #11 3 years ago

    Gotta say, I recently started using my PS3 as a full-blown media centre and it's really impressed me. I've tried a lot of media options over the years, from a media centre PC through dedicated streaming boxes and I've never really been happy with 'em. Oh, sure, they worked and gave decent quality but they just didn't integrate that well into my AV rig and for anything that streamed it required another bit of kit being left on. Not to mention showing family members how to use it. The PS3 however seems to have it cracked, well, almost. I do wish they didn't have this silly artificial limit on how many folders you can nest without hitting 'dispaly all' but other than that it's trivial to add an external drive, simple to browse through your media and the quality is superb, way better than I was getting from a PC using the VGA port on my plasma.

    Being able to display 1080p60 may not be that relevant now but it's a good sign for the future and hopefully Sony will continue to develop the PS3 as a media hub. I think it's really got the potential to bring digital formats to a much wider audience in a single box solution for everything from DivX to Blu-Ray.

  • Widge #12 3 years ago

    This is what I can't figure out, what is the 60fps for? Would it make films look a bit "hyper-real" when it comes to movement? You get this kind of effect with 100hz modes on TV's I find so I always kick this option down to minimum levels.

  • chrisno21 #13 3 years ago

    "Why would 60 fps be of any importance in movies when movies are shot at 24 fps? "

    This.

  • Widge #14 3 years ago

    Hm talking of PS3 as a media box solution (and not sure if Rich keeps an eye on the comments at all), be nice to have a 'noise' article from DF when/if the Slim arrives. To see the noise output by the PS3/360/360 with media or game installed/PS3 slim when doing a variety of things like gaming, watching DVDs, upscaling, bluray (for the Sony's). Thats going to be one of the major factors for me if I'm going to add a slim to my setup. Most people talk about the PS3 being quiet but if I'm being honest, I find it just the wrong side of acceptable sometimes (60gb launch model user here).

  • sonmi451 #15 3 years ago

    technology confuses me....so it can play both VHS and Betamax?

  • canIdoyabombsforya #16 3 years ago

    Can hackers please unlock the dual screen gaming that Sony promised.

  • Widge #17 3 years ago

    and you'd find that useful why?

  • Gurgeh #18 3 years ago

    It's a shame then that Blu Ray is likely to remain irrelevant for most people.

    Here's an odd fact: More houses in the USA own an HD-DVD playerthan a standalone Blu-Ray player, more than a year after the HD-DVD format was dropped. Why? Because the players were sold off dirt cheap and upscale ordinary DVDs. So for little cost everyone gets to watch their films in better resolution. Sure, they aren't as high-def as Blue Ray, but in terms of quality per dollar upscaling beat Blu-Ray hands down.

    Another oddity. Shortly after HD-DVD died, Blu-Ray disc sales fell. And they have never really picked up again. There appears to be little demand for high definition films. My guess here is that it's one of those things you don't miss if you don't have it. Maybe when HD TV broadcasts become more generally available people will look again at their old DVD collections.
    Edited by 1 at 02/07/09 @ 10:07

  • xakmad #19 3 years ago

    a few people have asked "why/when would you use 60fps?"

    the answer isnt in films @ 24fps, its in games developers wanting to show their 60fps engine as a video file, as the HD videos of say, Ratch, or WipeOut HD, are only 24 or 30 fps, giving us a better idea what the game would be like.

    in theory, a 24fps film processed as 60 (58?) fps would be be better, as the encoding software would look at frame 1 and frame 2 and create a new frame 1.5 based on the two, in the same way tellys runnig at 100hz or 200hz do.
    but it wouldnt be worth the effort IMHO

  • penhalion #20 3 years ago

    @xakmad

    the answer isnt in films @ 24fps, its in games developers wanting to show their 60fps engine as a video file, as the HD videos of say, Ratch, or WipeOut HD, are only 24 or 30 fps, giving us a better idea what the game would be like.

    Er no they definitely wouldn't. Most games that push the two systems PS3 and 360, are not running at a constant 60 or even 30 fps. To shoot a video of that content in 60 fps would show up every glitch, screen tear and blemish you can imagine. It would also show any frame dips in realtime too. Most developers would stear well clear of any 1080p 60fps playback like it was a very hungry rabid dog!

  • Darren #21 3 years ago

    @Gurgeh - "It's a shame then that Blu Ray is likely to remain irrelevant for most people."

    You mean like DVD is also irrelevant to a large number of people? You know those who still think VHS is cutting edge? ;)

    Seriously though, BD sales are increasing month by month as DVD sales decline so there clearly is a demand for them, no doubt brought on by the increasing number of sub-£200 BD players (Sony sell an excellent one for under £150) and number of HDTVs appearing in people's homes. Yes, the discs are expensive to buy locally from HMV and WHSmith but then so in my experience are DVDs still, which is why any sensible person will buy the discs online. I suspect that BDs will outsell DVDs within the next five years myself. Remember DVDs didn't become a success overnight either, it took over four years before they outsold VHS.

  • LetsGo #22 3 years ago

    I guess at the end of the day, as more people get HD TV’s they want HD movies.
    And the only way to do that is via a Blue Ray player?

  • AgentCool #23 3 years ago

    "in theory, a 24fps film processed as 60 (58?) fps would be be better, as the encoding software would look at frame 1 and frame 2 and create a new frame 1.5 based on the two, in the same way tellys runnig at 100hz or 200hz do.
    but it wouldnt be worth the effort IMHO"

    This is how the NTSC system has worked for years resulting in ugly 3:2 pulldown judder. 24 doesn't go into 60 evenly so it is impossible to get smooth motion when upconverting to that frequency. 24Hz material is correctly displayed at 72Hz (3:3) or 120Hz (5:5) on most decent 1080p TVs.

  • peterfll #24 3 years ago

    BR prices are finally starting to stabilise and you can get some really good 3 for 2 etc deals if you shop around. I was watching Speed Racer on BR at the weekend and, general comments about the quality of the film itself aside, it looks A-MAZING. Now that BR prices are where they are, I tend to buy BR discs now instead of DVD.

    Anyway, I'm slightly puzzled about 1080p and 60fps. I downloaded the trailers for Wipeout HD before it was released. What did these play in? I thought it was 1080p 60fps?

  • Brianstorm #25 3 years ago

    The biggest challenge for SONY with all the benefits the PS3 is starting to show is communicating it all to the consumer. They have failed on a massive scale to get the features and benefits of the system over to people, the sooner they get this sorted the better.

  • Johnsters #26 3 years ago

    @Gurgeh - "It's a shame then that Blu Ray is likely to remain irrelevant for most people."

    I don't know why you would say that. Your comment has no fact behind it. Like Darren says, year on year, BR HW sales and Disc sales are increasing. In fact, it's a faster take up rate than that of DVD!
    Blu Ray is here to stay. (dont get me started on Download)

    By early next year, the defacto DVD player in the shops will be the Blu Ray player. They will be sub £70/90 then.
    Do not be fooled by Upscaled DVD. It can't add in the detail that is missing. Online shopping, a New Blu Ray disc is about 30-60% more than the DVD price. You get ~250% more picture. Do the maths.

  • knightmt #27 3 years ago

    I severly doubt that there are more HD DVD players in the us than BR, that would be a bit bizarre and counter to market choice.
    I really enjoyed WALLE in BluRay it was a real stunner, and am looking forward to other classics aswell, such as Blade Runner, Star Wars and Lord Of the Rings when they figure out how impressive it is.
    The more frames it can do the smoother that it can handle the 24Fps therefore it is a mark of quality(this is a guess),
    also there may be a possible 3D tie up.

  • BOFH_UK #28 3 years ago

    On Blu-Ray, the one thing really holding it back in the UK is highstreet prices of the media. The players are now under a hundred quid (I believe Tesco was churning one out for around £70 a week or two back) and hopefully they'll be around £50 for christmas. But it's very hard to recommend the average customer buys in when HMV are selling discs for between £20 and £30 that you can get online for £8.

  • Zappa #29 3 years ago

    Why would video at 60 fps not work is what I dont get.

    PS3 play MLB09 The Show at 1080 60fps, so wouldnt it be much harder on the PS3 for a game than video?

  • chubster2010 #30 3 years ago

    "It's a shame then that Blu Ray is likely to remain irrelevant for most people."

    Well - judging by the ever increasing shop space HMV are giving BluRay, i would say it's relevancy is increasing quite dramatically.

  • IneptPercy #31 3 years ago

    I put a 1080p60 video on my 360 on a pen drive a while ago and it played fine or did I imagine that.

    I never even thought that both consoles wouldn't have enough power to do this.

  • m0thr4 #32 3 years ago

    On Blu-Ray, the one thing really holding it back in the UK is highstreet prices of the media ... it's very hard to recommend the average customer buys in when HMV are selling discs for between £20 and £30 that you can get online for £8.

    That's not my experience. HMV in Leeds & Sheffield have loads of titles for £10-15 and I haven't seen anything over £20 apart from box sets or special editions.

    EDIT: Anyway, didn't DVD start off exactly the same way?
    Edited by 1 at 02/07/09 @ 13:04

  • homerbert #33 3 years ago

    I love the blu-ray maths crowd. "It's got more dots, so that's 250% better". It completely ignore diminishing returns, TV quality, eyesight quality and how much attention Joe Bloggs will pay. If something came out that had 100 times the resolution of BR, would that be amazing? I doubt most folks could tell the difference.

    I just don't think the public cares very much about video quality or HD. I say this as a TV production company tech guy, so I deal with HD a fair bit. While I know people that care, I know non-nerd that do.

    Also, the uptake stats are misleading because there's a clear upwards trend in hardware adoption rates over time. As people get more tech savvy they adopt to new products and ideas sooner. HD-DVD had some pretty good stats compared to the early days of DVD and we know how that ended up. I don't doubt Blu-Ray will have plenty of success, but it will be as a nerd favourite choice rather than as something as essential as a DVD player.

  • m0thr4 #34 3 years ago

    Why would 60 fps be of any importance in movies when movies are shot at 24 fps?

    This should be obvious, shouldn't it? Do I really need to say it?

    Not everything we want to watch is a movie shot on celluloid.

    Does that clear it up? Plenty of other things are filmed at 1080i60 (HD TV broadcasts, some Blu-ray releases) and it may not be long before broadcasters decide they want to go for 1080p60.

    When that happens, it's nice to know that the PS3 (and probably the X360 for all I know) are ready to play this material.

    The real shame is that Sony didn't have the foresight to make 1080p60 part of the Blu-ray spec.

  • m0thr4 #35 3 years ago

    @homerbert
    I love the blu-ray maths crowd. "It's got more dots, so that's 250% better". It completely ignore diminishing returns, TV quality, eyesight quality and how much attention Joe Bloggs will pay. If something came out that had 100 times the resolution of BR, would that be amazing? I doubt most folks could tell the difference.

    A classic Straw Man argument, via reductio ad absurdum. Not very clever.

    If your eyesight/TV is genuinely so poor that you cannot tell the difference between standard definition and high definition (up to 9 times the number of pixels), then you have my sympathy, but the whole High Definition scene is simply not targeted at you.

  • m0thr4 #36 3 years ago

    @Johnsters
    Some good points above, but

    Online shopping, a New Blu Ray disc is about 30-60% more than the DVD price. You get ~250% more picture. Do the maths.

    Ok then...

    DVD - maximum number of pixels is 720 × 480 = 345,600

    Blu-ray/HD - maximum number of pixels is 1920 × 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels

    So you're actually getting 500% more picture (Blu-ray being 6 times the res of DVD).
    Edited by 2 at 02/07/09 @ 13:34

  • chubster2010 #37 3 years ago

    @ Homerbert
    re 'I don't doubt Blu-Ray will have plenty of success, but it will be as a nerd favourite choice rather than as something as essential as a DVD player.'

    Bearing in mind that you can now pick up BluRay players for £100 - if you were looking to buy a 'DVD ' player, would you spend your money on a standard DVD player...or...buy a Bluray player, that can play both DVD and an HD format?

    I've got a PS3, so this isn't something I have to think about, but, if I didn't, the Bluray player would be a far more attractive way to spend my money, and I think a lot of people would think in the same way.

  • m0thr4 #38 3 years ago

    [/i]^ ^^
    Good point, but you forgot to close your italics.

    (so I've done it for you)

    :-)
    Edited by 1 at 02/07/09 @ 13:52

  • chukcyQ #39 3 years ago

    I need 1080p 60Hz porn movies!!!

  • Johnsters #40 3 years ago

    @m0thr4

    ok, so I was a little out - I was being cautious (and did my maths only on vertical lines -roughly). But proves my point further.

    @homerbert

    I am not part of the Blu Ray Maths crowd, I was underming the Upscale camp with raw figures but human observations (DVD upscale vs. Blu Ray on a 40"" 1080p TV) is very noticable - even to the clinically blind - if you don't notice the difference then HD is not for you (the general joe))

    I do understand your point that if I was to watch 100 times better the blu Ray, would I notice? Maybe not on my 40"" TV. If I had a 400"" TV, then maybe, but I am sure I would need planning permission.
    But you are right, how far do we go? I have heard of Super HD (or something similar) but I think as consumers who care, Blu Ray is just fine right now (I may have said the same thing about DVD in 1998, but I wont lie, I am a hypocrite)

  • andronbr #41 3 years ago

    [link url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Video
    ]http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_...[/link]

    The japanese are making SuperHi-Vision, 16x the pixel resolution as current HD. It's crazy big and could be used for cinema showing...

  • riceNpea #42 3 years ago

    cake is yummy. and fewer people get anal over cake then technology

  • Pickster #43 3 years ago

    There may be 250(500)% more 'picture' when watching a blu-ray vs watching a DVD, and indeed it may be noticable. But the point is you* dont get 500% more enjoyment out of watching a blu-ray vs watching a DVD.

    The picture may be a bit sharper, the extra detail may enable you to see the serial number on Optimus prime**, but the film is the same film.

    I am not saying Blu-ray does not have its place, movie wise, but everything has to be put into perspective. There was a very good reason to move from VHS to DVD, there is less motivation to move from DVD to Blu-ray, especially when an upscaled DVD image is more than acceptable for alot of people with HD sets in the 32 - 46 inch region.

    *I mean the general public, not the (very) minor amount of people that do base all there enjoyment on how many squares there eyes are presented with.

    **This may or may not be true

  • m0thr4 #44 3 years ago

    @Pickster
    I'm not sure why you think you are any more representative of the general public than the rest of us here?

    To be honest, your argument is flawed (classic Straw Man fallacy) and you come off as a luddite.

    No one has suggested that a 500% improvement in the Blu-ray picture equates to a 500% increase in enjoyment.

    The leap from VHS to DVD provided many useful features, plus a small increase in resolution and a big leap in sound quality. Blu-ray just does the same again, only more so. Vastly more space for extra content, better sound quality, 6 times the picture quality, more sophisticated menus, picture-in-picture, access to Internet-based content.

    If you don't appreciate advances in technology, then fine... stick with whatever you've got, but don't try to justify your position as somehow being the norm. However if (as I suspect) it's just sour grapes because you can't afford to buy in to these new technologies, then that's something you'll just have to come to terms with until the prices fall to what you consider acceptable.
    Edited by 1 at 13/07/09 @ 21:21