I posted these elsewhere, but figured it was worth a crosspost here at WiiChat


[Originally posted]

Walmart issued a press release (and internal memo) that they would give a FULL refund on any Toshiba HD-DVD player bought between Nov 1st and April 30th. I bought mine WAY back on secret Friday, Nov 2nd, but according to the G2, it qualified, so I just a full cash refund. The CS manager was wacking out not having heard of this - luckily I had copy of the internal memo The Wifey© and I hadn't done anything like a late night videogame raid in a while, so the whole late evening adventure to Wallymart was pretty fun last night (yeah, I cut it super close).

This was going to cause a vacancy in the media player space downstairs, figured might as well go Blue Ray, and right now, the best BD player (barring *possible* a few ultra high end) in my mind is the PS3 (upgradability, plus media services, game console, Linux PC goodies are all icing on the cake).

So I scored a 40GB model and the one they had in stock was the previous "limited ed" package with Spiderman 3 on BD, which is pretty cool ( read a post here recently that someone was peeved they didn't get their freebie).

No games of yet, just going to mooch some from the BIL and switch our Netflix over the Blueray (when I did this, about 2X as many movies in our queue became HD vs. HD-D). I still need to bail on my few HD-D's but it shouldn't be too tough (a few I'll need to replace with BD like 300 and Blade Runner).

Very cool so far - the upscaling on SD-DVD looks very good (I think the Toshiba might have looked sharper, but I haven't tweaked anything yet), Spiderman on BD of course looked outstanding. The set where it's hooked is a Sony 50" LCD via HDMI.

Upgraded to 2.3 firmware and everything works really fast. Good browser performance, the new PS Shop is excellent (was able to download several demos and movies in the background during other functions). Took < 5 minutes to setup the WiFi (including WPA/2), that's working fast and perfect (to a DIR-655 router).

Oh yeah, this is tasty - I setup Nero Media Home (which is part of Nero and the PS3 found the media server on my machine (even a nice little icon right in the media menu) - access to all my photos, vids, music - didn't get a chance to play with this much.

Definitely going to score a mouse/keyboard and install Linux as well.


[After a day or two of ownership]

The SD-DVD playback is tremendous - it's definitely as good as all the standalone players I've experienced that are consider excellent upscalars. (Toshiba A series HD players and Oppo's). I pulled out the LOTR's Deluxe Ed, which is considered by many to have one of the best encodings of SD media and it was just fantastic.

I *just* made my Netflix update in time as the BD version of a movie shipped today (I think it was I Am Legend), so I'll get another BD exposure. To be honest the HD-DVD stuff using the same VC1 CODEC was as good, but now that I've settled on a standard (for as much as it is), I'll be able to start really building up our HDM library. I ordered a copy of Pan's Labyrinth on BD for the Wifey© yesterday, shhh, don't tell her

I downloaded several demos and have been floored at some of the tech being implemented - just beautiful. Now I'm a big advocate of gameplay, so I'll have to wait till I get a little more hands on (and some actualy, full titles in hand), but even on the demos we had a blast!

The XMB/media services are really well implemented - I haven't had enough time to fool around with the Nero 8 Home server, so I was only able to copy down MP3 files vs. streaming them directly from my server, but I'll get a chance to tweak some thing this weekend.

Is there a preferred media server (either freeware or commercial) app that people use?

I think I might pick up a MediaBoard Pro today - seems like a perfect all-in-one keyboard solution (with the integrated touchpad) and it would just be for web related use, not gaming. I'm assuming that there's no issue with that model and Linux [?]


[Saturday thoughts]

I wound up shutting off Nero, it wasn't doing the job. Then I simply fired up Windows Media Player 11's media sharing functions and those seem to be working extremely well. I had zero problems accessing our primary image and MP3 folders. Pretty cool stuff.

No one had the MB Pro in stock (according to online) so I'm just going to order one from NewEgg ($54.95 after rebate). Sounds like there are fixes for both YD and Ubuntu Linux where you don't need any kind of wired keyboard except for the install.

PS3 sounds like a good deal. Would never trade my 360 for it, though.

It sounds like you're having a great time with it. Just wait'll you get some good games, some of them will just blow you away. Glad that you're liking it though, I love my PS3 too.

You might look into TVersity too. It's free and seems to offer some additional organizational abilities. It can also transcode videos on the fly if they're not in a format that the PS3 can play natively.

Thanks, yeah, I have that already up and running (was experimenting with the Wii)! I also installed Red Kawa for a super simple web-based file sharing solution. Basically you just nav the filesystem and save-as to the PS3 - makes moving large file around pretty simple (though any web server will support this type of solution).

Decided I'm going to go ahead and order a 320GB HDD today/tomorrow and upgrade the internal drive right up front. I can see how the content will fill up quickly, and I want to do a Linux setup.

queue your disappointment....


if you are going for a linux install, you will only be given the option for a 10GB partition for it..

(or vice versa, ie 10GB for PS3, remainder for linux)

this is the case even with an upgraded HDD, ended up being the main reason i didnt bother

nice to hear you are enjoying it though

Hey Gary, yeah, after doing a little more research, I understand these are the options (re: HDD space allocation):

Option 1) Entire Drive for the gameOS

Option 2) 10GB for Linux / Remaining for gameOS

Option 3) 10GB for gameOS / Remaining for Linux

That's semi crap-tacular

So it sounds like it might be more advantageous to do a 10GB Linux and then hang a nice 500GB external drive off the USB ports.

In that configuration, is the drive accessible from the Linux and gameOS sides? If it's simple to access for the gameOS, wouldn't is be better to do a 10GB gameOS, remaining for Linux and use the 500GB for gameOS (and Linux if that's possible).

Glad I read this and held off, I had my 320GB internal just a click away from completing the transaction!

yep, those are pretty much the main options.... and yes they suck




and yes it would make sense to have the external alongside the 10GB linux partition.

as for both partitions being able to 'see' each other, im pretty certain they cannot if you had the 10GB for linux, you would need the external for the extra storage. the gameOS would not be able to access anything outside its own partition on this HDD, it could only pick up from an external, providing its formatted in a FAT filesystem (so make sure you have a linux distro that will happily read FAT)

its annoying as you cant even format/partition the drive upfront in/via your PC to your own partition sizes, as the PS3 will force a fresh wipe when the HDD is installed. on this note make sure you backup your PS3 contents before you remove the drive

your best bet, if you still want linux running on it is to upgrade the HDD, and set the 10GB for it - then use an external as well. it means a potential higher spend, but is the only realistic way to have both sides of the system with a decent amount of storage...

If the external HDD FS is FAT, I'm thinking that drive would be accessible to both OS's [?] My hope is that I could use Linux to acquire/manage content and then swap over to the gameOS and access that same content through the XMB media services (I understand most Linux implementations are "lite" on hardware access so things like video acceleration/decode/etc are much faster on the native OS).



Ahh, good predictive call on next question. At this point I have nearly nothing on the PS3 which is why I wanted to determine my storage direction _now_.

Thanks a ton, that clears up just about everything.

I have a nice, though semi-scavanged HTPC sitting in storage that I was hoping the PS3 might be able to replace - it's close!

in this sense, it should be accessible. my only gripe is the fact that anything you download from the PS Store (vids, demos, themes etc), game saves, game installs and so on, can only download directly to the PS3 HDD. so without upgrading the HDD, you are stuck with around 25GB for the PS3 straight after the linux partition..

considering GTA forces an install that takes about 3.3GB, DMC4 prompts an install which takes about the same IIRC... so the trend is emerging where games are wanting HDD space to install to make up for the slow BD read speeds.. just something you might to consider, seeing as you liked my intuition ▼



and for some more predictive/future assumptions, if you are interested in PlayTV at all, this will most likely follow the idea that you can only save to the PS3 gameOS's partition.. again bringing the need for a larger HDD