Ask questions to Sony Pictures Entertainment insider "paidgeek"

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by neo_reloaded

Hi paidgeek,

What discipline did you receive your undergrad / graduate school degrees in (if you received one or both)?

From your postings here, it seems you aren't directly involved with designing / coding the high-def codecs used on Sony Blu-ray discs - but I figure you are very involved in the whole industry and, as such, might be knowledgeable about those who do.

I'm about to receive my undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering and plan on continuing to graduate school. My biggest passion is writing and testing algorithms, so I now have it in my head that designing / refining high-def codecs could be one potential career to look into. I'm not really sure how to get from where I am to a job like that, so any input on what path to look into would be greatly appreciated.

No grad school for me. My education is in electronics engineering, but I enjoyed working on electromechanical systems as well.

If your passion is algorithms, then I recommend a graduate degree. I just wouldn't do it with an expectation of making more money than those outside the lab.

Codecs and pure R&D are generally developed at the companies that can afford the budget for this (as in fortune 500). If that is what you want to pursue, then those are the companies I would check postings for. Can I suggest you intern or temp before moving or making a major committment?

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by syncguy

Subtitle repositioning is very important to me. It appears that this is a trivial function to implement in player firmware and it is not mandatory to provide different subtitle files on the disk to achieve this. TheaterTek s/w DVD player has this capability and I also know that some other h/w DVD players are capable of this. Do you know of any progress in implementing this function in PS3 at least for blu-ray disks.

We are testing, but getting a good result is somewhat hardware dependent. Watch for a production title to have this feature later in the year.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Fox has been REALLY bad in this regard. You could compile quite the list of titles they've skipped over, especially from the Fox Searchlight label. Maybe they have a minimum box office haul to qualify for HD treatment, but I don't see a method to their madness at all.

Yes. My point was Fox were similarly slow with DVD (along with Paramount). And Sony similarly aggressive with DVD (along with Warner).

There is a corporate culture aspect involved.

Why isn't Star Wars out on Blu-ray? The leopards don't change their spots.

Gary

[blitz6speed]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Very interesting. Almost no interest in BD-Live?? Does this mean that everyone here just wants to watch the movie and won't connect your player to a network?

I am surprised that you are surprised. Who gave ANYONE the illusion that anyone cares for networking and the like? For firmware upgrades, yes, for most things, people just want to watch a movie. Not saying there wont be content perhaps introduced later to make us feel different, but for right now, we all just want the best possible PQ/AQ on the disc, ASAP. Thats the #1 driver of HD Movies on disc for me and everyone else i know.

[un4gvn94538]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Very interesting. Almost no interest in BD-Live?? Does this mean that everyone here just wants to watch the movie and won't connect your player to a network?

i dont think people wont connect to a network, most ps3's are already. we just feel that the playback ability of the ps3 for blu isnt complete.

[blindcat87]

Most of the special features I actually tend to access were already available on DVD. Commentaries, deleted scenes, bloopers, etc. I would definitely like to check out advanced BD Live features when available, but my priority is and always will be the movie. I want picture and audio quality to come first and extras to come in second. JMO.

I like using my PS3's wireless networking for firmware upgrades, and as I said would check out BD Live extras, but the thing that interests me most about the possibilities of the profile would be exploring the possibilities of downloadable extra soundtracks. If it can be managed, I would love to be able to download descriptive video soundtracks for titles that do not already have one. Great way to increase accessibility without taking up extra disc space. Would also like to see some soundtrack translation audio tracks come about, the Netherlands' national library is actually starting to produce such tracks in Dutch apparently. It would be great to have that happen in the US as well.

At any rate, I don't think the poll really shows that there is total apathy to networked extras, just that the priority is by a wide margin the audio and video. A common reaction to announcement of new advanced profile extras seems to be something like "Sounds pretty cool, have to try that one out, now what are the audio specs on that title and does it include the director's cut/alternate ending/etc.?"

Chris

[Arecsa]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Very interesting. Almost no interest in BD-Live?? Does this mean that everyone here just wants to watch the movie and won't connect your player to a network?

Right now DTS HD MA decoding is definitely much more important. With Saw IV and War as the only BD-live titles available the interest in it just isn't there yet, when more BD-Live titles come out I think the demand for the profile 2.0 upgrade will be greater.

[dakota81]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

Very interesting. Almost no interest in BD-Live?? Does this mean that everyone here just wants to watch the movie and won't connect your player to a network?

I don't think that's what the poll is saying. I think most people assume the PS3 is profile 2.0 and will be updated before the first title is released. Thus an official announcement wouldn't be very important.

BD-Live, though honestly, the ideas used on HD DVD releases thus far have not interested me. At the minimum, a feature would have to be something that a Blu-ray player can do better than what I already can do with a pc.

Some of the features that are already in Blu-rays, aren't intuitive either. While watching Resident Evil Extinction, was curious what the picture in picture looked like, but I was pressing all different buttons on the PS3 remote and nothing was turning it on. Similar thing with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the menu had a feature that listed the different cuts and chapters and functions for the color buttons of the remote, but I couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on. It would be nice to have some instructions written down somewhere on what the special features are and how to use them.



Anyways, on a brighter side, I picked up and watched Gattaca, you guys did a phenomenal job on the picture. And it never occurred to me what the name meant until watching the movie in pristine 1080p quality.

[syncguy]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

We are testing, but getting a good result is somewhat hardware dependent. Watch for a production title to have this feature later in the year.

Thanks very much paidgeek and SPE for testing and letting us know about this.

Subtitle repositioning is very important to non-speaking-English countries and also Bollywood and Chinese movie fans. This is a multi billion dollar market and I think SPE knows this fact well.

There is a growing market segment using "constant image height" systems that will not display subtitles if on black bars. Also there are lot of people annoyed with black bars and (whether it is right or wrong) they want to zoom out black bars.

I am requesting SPE on behalf of this huge market segment to provide a solution to reposition subtitles (using player firmware) even if the content author does not enable repositioning capability in software.

For example, it is hard to expect for Bollywood movie studios to add this capability in software. Therefore the player should have the capability to reposition. As I indicated previously there are s/w and h/w DVD players that can do this in player firmware.

I hope that SPE is testing the capability of players to reposition subtitles regardless whether this function is enabled in blu-ray disk. That means once PS3 is firmware upgraded with this capability, I should be able to reposition the subtitles of Casio Royale (which I cannot do now).

I am confused. Please clarify we are desperate on this. Thank you.

[HDJK]

^^ I really don't understand why SPE would bother with a feature that is not exactly easy to implement. Just leave the subs in the picture where they were in the Cinema to begin with. The subs from Close Encounters were about half a letter hight in the black bar, the rest was in the picture. I'm not bashing CEoT3K, because that was a great release all around, but honestly I don't see the point of that kind of sub positioning.

I do appreciate it that SPE is looking into this (thanks to Paidgeek) but my vote would be to just leave them in the picture (as many films from other studios are presentet this way, too).

[binarymelon]

Originally Posted by Arecsa

Right now DTS HD MA decoding is definitely much more important. With Saw IV and War as the only BD-live titles available the interest in it just isn't there yet, when more BD-Live titles come out I think the demand for the profile 2.0 upgrade will be greater.

My big issue is that this same poll would yield much different results on the official Playstation forums. The users here have a much different agenda than the average PS3 owner.

[Chris Beveridge]

Hi Paidgeek,

I just wanted to drop in to see if anything had been discovered about the Blood+ "dubtitles" we covered a week or two ago? I'm halfway through the set and enjoying it, but the discrepencies tend to take one out of the show...

[Moonlight Shadow]

Hello paidgeek.
I own a BDP S 300. As you probably know this machine has a bug that causes
it to freeze occasionally during playback.
When that happens the player has to be disconnected, the disc reloaded and
I have to find the scene when the player crashed. It is annoying to say the
least.
This bug is well documented on all internet forums. Until now I have been
patient because I was confident that Sony would address the problem with
the next firmware update.
Yesterday however my player froze again while I was watching BABEL even
though I have installed the new 3.80 firmware.

Do you know if Sony is aware of the problem and what they are planning to do about it?

Thank you for your time.

Andreas

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Moonlight Shadow

Hello paidgeek.
I own a BDP S 300. As you probably know this machine has a bug that causes
it to freeze occasionally during playback.
When that happens the player has to be disconnected, the disc reloaded and
I have to find the scene when the player crashed. It is annoying to say the
least.
This bug is well documented on all internet forums. Until now I have been
patient because I was confident that Sony would address the problem with
the next firmware update.
Yesterday however my player froze again while I was watching BABEL even
though I have installed the new 3.80 firmware.

Do you know if Sony is aware of the problem and what they are planning to do about it?

Thank you for your time.

Andreas

This is the first I have heard about S300 playback problems of this sort. Can you please send me a few links to other posts indicating this problem? I'll see what I can find out.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by Chris Beveridge

Hi Paidgeek,

I just wanted to drop in to see if anything had been discovered about the Blood+ "dubtitles" we covered a week or two ago? I'm halfway through the set and enjoying it, but the discrepencies tend to take one out of the show...

I did get some information that the theatrical translation was not used. The persons involved have been asked to avoid this whenever possible.

[paidgeek]

Originally Posted by blitz6speed

I am surprised that you are surprised. Who gave ANYONE the illusion that anyone cares for networking and the like? For firmware upgrades, yes, for most things, people just want to watch a movie. Not saying there wont be content perhaps introduced later to make us feel different, but for right now, we all just want the best possible PQ/AQ on the disc, ASAP. Thats the #1 driver of HD Movies on disc for me and everyone else i know.

I am not surprised. We have done focus groups that show that few people watch the added value, add the complexity of connecting a network and this is sure to reduce usage further.

What is being missed here is that BD-Live is not just a way to send a bit more added value to the customer. It is a bidirectional link to our customers. We can use it in all sorts of ways including polls not unlike those that we hold in this forum. What about also giving some reward to those of you who buy most of our titles? You have to let you imagination run with the possibilities.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

This is the first I have heard about S300 playback problems of this sort. Can you please send me a few links to other posts indicating this problem? I'll see what I can find out.

I mainly read discussions about the problem in german forums but a quick google search for "BDP S 300 + freeze" or "frozen" brought a lot of hits. Here are some:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4#post11599534

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hd-...yer-page2.html

http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=43004

It seems some s 300 owners have mainly problems with playing DVDs on it. I don't know about that, I'm using the player only for BDs.
I'm using it since early january and the player froze up about 5 times.
The froze-ups are not connected to any specific discs or scenes. The player freezes at a certain point and if I play the same scene again a few minutes later after reloading it plays just fine.

[ezcobar411]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I am not surprised. We have done focus groups that show that few people watch the added value, add the complexity of connecting a network and this is sure to reduce usage further.

What is being missed here is that BD-Live is not just a way to send a bit more added value to the customer. It is a bidirectional link to our customers. We can use it in all sorts of ways including polls not unlike those that we hold in this forum. What about also giving some reward to those of you who buy most of our titles? You have to let you imagination run with the possibilities.

I would like to see the polls and rewards come into fruition. Are studios going to focus on making the BD-Live features something that individuals will look forward to or just simply something that is added value but to a lesser extent than previous iterations of added value?

[coolmilo]

Originally Posted by paidgeek

I am not surprised. We have done focus groups that show that few people watch the added value, add the complexity of connecting a network and this is sure to reduce usage further.

What is being missed here is that BD-Live is not just a way to send a bit more added value to the customer. It is a bidirectional link to our customers. We can use it in all sorts of ways including polls not unlike those that we hold in this forum. What about also giving some reward to those of you who buy most of our titles? You have to let you imagination run with the possibilities.

Hello Paidgeek,

Could Sony use the BD-Live feature to distribute firmware updates to standalone players (players that support BD-Live of course)?

[un4gvn94538]

Originally Posted by binarymelon

My big issue is that this same poll would yield much different results on the official Playstation forums. The users here have a much different agenda than the average PS3 owner.

the playstation forums want in game xmb to chat and play music while gaming. they also want homeand some a stupid clock! none of that has to do with blu ray movies. profile 2.0 and dts ma decoding are only about movies.