General PS4 BD-A/V Playback Issues Thread

[42041]

It should not be any different.
Barring microscopic differences due to chroma resampling algorithms and all that stuff, it either decodes accurately or it doesn't.

[IStoleYourUsername]

[Show spoiler]

Originally Posted by Jpierro79

I would have to disagree as a home theater enthusiast for 20 years that the ps3 is not one of the better blu ray players. People who won't notice are the ones with inexpensive tv brands or base model flat screens and projectors. I'll get into projectors specifically in a minute. The reason is because the tv could not produce the correct color shading, pixel clarity and other technical reasons. Everyone seems to forget the information has to be decoded into a color format to fit the ability of your TV's screens. You can have two TVs that are 1080p but one has faster pixel changes with better color accuracy you can easily see the difference. No projector can truly ever compare to an Led or a good plasma. Yes I said plasma. A good plasma tv can be just as bright and brilliant as any led. I know I spent a large amount on mine. Plasma TVs have a faster refresh rate than any other tv so when it changes from frame to frame there is more accuracy partly due to the least delay and many other reasons. LED TVs are great but there refresh rate is 240hz tops while good plasmas are 600hz. Not all plasma TVs are good you really have to spend the money to have the vibrant colors as a LED tv has. Cheap plasma TVs are dismal at best so don't expect to go and spend 800 on a 60 tv and get a real blu ray quality picture. The picture accuracy meaning separation from two pixels beside each other is more clear with a plasma so it has more depth. You do have to stand close to see it or have really good vision. 20 20 vision is line 6 at the eye doctor if I remember correctly I can read three lines lower meaning smaller letters with one and two with the other eye so I can see the difference from afar. Please don't get into the whole blu ray at 24hz saying owe that's as fast as it goes. NOT TRUE. A good tv multiplies these frames by doubling or more the frames and blending the transition.

PROJECTOR TVs have a big problem and that is the fact that it's projecting to a screen and it can NEVER be as accurate as regular flat screen. No matter how perfect the image is as soon as it leaves the projector your doomed. Not saying it can't look good but it's not as accurate. Starting with the problem that any micro partical in the air distorts the image before it reaches the screen. The other problem is your stretching the image from 3 to 4 inches up to 60 plus inches. Your squeezing 1080 pixels down to a few inches. Think how much smaller do the pixels have to be and how much harder that is to make them accurate when it 20 times smaller to begin.The last problem is your reflective surface will never be perfectly accurate. These are the reasons projectors are not a good comparison platform. I'm NOT SAYING PROJECTORS ARE BAD BUT not as accurate.

NOW TO THE NITTY GRITTY. The blu ray player in the p3 is not a bad blu ray player but the quality in it is no better than a cheap 100 to 150 dollar blu ray player. I have a ps3 that I used to use for my TV but never again. I bought a pioneer elite blu ray player and the difference in picture quality was immediately noticeable. Everything was smoother the colors where more accurate and the depth and realism was soo much better. That includes 3d as well. The effect was drastically better here and I mean drastically. My wife has poor vision to the point she couldn't read this without squinting and she noticed the difference immediately. I'm NOT saying the ps3 is a bad blu ray player but it's definitely NOT on the high end. It was never designed for 3d to start and it's like tuning up a honda civic you can only get so much handling and quality out of it but it would Never be a Lamborghini aventador.
One more thing is that expensive doesn't always mean better. Just cause you might spend 5000 on a tv doesn't means it's better than another tv by another manufacturer that someone paid 2800. Don't listen to hype either go to a major supplier like bestbuy and go to there magnolia room and look in a place like that or your local electronics supplier and walk into there top end room and actually look at what your buying and do your self a HUGE FAVOR AND BRING A BLURAY YOU HAVE From HOME SO YOU HAVE A BENCHMARK. If they won't let you see it then maybe your in the wrong type of store.

I HOPE that this helps those looking into the mArket at blu ray players and maybe thinking even of the new ps4. I would truly believe that the new platform will play with better quality due to the hardware is much better and more accurate. But they are not releasing it with 3d ability and that means some updates before that happens. Remember it's still not designed to play blu ray 1st its a gaming console first and a blu ray player 2nd.

PS one last thing is plasma TVs don't have burn in issues anymore and they don't burn out anymore.

Too much for me too read.

[Jpierro79]

Originally Posted by 42041

It should not be any different.
Barring microscopic differences due to chroma resampling algorithms and all that stuff, it either decodes accurately or it doesn't.

It's not that simple yes it's decoded but it's not a computer program your still dealing with other factors. What your saying is like saying a mp3 song on a 100 receiver can put out the sound quality of a 1000 receiver. It doesn't work that way. Every blu ray player does NOT decode exactly the same and for that very reason they can and will have different picture quality. If they were exactly the same they would all carry the exact same software. Decoding a blu ray has a particular format agreed BUT and that's a big but not all TVs and or blu ray players put out the same exact information. Hence different color formats refresh rates and shading and so on. Each company has there own software for color shading frame transition formats and many other processes. YES THE BASIC INFORMATION ON THE DISK IS THE SAME BUT AFTER ITS DECODED OFF THE DISC, THE SOFTWARE OF THE INDIVIDUAL PRODUCT TAKES OVER. If every blu ray was truly the same there would be no such thing as better quality blu ray. Your treating a blu ray like it's just a hard drive but it's soo much more than that. Please PEOPLE not all blu rays are the same. You can have two identical computers but with different software and they will never perform the same or you can have two computers with the same software but different hardware and even almost identical specs but the one with better hardware functions better.

NOW ABOUT HDMI CABLES don't waste your money on these. It's a digital signal it either makes it there or not. BUT I don't recommend the cheapest either but that's for longevity. Don't go burning money on HDMI cables it will NOT improve the picture

[Derb]

Gonna skip hands on BD review of PS4 until more system updates arrive.

The drive itself could get a firmware. I remember older BD players receiving these types of updates. Or was that HD-DvD?

I bet my PQ on Oppo 103 is better anyway. The audio sure is.

[42041]

Originally Posted by Jpierro79

It's not that simple yes it's decoded but it's not a computer program your still dealing with other factors.

Actually, that's exactly what it is (or the hardware decoder equivalent).

What your saying is like saying a mp3 song on a 100 receiver can put out the sound quality of a 1000 receiver. It doesn't work that way. Every blu ray player does NOT decode exactly the same and for that very reason they can and will have different picture quality. If they were exactly the same they would all carry the exact same software. Decoding a blu ray has a particular format agreed BUT and that's a big but not all TVs and or blu ray players put out the same exact information. Hence different color formats refresh rates and shading and so on. Each company has there own software for color shading frame transition formats and many other processes. YES THE BASIC INFORMATION ON THE DISK IS THE SAME BUT AFTER ITS DECODED OFF THE DISC, THE SOFTWARE OF THE INDIVIDUAL PRODUCT TAKES OVER. If every blu ray was truly the same there would be no such thing as better quality blu ray. Your treating a blu ray like it's just a hard drive but it's soo much more than that. Please PEOPLE not all blu rays are the same.

That's not true at all.
The compressed stream is decoded according to the codec specification. The ouput is either accurate, or it isn't. Some minor variability may be incurred when the raw decoder output is converted to RGB (likely done by your TV anyway), but that's pixel-peeping stuff. Some players might do various image enhancement, but if that stuff is disabled (and it should be), there should be no difference in the (native HD) picture quality of any half-decent blu-ray player. This isn't laserdisc. Of course, that's only true for native HD content, for things like upscaling SD or deinterlacing, there's no one way to do that, different players could have much different algorithms.

You can have two identical computers but with different software and they will never perform the same or you can have two computers with the same software but different hardware and even almost identical specs but the one with better hardware functions better

Then you're doing something wrong.

[pitchman]

Originally Posted by Derb

Gonna skip hands on BD review of PS4 until more system updates arrive.

The drive itself could get a firmware. I remember older BD players receiving these types of updates. Or was that HD-DvD?

I bet my PQ on Oppo 103 is better anyway. The audio sure is.

As someone who also has an Oppo 103 (plus a PS3 and a PS4), I concur. To me, the Oppo PQ and audio quality is superior. That said, the PS3 and PS4 are extremely versatile Blu-ray players and will satisfy the needs of most non audio and non videophile enthusiasts just fine.

I did a couple of brief A-B comparisons between the PS3 and the PS4 over the weekend, but I did not see any obvious difference in picture quality. I won't say that both players are identical since I didn't do a critical comparison, but to the naked eye, they are close enough that whatever differences there may be, I didn't detect them.

On the audio front, there is at least one documented difference between the PS3 and the PS4, but I am not presently set up to personally confirm. According to a November 15th news release from DTS, the PS4 is the first Blu-ray player to get their new DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 decoder. Although I have a Denon-AVR 3313CI, I never bothered going the 7.1 route with it, so I can't say for sure how much of a difference the new decoder will make.

The only other thing worth mentioning from my personal comparison is that the PS3 seems to load Blu-ray movies noticeably faster than the PS4. Based on the number of tweaks and performance improvements Sony made with firmware updates on the PS3 over the years, I'm fairly sure faster loading times will come to the PS4 over time.

[Derb]

Originally Posted by pitchman

On the audio front, there is at least one documented difference between the PS3 and the PS4, but I am not presently set up to personally confirm. According to a November 15th news release from DTS, the PS4 is the first Blu-ray player to get their new DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 decoder. Although I have a Denon-AVR 3313CI, I never bothered going the 7.1 route with it, so I can't say for sure how much of a difference the new decoder will make.

It really depends on how well the compression from 7.1 to 5.1 channel set-up is. Even if possible with the new decoder, I'm not sure. Should be.

Thanks for console comparisons.

[storythecorgi]

I've been searching all day for an answer to this but no one seems to know of a solution. When I play a Blu-ray (I've testes 4 titles), the audio comes out a bit too soon which leads the lip syncing to be off. It's not by much, maybe a half second but it's enough to bother me. I have tried messing around with the settings on my Onkyo 7.1 sound system as well as the lip sync tool on my TV, but those actually make it worse (video becomes extremely delayed after the sound comes through).

I have the PS4 hooked up with a high speed HDMI that feeds through my home theater system. I have the settings set as PCM on the PS4 (for some reason, Dolby and DTS Bitstream sounded worse). I didn't have this issue with the PS3 at all ... everything was flawless. In fact, I'm about to hook the PS3 back up as my primary Blu-ray player until Sony gets their act together and starts sending out firmware updates.

I know others are having the same problem but like I said, no one has found a solution to the problem. So I don't believe it has anything to do with my home theater system or my TV settings.

Can anyone help?

[sinister184]

These types of problems usually just call for some trial and error. In my experience with lip sync issues, the sound is a little behind the video and was the result of some post processing. Try different cables settings, etc.

[storythecorgi]

Thanks for replying

But I've tried everything imaginable on my end and nothing quite matches up perfectly. However just for the thrill of it, I tried seeing if the same thing happened to a DVD and strangely it had no issue.

[sinister184]

Originally Posted by storythecorgi

Thanks for replying

But I've tried everything imaginable on my end and nothing quite matches up perfectly. However just for the thrill of it, I tried seeing if the same thing happened to a DVD and strangely it had no issue.

You mean a DVD in the PS4?

[AmishParadise]

Originally Posted by storythecorgi

Thanks for replying

But I've tried everything imaginable on my end and nothing quite matches up perfectly. However just for the thrill of it, I tried seeing if the same thing happened to a DVD and strangely it had no issue.

My PS3 serves as my dedicated stand-alone Blu-ray player per Netflix and Redbox rentals. Spend just as much time watching Blu-ray's on my PS3 as I do playing games. Have no plans to purchase my first PS4 until the general consensus online is that the PS4 is finally on par with the PS3 as a Blu-ray player. This is a major selling point for me. That being said, I wouldn't waste your time attempting to compensate for the PS4's failings by messing with your home theater receiver settings and so forth. Clearly the PS4's Blu-ray playback capability is not ready for primetime based on the various forum posts I've read online here and elsewhere. The PS4 didn't even ship with the ability to play Blu-ray's out the box. Considering this it's not so surprising that the day one system update has fallen short with respects to the PS4 and Blu-ray playback.

[rhonnie.macrae]

Originally Posted by AmishParadise

My PS3 serves as my dedicated stand-alone Blu-ray player per Netflix and Redbox rentals. Spend just as much time watching Blu-ray's on my PS3 as I do playing games. Have no plans to purchase my first PS4 until the general consensus online is that the PS4 is finally on par with the PS3 as a Blu-ray player. This is a major selling point for me. That being said, I wouldn't waste your time attempting to compensate for the PS4's failings by messing with your home theater receiver settings and so forth. Clearly the PS4's Blu-ray playback capability is not ready for primetime based on the various forum posts I've read online here and elsewhere. The PS4 didn't even ship with the ability to play Blu-ray's out the box. Considering this it's not so surprising that the day one system update has fallen short with respects to the PS4 and Blu-ray playback.

It seems to me that the ps4 is lacking in multimedia capabilities in general (after spending the past few days with it). Im glad I kept my ps3 around now honestly! lol.

[jdw89]

I have absolutely no issues on my end, sounds like your HT equipment.

[storythecorgi]

Originally Posted by sinister184

You mean a DVD in the PS4?

Yes. Blu-rays have issues with audio and video syncing up properly while playing on my PS4, but DVDs work just fine.

[storythecorgi]

Originally Posted by AmishParadise

My PS3 serves as my dedicated stand-alone Blu-ray player per Netflix and Redbox rentals. Spend just as much time watching Blu-ray's on my PS3 as I do playing games. Have no plans to purchase my first PS4 until the general consensus online is that the PS4 is finally on par with the PS3 as a Blu-ray player. This is a major selling point for me. That being said, I wouldn't waste your time attempting to compensate for the PS4's failings by messing with your home theater receiver settings and so forth. Clearly the PS4's Blu-ray playback capability is not ready for primetime based on the various forum posts I've read online here and elsewhere. The PS4 didn't even ship with the ability to play Blu-ray's out the box. Considering this it's not so surprising that the day one system update has fallen short with respects to the PS4 and Blu-ray playback.

Yes, I used my PS3 as a primary Blu-ray player as well (70% Blu-ray, 30% gameplay). It's a shame that the PS4 took a step back. It's not even equipped to play 3D Blu-rays as of yet. So yeah, I'll be hooking my PS3 back up later today and I'll just use the PS4 for playing a couple launch title games.

Good thing I decided to not sell my PS3 just yet.

[Wingman1977]

Which titles are the ones you are experiencing the issue with?

[Far Out]

By now we know that PS4 shipped without blu-ray movie support, and that a day one download was required to enable basic 2D movie support.

What's interesting is the logic behind that.

What we do know is that the content and functionality of the initial release software would have been considered and tested in excruciating detail.

So the decision to include or exclude this feature was highly deliberate.

I'm curious why they made that decision.

[ack_bak]

Originally Posted by Far Out

By now we know that PS4 shipped without blu-ray movie support, and that a day one download was required to enable basic 2D movie support.

What's interesting is the logic behind that.

What we do know is that the content and functionality of the initial release software would have been considered and tested in excruciating detail.

So the decision to include or exclude this feature was highly deliberate.

I'm curious why they made that decision.

You are overanalyzing this. Sony rushed the PS4 out to get it out in time for the key holiday shopping season. They will be adding functionality via update as they go. For example they have confirmed that MP3 support and file sharing is coming. They just did not have it ready before the consoles shipped to retailers. I bet most of these retailers had the consoles for weeks.

[Derb]

Regional Lock is kinda important in the home entertainment industry. Just because you have a working BD player doesn't give you the right to sell region free.

Can't blame them considering how many countries got supported.