Ken Kutaragi Promises AV-centric PS3

Music and movies first, gaming second?

Posted by Staff
Ken Kutaragi Promises AV-centric PS3
A brand new PS3? Already? One that doesn’t major on games? Seriously? Well, it’s certainly serious in the mind of the ‘father of the PlayStation’.

Sony’s recent corporate reshuffle in which Ken ‘father of PlayStation’ Kutaragi was carefully moved upstairs (sidelined), seems to have done little to dampen his enthusiasm for making wildly speculative remarks to journalists.

Ken’s latest outing is an interview conducted by Japan's Impress, in which he has gone on record with a "promise" for what he's calling an AV-centric PS3. Ken’s claim is that the audio and video capabilities of the machine are going to be more important than the gaming functionality.

On further reading though it seems that Kutaragi is not talking about your bog-standard off-the-shelf 60GB PS3 model (off-the-shelf if you are ‘Mercan or Japanese, you understand) but a ‘future’ device built around the Cell-processor platform, which would be (even) more expensive than the current gaming-focused console.

Ken tells Impress that his uber-box would be, "a standard AV component sized box with a more powerful power supply unit, anti-shake insulator, twice the main memory, and 2x HDMI to split sound and video output."

Gah! Just as we thought the future was almost here, Ken goes and spoils it all by taking it all away again. Having spent a little time browsing the PS3's hugely impressive multimedia functions, SPOnG finds it genuinely hard to see how the company could improve the offering in the near future.

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Comments

Dreadknux 20 Dec 2006 12:04
1/15
It's a brilliant idea! I mean, just look at how successful the PSX was!

... oops.
vault 13 20 Dec 2006 12:32
2/15
Svend Joscelyne wrote:
It's a brilliant idea! I mean, just look at how successful the PSX was!

... oops.


PSX? Oh yeah! You mean what the PS1 was called before the PS2 came out. I know what you mean, I think they may have even called it PSX too. But to be fair, they never really gave it a big push and it also was never released in America or Europe.
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crs117 20 Dec 2006 13:53
3/15
The best thing about this new AV centric ps3 is that all of your entertainment will fore go the 3d of most of todays standard gen systems, it will even fore go the 4d of the ps3 and will actually present all entertainment in full featured 5d. Thats right folks...the future is here with 5d from sony.
SCiARA 20 Dec 2006 14:21
4/15
crs117 wrote:
The best thing about this new AV centric ps3 is that all of your entertainment will fore go the 3d of most of todays standard gen systems, it will even fore go the 4d of the ps3 and will actually present all entertainment in full featured 5d. Thats right folks...the future is here with 5d from sony.


Very good!

But me not being uber-savvy I don’t get why you would need separate hdmi for sound and vision?

How many sets are going to have more than 2 hdmi slots??
Dreadknux 20 Dec 2006 14:26
5/15
vault 13 wrote:
PSX? Oh yeah! You mean what the PS1 was called before the PS2 came out. I know what you mean, I think they may have even called it PSX too. But to be fair, they never really gave it a big push and it also was never released in America or Europe.


Almost. It's a bit confusing, because PSX was the codename for the PS1... And is also the name of a PS2/TV Set Top Box hybrid by Sony that was released sometime after the PS2. I was referring to the latter, in a moment of sarcasm. :-)

The PSX was a white slab of concrete (well it looked like one) and as well as being a functional PS2 it had a hard drive to record TV shows and stuff. It all sounds very similar to Sony's ideas for rejigging the PS3 architecture to accommodate TV/Home Movie viewers.

It will fail. :F
king skins 20 Dec 2006 15:08
6/15
SCiARA wrote:
How many sets are going to have more than 2 hdmi slots??


You wouldn't. One of the things about HDMI is that it does both sound and video, so you wouldn't need two.

Unless Sony are about to try and enforce the copy protection mechanisms built into HDMI into audio leads, but I can't see anyone going for this since we already have phono, digital coaxial and optical cables to carry sound separately that all hi-fi equipment is already using.
SCiARA 20 Dec 2006 15:09
7/15
or maybe one for the TV and one for an amp/surround sound?
tyrion 20 Dec 2006 15:24
8/15
SCiARA wrote:
or maybe one for the TV and one for an amp/surround sound?

That's what I thought, but I bet more people will have amps that take optical digital connections, so it's not really that useful to have 2 HDMI connectors.
LUPOS 20 Dec 2006 16:22
9/15
tyrion wrote:
so it's not really that useful to have 2 HDMI connectors.


Why is sony so hung up on Dual HDMI? They originaly planned for the 60gig PS3 to have 2. Remeber when everyoen thought they woudl be playign 7 (WTF?) player FPS' on Dual Plasmas with a score screen takign up the 8th spot or some s**t? Oy veh!

By the by, does the PS3 have tivo liek capabilities? I remeber long ago that being mentioned as an intended featre. Was rather dissapointed when the 360 didnt end up witht he capability.
___________
tyrion 20 Dec 2006 16:46
10/15
LUPOS wrote:
By the by, does the PS3 have tivo liek capabilities? I remeber long ago that being mentioned as an intended featre. Was rather dissapointed when the 360 didnt end up witht he capability.

Nope, not as standard, but with a driver for a USB capture system, it could have the functionality added quite quickly as long as there was an EPG information source.
LUPOS 20 Dec 2006 16:57
11/15
tyrion wrote:
Nope, not as standard, but with a driver for a USB capture system, it could have the functionality added quite quickly as long as there was an EPG information source.


Thanks, didn't think so. I suppose the 360 could also have a capture device added on. Though the amount of peripherals for the thing is already gettign a bit out of hand. Camera, HD-DVD (come on Santa!), quick charge kit on my table, wifi adapter, its getting ugly behind my tv.
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OptimusP 20 Dec 2006 19:32
12/15
Can't sony just fire thise guy? Let's spend even more money on useless crap that no one will buy!!! woohoo!!
vault 13 21 Dec 2006 05:59
13/15
LUPOS wrote:
...HD-DVD (come on Santa!)...

Are you (the SPOnG populace on the whole) actually telling me (the King of the Universe) you're going to buy into one of two ultimately failing technology? My money's on Blu-Ray, but no one knows. And buy all these awesome looking HD movies to end up with what? A bunch of useless discs for a useless format (if it goes that way). My thing is this: If your gonna adopt early and enjoy the nice picture quality, fine, just be prepared to be a guinea pig.

P.S. Not to mention the current players (the 360 addon excluded because I haven't seen it on a constant run) freeze (HD and BD), ALOT! The movies are $5-10 more. The boxes are huge. The boxes are expensive, $500-1000. The movies take a while to load, noticably so. And you've got a year ot two tops if you buy the failing format. No thank you sir, I'll pass.
SCiARA 21 Dec 2006 09:04
14/15
vault 13 wrote:
LUPOS wrote:
...HD-DVD (come on Santa!)...

Are you (the SPOnG populace on the whole) actually telling me (the King of the Universe) you're going to buy into one of two ultimately failing technology? My money's on Blu-Ray, but no one knows. And buy all these awesome looking HD movies to end up with what? A bunch of useless discs for a useless format (if it goes that way). My thing is this: If your gonna adopt early and enjoy the nice picture quality, fine, just be prepared to be a guinea pig.

P.S. Not to mention the current players (the 360 addon excluded because I haven't seen it on a constant run) freeze (HD and BD), ALOT! The movies are $5-10 more. The boxes are huge. The boxes are expensive, $500-1000. The movies take a while to load, noticably so. And you've got a year ot two tops if you buy the failing format. No thank you sir, I'll pass.


Well, my 360 hd-dvd drive is nothing like you mentioned above (I've not heard of any freezing problems with general players either). Its small quiet and quicker than a regular dvd player to start a film, no freezing so far, prices are on par with new dvd's if you import from places like movietyme, region free out the box and for £130.00 its an absolute bargain. Give it a couple of years and we'll see players that are able to play both formats so if one does go under it’s not a problem.

My money is on HD-DVD winning.
tyrion 21 Dec 2006 09:45
15/15
vault 13 wrote:
P.S. Not to mention the current players (the 360 addon excluded because I haven't seen it on a constant run) freeze (HD and BD), ALOT! The movies are $5-10 more. The boxes are huge. The boxes are expensive, $500-1000. The movies take a while to load, noticably so. And you've got a year ot two tops if you buy the failing format. No thank you sir, I'll pass.

Well, we have an HD-DVD drive at SPOnG and will hopefully have a PS3 before too long. We'll be able to see how they perform for pure movie playing.

From what I've seen of others reviewing the systems, they both stack up well against the dedicated movie players.
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