Audio Video News

Last night I went to a rock concert and a product launch broke out. But seriously folks, as you're all probably aware Sony's long awaited PlayStation3 game console officially went on sale at midnight last night around the country. I attended the San Francisco launch at the Sony Metreon, where fans, er consumers, were camped out and lined up around the building and down the street for the privilege of buying the consoles as they went on sale at the stroke of midnight.

With enclaves of anxious gamers and entrepreneurs camped out waiting to buy the consoles at $600 a pop, the PS3 intro saw SF's 4th street blocked off in front of the Metreon at about 7:30pm. The star of the event was arriving, which was indeed "like no other." A police escort of cars and motorcycles with sirens blaring cleared the way for an 18-wheeler that parked outside Metreon with the crowd cheering its arrival.

One of Sony's head honchos was on hand to pull a pair of PS3s out of the nondescript brown boxes in the truck and ceremoniously make his way into the Sony store with the news cameras rolling. Sony store employees with red and black PlayStation3 shirts then rushed out with massive hand trucks to begin loading the boxes of condoles and games into the store with crowd cheering them on lustfully. The street remained closed as alt. rockers Angels and Airwaves pounded through a 90-minute set that seemed to match the frenetics of the PS3 game demos that members of the press were treated to as the event wound down and the countdown to midnight rolled on.

Of course, Sony's initial US shipment of 400,000 units was probably spoken for by 12:01am last night. But even with an additional 1,000,000 units expected in the US by year's end, reports are already streaming in that units bought by speculators are selling on Ebay for thousands of dollars, even though the top-end PS3 retails for $600. Supply and demand baby, the American way.

The PS3 demos were very impressive, and its scope of operations obviously go far beyond gaming. Although the Sony folks in attendance were mostly from the gaming side, I did learn some things that will interest home theater and music enthusiasts considering the PS3 as a cross-platform device.

The unit does indeed have the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD, and is HDMI version 1.3 equipped, which means that when AVRs and Pre-Pros with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoders are available this unit can transmit those signals digitally in their native format. The unit also has a new DTS logo on it, but according to DTS the PS3 doesn't include full decoding capability for DTS-HD or DTS-HD Master Audio. A DTS rep did tell me that because PS3 is an open achitecture that a future software update to accommodate the new codecs is a possibility.

While the PS3 does support and playback SACD, there are no standard analog outputs from PS3. There is "AV multi out" that has analog audio and video capability, but this not a standard connection. It requires a "breakout" cable at the PS3 end, and at the other end the only diagrams Sony showed revealed two-channel RCAs at the. I'm not sure if this means that SACD playback is limited to two-channel, and again, I'm waiting to hear from Sony on this. HDMI 1.3 does support SACD transmission, but it's not known if the PS3 supports this or if any AVRs or pre/pros in the market currently support SACD via HDMI.

Also, Sony reps did nail down another question for us regarding the video output, which at the top end is 1080p/60 not 1080p/24. This is just a little mysterious as Sony's most current displays are maximized for 1080p/24, which is the native format of the movies so far released on Blu-ray Disc. Sony's standalone BDP-S1 BD player will output 1080p/24, and perhaps that's at least some of the answer right there.

Look for UAV to offer a full report on PS3's capabilities as a Blu-ray Disc player as soon as Sony can cut loose a demo unit for us. As curious as we are, camping out wasn't an option and neither is paying thousands on Ebay, so we'll have to wait!