Next firmware update to improve music playback -- but how?

by Andrew Yoon { Oct 22nd 2007 at 8:00PM }

Brier Dudley from The Seattle Times is loving the PS3. Not as a games machine, but as an affordable media center. At $399, the upcoming 40GB PS3 will be one of the most affordable and most advanced Blu-ray players around. With its ability to play music, showcase photos, display movies, and more, the PS3 has a great chance of targeting the media savvy with its newer, cheaper model.

Sony will continue to expand upon the media functions of the PS3. According to the report, "within a month, a software upgrade will improve the PS3's interface for music stored and played through the system." However, we don't have any further specifics. Patrick Seybold from SCEA emphasizes that "we haven't made any specific announcements on upcoming firmware." Could enhanced music be a part of the now-mystical 2.0 firmware update?

It will be interesting to see what Sony plans to offer the media hungry in America. While Europe gets PVR capabilities, America has been left out. But, it appears that something will be in the works soon. "Some of that same functionality are things that we're working on here," Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, told the newspaper.

[Via Joystiq]

Tags: dvr, firmware, pvr

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

OTAM @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:15PM

Every PS3 comes with a hard drive so I can't figure out how such a basic feature like this was left out.

Then again,it's still painfully frustrating just to get people i'm friends with into a game of Warhawk. Took me like 25 minutes last time to where I didnt even want to play at that point.

Spoon!! @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:26PM

If they really want to sell it as a media center, they need to include divx, xvid, and matroska file support. Or just give us access to 2D acceleration in Linux.

phattie @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:30PM

They can start by having an actual music player instead of what they have now which is barebones... it should be a self contained application like the browser, but, you should be able to put it in the background so you can do other stuff like look at pictures and browse.

Also, they will most likely add an resampling feature for audio tracks up to 192khz .. just like video can be improved with upscaling, audio can be improved as well.

Darren @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:44PM

whatever they do, there should be some sort of search function. even though i'm streaming media to my ps3 through tversity, the size of my music library (24000+ files) makes browsing through the ps3 interface impractical. I tend to create playlists and play music through those instead. a search function would be the tits.

ninxf @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:46PM

@3 You can currently play music in the background while looking at photos. While the song is playing, press the PS button (I think) and it will back you out to the XMB bar while the song continues to play.

ekbigpimping @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:47PM

I want mp3 to be playable during gameplay thats all I want dam is it too much to ask for

Justin @ Oct 22nd 2007 9:18PM

@ phattie...yes, like number 5 said.

go to your music, start playing it, and just hit the PS button (on the controller) and it brings up the XMB so you can do anything else (ie. web browser, look @ pics) but it turns off if you play a game or a movie

Hashbrown_Hunter @ Oct 22nd 2007 9:30PM

I think they might change the play screen for music. Make it more complex than it is right now. Maybe add visualizations like the PSP has?

Andy @ Oct 22nd 2007 10:02PM

One thing I want is to actually choose the visualization. If you play and song and turn on visualization for that song you only get that style of vis. Even if you enable and disable it.

Hint: You can play music while browsing the web, for boring sites like PS3fanboy it makes it much more enjoyable(just kidding)

phattie @ Oct 22nd 2007 10:40PM

Hmmmm... apparently you can have music in the background .. lol thnx. OK.. now, how about LPCM support as well.

navsimpson @ Oct 22nd 2007 10:42PM

I think I prefer the PS3's method of playing music vs. the 360. The 360's interface is very slick, but playing music can be a pain. The PS3 approach is, so far, the better of the two.

But as others have said, some improvements would be great. One thing that I would really encourage is lossless audio support. Sony Media Manager Pro for the PSP just added FLAC support, so... maybe? Anyway, it's good to know that some fun stuff is on the way.

meateebon @ Oct 22nd 2007 11:32PM

I stream my mp3s from my Vista machine through my PS3, and it would be nice if the PS3 would display the album art instead of just a generic Note icon.

Popfrogs @ Oct 23rd 2007 1:10AM

@12: Windows Media is a poor streaming server. Use something more robust like Nero Media Home and you'll get album art.

TCampbell76 @ Oct 23rd 2007 1:12AM

This is still a 'game' machine right?

carl @ Oct 23rd 2007 1:29AM

How about Playing Music in the background while playing video games? 360 can do it...I would expect the same for the PS3!!!

animekid3515 @ Oct 23rd 2007 1:36AM

@carl: coming to a 2.00 firmware near you!

Tyba @ Oct 23rd 2007 2:03AM

Nero Media Home will display album art?! My music collection is in awesome shape, tagged correctly and everything has album art, but it's set up with iTunes which isn't a DLNA program. Will Nero be able to display my album art immediately or will I have to add images to everything all over again?

tyba @ Oct 23rd 2007 2:06AM

One more thing, I think buffering the next song set to play shouldn't be an unreasonable request... gapless playback FTW!!!

Oh, I also have the occasional "disconnect" from the media server... nothing sever, maybe once every four or five hours of play, but it's still something that shouldn't happen.

matropolis @ Oct 23rd 2007 3:01AM

TCampbell76.......yes, the PS3 is a gaming machine, but it does have several other secondary features as well. When Sony tells us they are trying to improve these features some of us like to discuss how they might go about doing this.

Apollo @ Oct 23rd 2007 2:56AM

Hopefully, they will add DTS-HD Master decoding and SACD DSD bitstreaming as those are the two gaping holes in the audio playback department.

Extinction @ Oct 23rd 2007 3:01AM

"Or just give us access to 2D acceleration in Linux."

We do have that. It's 3D we don't have

Shane @ Oct 23rd 2007 4:13AM

The 'media center' quips from Sony are baseless until such time as they add support for the most popular media formats in existence - DIVX and XVID. Until then, its all noisy marketing spiel if you ask me.

Sure, it has MP3 support, but thats like promoting a particular brand of car because it comes with a steering wheel.

BlackCountryBob @ Oct 23rd 2007 5:20AM

I wanna see internet radio on the PS3, I know you can get it on the net browser but I want a separate module on the XMB music section that can get all the stations, a pretty easy thing to do I would think and would be very unique among the consoles, its certainly something the 360 and Wii don't do.

Redspear @ Oct 23rd 2007 6:22AM

I want lossless music! I need it badly!
And also a better music interface for large music and photo library!

Jay @ Oct 23rd 2007 6:49AM

I have music on a Memory Stick using Disc2Phone. When I plug the stick into the PS3 and listen to the tracks the sound quality is worse than you got on an old magnetic tape!!

And yes, a proper player would be nice.

reakt @ Oct 23rd 2007 7:45AM

If only the xmb included an itunes interface!

Nick Gray @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:17AM

Maybe improved music playback means a tweaking of the interface to make music a bit easier to find.

http://htcsource.com

PJ @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:10AM

Is the image of the tweaked XMB above actually a (future) reality or just artistic license?

"...a software upgrade will improve the PS3's interface for music stored and played through the system..."

With over 120GB of music saved, im with #4, a search feature would be great!

I want to be able to use the wireless keyboard i've got plugged into my ps3 to press "M" and be whisked magicaly to mary poppins soundtrack instead of waiting for the end of time for the PS3 to trundle down the seemingly endless list of songs.

A folders feature too perhaps. The ability to effectivly hide away the junk you dont use often or to make sure your family movies dont get mixed up with your... "art collection".

ps, i dont have mary poppins soundtrack... but if someone wants to send me it...no, please dont.

Spoon!! @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:23AM

"We do have that. It's 3D we don't have"

Really? I thought there was still no hardware video acceleration of any kind under linux yet. Which distro provides at least hardware 2D acceleration?

Starfire @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:26AM

I expect a better music player, with more visualisations and more convenience (like sorting by Genre, searching, album art, etc).

I hope for support for more formats, though- FLAC, APE (like Flac, lossless), XVID, DIVX. But I'm not sure Sony are serious about the Media Center thing, as they're still so focused on promoting disk-based playback like Blu-Ray .

MILO @ Oct 29th 2007 10:43AM

THE PLAYSTATION 3 CAN PLAY MUSIC WHILE SURFING THE WEB & START A SLIDE SHOW, YOU CAN ALSO DOWNLOAN VIDEO FROM THE WEB FOR PLAYBACK I HAVE OVER 100 CLIPS FROM THE WEB. YOU CANT EVEN COMPAR THE XBOX 360 TO THE PS3 IT DOSENT EVEN SURF THE NET, NOR DOSE ALL OF ITS MODELS HAVE HD PLAYERS BUILT IN. {SERIOUSLY)

Frank @ Oct 23rd 2007 11:25AM

Thanks for that intelligent post, Milo.

1BadKitty88 @ Jan 29th 2008 1:42AM

I would love it if the PS3 had a better interface with my Ipod. It is nearly impossible to search and it even makes up random titles like "addj" I have no idea what that is! While i am glad I can dump my videos, MP3's etc from my Ipod to my PS3...it is a royal pain in the behind!

steve sway @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:26PM

If SONY are serious about the PS3 being anything more than an expensive game console, I challenge them to include the following much desired features:

1. Xvid and Divx Codec support.
2. Skype (PS3 and PSP).
3. Internet Radio.
4. DV video editing.

We won't be holding our breath of course...

ted @ Oct 24th 2007 1:05AM

Appolo got it right- Full SACD multi channel, and DTS Master lossless. Of course FLAC support. I guess they could go crazy and offer us all sorts of customising options like an equaliser, room eq, custom output to match the number and size of speakers etc.

PrinceFayzon @ Oct 24th 2007 4:31PM

Regarless, is that the new XMB layout? Looks sleeker

Brad @ Jan 17th 2008 3:04AM

So, we have our answer. The rumored inteface "upgrade" for music must be the new "earth" visualization.

Cool visualization, but I has hoping for lossless codec support - i.e. WMA Lossless. At this point I'm even desperate enough to accept ATRAC 3 for kripes sake...