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Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

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Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#151

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Seems to me that both 8k and ray tracing capabilities fall into the category of better to be prepared than not, because upgrading consoles beyond the HDD isn't really much of a thing – you just replace the whole thing. Maybe they could do a PS5 Pro thing much like they did with PS4, but why not just include the hardware right off the bat if it's available and fits within the cost parameters?

As a very happy PS4 Pro customer, I'm definitely also in the optimistic camp. Heck, I don't even care all that much for the hardware, but I absolutely loved Horizon Zero Dawn and given its a PS exclusive I'll buy the PS5 just because of the next HZD installment.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#152

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Regarding 8K... even though 4K TVs are readily available, my guess is most of those TVs don't display 4K content. Netflix will often give you 720p. Game consoles have a difficult time simply pushing 4K pixels down the pipeline. Some games have taken to something akin to interlacing, except with the pixels divided in a checkerboard pattern.

Netflix is actually probably the most common source of 4k home video for most people. Nearly all of the Netflix original content is 4k, increasingly in Dolby Vision. Unfortunately (and bizarrely, to me), you do have to buy the most expensive monthly plan to have access to the 4k content. I don't understand why they would choose to make video quality the main object of price discrimination (it seems like associating Netflix with great video quality would be extremely advantageous to them), but hey, it worked for them to get the extra bucks from me.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#153

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

I imagine it's easier to sell higher resolution over higher framerates.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#154

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

8k piped into a next gen VR headset would be epic.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#155
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 8K... even though 4K TVs are readily available, my guess is most of those TVs don't display 4K content. Netflix will often give you 720p. Game consoles have a difficult time simply pushing 4K pixels down the pipeline. Some games have taken to something akin to interlacing, except with the pixels divided in a checkerboard pattern.

Netflix is actually probably the most common source of 4k home video for most people. Nearly all of the Netflix original content is 4k, increasingly in Dolby Vision. Unfortunately (and bizarrely, to me), you do have to buy the most expensive monthly plan to have access to the 4k content. I don't understand why they would choose to make video quality the main object of price discrimination (it seems like associating N…

Doesn't 4k content both cost them more to deliver and generally go to a demo that is more price insensitive? Seems like an obvious play.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resolution isn't an indication of image quality. Just like megapixel chasing in photography. Sure it's 4k, but it's heavily compressed, just like the terrible audio quality you get still to this day. They aren't streaming you 100GB.

It’s been a long time since I took a class on compression, but I wonder if 4K has worse image quality than 1080P at the same bitrate. Anyone know?

It depends on how restrictive the bitrate was to begin with. Higher bitrates mean there's more data to move from mini-improvements over to filling in extra resolution. Lower bitrates mean you're already squeezing every drop out and the codec will collapse when asked to handle more pixels.

Here's a couple charts: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0095/4332/files/optimal_bi... https://di2vvsisz3gt1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018...

It's possible to design a codec to handle that kind of detail scaling internally, but I don't think it's been a big priority.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#157
post #14

A lot of the things they revealed about the Ps5 don't really "wow" me. The system better be backwards-compatible, consoles these days are pretty much more custom PCs, there shouldn't be a problem with backwards-compatibility. Switching to SSD is also a no-brainer, getting better load times as a result of using better hardware isn't that big of an accomplishment, and you could get that performance increase even with a…

What's the appeal of 8K? Is the support just there for some future VR plans? I already have my couch about as close to my 55" 4K TV as is reasonable, and can barely tell the difference between 1080p and 4K video. If I had an absurdly large TV (70"+) and didn't move my couch back yeah, 4K'd be a clear improvement. But 8K? Why?

Probably for VR, Blu-Ray, and to sell more Sony TVs

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#158

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Raytracing is a good thing, not so much because of the better graphics, but because it enables produce nice graphics with less sophisticated engines and less artist input. A lot of the lighting etc. is currently baked into textures, hard coded, hand-optimized. This takes a lot of time. With raytracing, a lot of this comes "for free", so smaller / indie dev teams can produce games with AAA level graphics.

At the high cost of performance. As a consumer I am not really concerned with how easy it is to develop for. I'd rather see high frame rates than bleeding edge graphics. It's a good technology, but if we can't even manage 60 FPS minimum in 2020 I will be highly disappointed.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you run 4K video through things like Handbrake? They've been proven to seriously reduce the amount of space (and, therefore, bandwidth) that video files need, and considering that 4K videos have about three times the resolution [1] they have a lot of space to gain from it. I would guess that there are appliances that can run some flavor of compression in real-time to get 4K to stream well. Yes, it will take more…

precompressed content at 4K h.265 is pretty damned good at even relatively high compression. I also prefer the degredation method h.265 uses over h.264. For 720p-1080p it can actually go both ways, the higher the resolution the better h.265 is as the compression algo. However, that means nothing for live streaming as generally speaking "live stream" compression really tends to suck a lot. And as to the above, a lot o…

It's a fun comparison there, because 1080p to 4K demands a doubling of bandwidth, and h.264 to h.265 lets you cut bandwidth in half. So you get all that extra quality for free.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#160

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

PS5 will support 8K just like PS3 supported 1080p: it was there but almost no one used it. Nearly every game opted for 720p instead. It's a way to future-proof the generation, allowing for a future enhanced version of the console.
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