Blu-ray and PS3: The Truth
We dispel the most common rumors about the system, including its copy-protection scheme and whether your HDTV is ready or not.
by Chris Roper
IGN.com

April 25, 2006 - These are rather confusing times in the world of home theater and even next-generation gaming. With the move to new high-definition optical disc formats in the way of HD-DVD and Blu-ray, hardware makers and studios are utilizing some rather stringent anti-piracy means in order to prevent movies from being copied, especially in HD. The side effect is that these means will prevent some users from being able to take full advantage of the formats, and the details behind all of this is causing quite a bit of confusion.



Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray employ an AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy protection scheme that, to keep things short and (somewhat) simple, will down-scale HD content to a non-HD resolution if it isn't displayed over an HDCP-compliant HDMI connection. In other words, hooking up either of these formats via component connections won't cut it for true HD playback, at least in the future. Luckily, studios behind both formats have said that they won't ship their first batches of movies (possibly for a few years) with the scheme enabled to give users time to shift over to HDMI-enabled televisions, but this still leaves many questions in the world of gaming, specifically with regards to the PlayStation 3.

The main concern is whether or not gamers will be able to play PlayStation 3 titles in high-definition if they're "only" using component cables. Luckily, Blu-ray's copy protection scheme should have no impact on gaming whatsoever and PS3 gamers will be able to enjoy their next-gen systems at HD resolutions with any sort of HD-capable connection. This means HDMI, VGA, DVI and component connections would all work in HD, assuming these connections are all supported by the PS3's "Multi AV-out" port. Composite and S-Video would only work in 480i, of course.

The technical reason for this is that Blu-ray's AACS system is both hardware and software based, and any protected software will need to contain an Image Constraint Token (ICT) to essentially turn on the protection scheme. In other words, this is optional and whoever authors the media has the option of utilizing the AACS scheme or not. It's very much like how some VHS tapes have Macrovision and some don't.



In practice, it wouldn't make any sense to copy-protect the image output of a videogame. With movies, this makes obvious sense as the movie is wholly visual - that's its purpose and only existence (well, plus audio, of course). With gaming, the visuals only work to parlay the experience of interaction, which is what publishers are selling. If people stopped buying games and just started downloading 12-hour video walkthroughs, this might be a problem, but we don't foresee that happening, well, ever. It's possible that a company like Square may want to apply something of this sort to its cutscenes at some point in the future, being as so much money and production time goes into the making of these cinematics, but even this is rather unlikely.



More importantly in Sony's long-term plans as an electronics giant, however, is Blu-ray's role in movies. While Blu-ray will likely do fairly well on its own (once the prices come down to more consumer-friendly levels, anyway), Sony is using the PlayStation 3 to act as something of a Trojan Horse to get players into people's homes. If the PS3 is roughly as successful as Sony's past consoles, that would mean somewhere around 100 million Blu-ray players in homes all over the world in around five years or so, not counting standalone players.

Being as Sony pioneered the technology, should Blu-ray win out over HD-DVD and supplant DVD as the standard in home video, the company stands to make a fortune raking in a small percentage for every Blu-ray disc sold, similar to how it currently takes a licensing cut for every PlayStation game sold.



Now, one other question that people have is whether or not the PlayStation 3, and all other Blu-ray players for that matter, will be able to play their current DVDs and CDs. Yes, it will. In fact, just about the only media type that the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray drive won't be able to read is HD-DVD. There's no word yet from Sony on whether the system will up-scale DVDs to HD resolutions, though we'd be a bit surprised if it didn't. Although, the Xbox 360 doesn't so...

That should wrap up most of the pending questions that people seem to have about the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray capabilities and any adverse connectivity effects its copy-protection scheme may bring with it. Hopefully Sony will announce the last few tiny details at its press conference at this year's E3, like the exact drive speed, DVD up-scaling and so forth. But regardless, rest assured that you won't have any problems playing games in high-definition on your current display.