Posted 10/26/09 at 09:14:46 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Netflix announced today that it will be bringing its streaming service to the PS3. Netflix's streaming service will be available to around 9 million PS3 users residing in the US beginning next month. PS3 users will need a Netflix account and an absolutely free BD-Live disc - Blu-ray disc with internet functionality - to access Netflix's extensive content catalog.

PS3 users will have to insert the disc into their console each time they wish to enjoy streaming content from Netflix's library. But this disc-popping ritual should only last until the two companies enable direct access to the service. "As a leading game console and Blu-ray disc player, bringing Netflix to the PS3 system is a real win for both Netflix members and PS3 system owners,"said Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings.

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Posted 10/01/09 at 12:18:54 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Sony will now bundle PSP-compatible Digital Copy movie files with select Blu-ray titles. Both the high definition version and the Digital Copy for the PSP will coexist on a single Blu-ray disc. Sony was shipping Digital Copy files on a separate DVD-ROM disk till now. This announcement may not transport everybody into a state of ecstasy because not everyone possesses the desiderata for making this news worthwhile.

To transfer the Digital Copy file from the Blu-ray disc to a PSP, it is necessary that you also own a PS3. Godzilla and The Ugly Truth have been announced as the first Blu-ray titles to have this feature. In related news, the PSP GO is just hours from its tepidly-to-much-awaited launch.

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Posted 04/22/09 at 07:41:16 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Toshiba had last year chosen its Qosmio range of notebooks to lift the curtain on its SpursEngine chip, which is a co-processor based on the Cell Broadband Engine found in the PS3. SpursEngine-powered Qosmios are capable of some impressive graphical feats like real-time graphics processing and video upscaling (SD to HD).

Toshiba’s new Qosmio laptops, which bear the might of its quad-core SpursEngine chip, will arrive in Japanese stores on Friday with the promise of enhancing internet video. Two previous iterations of the Qosmio used the immense power of the SpursEngine at their disposal to upscale DVD video, but left streaming video untouched.

The SpursEngine co-processor will now be used to beautify video from websites like Youtube, though its corrective effect will only become evident in full screen mode. There is another strange caveat: this feature will only work with Internet Explorer. The new Qosmios include the 18.4-inch G50 ($3,421) and the 15.4-inch FX ($2,119). A U.S release is certainly on the cards but no one has the slightest whiff of exactly when it will occur.

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Posted 03/20/09 at 03:00:00 PM by Paul Lilly

Nvidia has been quite the busy body in the console market as of late. Earlier this week the graphics chip maker announced it had signed a tools and middleware license agreement with Sony to offer its PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) for use on the PlayStation 3 console, and then two days later, made a similar announcement regarding Nintendo's Wii console.

"Nintendo has reshaped the home entertainment and video game market with the success of the Wii console. Adding a PhysX SDK for Wii is key to our cross-platform strategy and integral to the business model for our licensed game developers and publishers,” said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of content and technology at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA PhysX technology, developers can easily author more realistic game environments for the evolving demands of a broad class of Wii gamers."

Three months ago, AMD had painted a gloom-and-doom future for Nvidia's PhysX technology, saying "There is no plan for closed and proprietary standards like PhysX. As we have emphasized, with our support for OpenCL and DX11, close and proprietary standards will die."

AMD wasn't just being a wet blanket, as they weren't the only ones to question to closed standards when it comes to in-game physics. This makes Nvidia's latest partnership with two major console makers a particularly interesting one, which could very well end up seeing more widespread PhysX support trickling over to the PC as a result.

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Posted 01/06/09 at 03:00:00 PM by David Murphy

We're not going to make any comments about your multi-platform setup at home, because it's okay to accept that your PC can live alongside your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or Wii without major squabbling between the systems.  But what do you do when your devices want to interact with each other?  How do you get all of those movies, music albums, and Internet feeds on your PC to show up on your console and television set?

There are a bunch of solutions on the Internet today for streaming media from your PC to your console of choice. But that doesn't mean all of them are good.  In fact, you'll never know whether a given tool works for you unless you spend the requisite half-hour installing it, configuring it for streaming, firing up your console, trying to connect to your PC, et cetera.  It's a process.  But at least allow us to do our part in reducing your streaming nightmare.  We've rounded up a batch of our favorite freeware applications for streaming media from a PC to a console, as well as a handy encoding tool in case you still can't get your huge movies to work just right.

Click the link, press Start, and we're off to World 1-1 of media transcoding!

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Posted 12/31/08 at 06:11:11 PM by Andy Salisbury

It looks like MITM attacks aren’t the only things ripping off SSL certificates these days, it looks like Sony’s PS3 is capable of the act as well!

In a recent study conducted with more than 200 PlayStation 3 consoles, researchers were able to create a secure sockets layer certificate for absolutely any web page. The forged certificates were made through a proof-of-concept attack. This particular attack runs by generating millions of possible certificates, and once a pair that contains a special collision in the MD5 hash is found, a legitimate website certificate is requested from one of the authorities that relies on only MD5 to generate signatures. These certificates have been accepted by every major browser.

“This break is major,” stated Karsten Nohl, cryptography expert and researcher at the University of Virginia. “It definitely is the most wide-scale attack, because anything short of patching all browsers in the world to not accept the certificates, there's nothing you can do to prevent it.”

Still, there’s no stated fix for the issue today. Let’s just hope that since the researchers possess the information on how the attack is conducted, they’ll be able to make one soon.

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Posted 12/26/08 at 04:43:23 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Doubts have been cast on the success of the Blu-ray format ever since it debuted. Initially, the format appeared to be doomed due to a poor adoption rate, thanks mainly to a host of factors, including the PS3’s initial tribulations, popularity of the DVD format, and the steady rise in the popularity of digital downloads.

However, it soon appeared that the tide had turned as PS3’s sales picked up and the rival HD DVD format ran out of steam and met its sorry fate. The latest good news has come in the form of sales data released by research firm Futuresource, which indicates that Blu-ray sales during the ongoing holiday season have been promising.

Futuresource expects 2.5 million Blu-ray players will be sold next year in Europe. But all this good news might just mark the end of the format’s halcyon days. Has the Blu-ray flattered to deceive?

According to Cnet’s Don Reisinger, the Blu-ray will never scale the heights of popularity that the DVD has managed. Like numerous other pundits – bona fide and self-proclaimed – before him, Reisinger is convinced that digital downloads will eventually deliver the Blu-ray to its grave.

Another sinister portent for the Blu-ray format happens to be the grim sales picture of the PS3; strong sales of the console surely could have gone a long way in popularizing the format. I expect Blu-ray to share the same mediocre fortunes as the PS3 during the remainder of its lifetime.

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Posted 11/24/08 at 12:00:00 PM by Will Smith

It’s hard to believe in the iTunes era of blink-and-you-miss-them CD rips, but in the mid-90s, ripping a CD was a time-consuming process, fraught with peril. Ripping a single disc to 128kbps MP3 could take 8 hours on a 200MHz Pentium! Fast forward a decade, with faster hardware and better software and CD ripping is so mainstream your mom does it.

Ripping DVDs and transcoding the video stored within into more efficient formats involves an order of magnitude more scary math than ripping audio CDs. A machine that will rip the latest Miley Cyrus CD in moments could take hours to extract and convert your copy of AVP to an iPod-friendly format. However, with the right software, a quad-core equipped PC, and a little know-how, you can cut your disc rip time from hours to 20 or 30 minutes. There are still plenty of tricks and traps for first-time rippers, but we’ll show you the basics, then walk you through the secrets of ripping power users everywhere.

However, the first thing you need to decide is simple: what player are you ripping your discs for? Are you ripping for a portable player, like the PSP or iPhone? Would you rather stream to device in your living room, like the Xbox 360, PS3, or Popcorn Hour? Are you simply interested in making an archival-quality DVD rips, in case you lose your collection? More likely, you’re probably looking for a combination of all three of these things. We’ll show you how to rip your DVD to a file suitable for streaming that consumes a fraction of the disk space of a DVD but maintains full video and audio quality. Then you can take that file, and convert it for whatever other devices you might have, like a PSP or an iPod. For the purposes of this story, we're going to focus on DVD rips. Getting ahold of unencrypted high-defintion video legally is still pretty tricky. We'll update with Blu-ray ripping info as ripping Blu-ray gets easier.

Hit the jump to get started.

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