Good Comparison Of Both Versions Of PS3

I HATE the bit rating for cds, disks, bandwidth, etc.  I always convert everything to bytes, and my 4500 kb/s is = to 36 mbps.  In any event, load times like this aren\'t going to effect games much, they have HDDs, and lots of RAM for caching any necessary data.  Load times should be almost a thing of the past in this generation, at least once you are in game.

As for needing \'more\' than 36 mbps/4500kbps necessary for HDTV, you have to remember that they are compressing such signals these days.  The max of 5000kbps video rate is rarely reached, and every blue-ray player and unit will be able to read at higher than 1x for at least short times, or have sufficient cache to catch up after such a burst.

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Besides the obvious reason for having larger capacity (easy uncompressed high res cutscenes, intros, FMV), you can also put on high-res textures, larger and more numerous areas and worlds.  If there\'s one thing that seems true it\'s that information expands to fill whatever media is cheaply available.  I have no doubt there will be a lot of 70% empty disks coming out for a while, especially in games with no FMV functions, but I can see the fact that they can tell companies that this will (for a time at least) eliminate piracy, and cost them only slightly more than DVD disks (not like cartridges which cost dollars vs cents) will be a selling feature..

[Evi]

I HATE the bit rating for cds, disks, bandwidth, etc. I always convert everything to bytes, and my 4500 kb/s is = to 36 mbps.

Yeah...I always get them confused. Sorry about that.

Regarding loading times on BR vs. DVD, I nabbed this from a virgin at AVS.  Take from it what you will:

54Mbps is the minimum requirement in the BD-ROM standard for movies playback, which is what the Crutchfield link addresses. However, BD-ROM base throughput (1x) is 36Mbps, and BD-ROM 2x is 72Mbps, which is just slightly faster than 6x DVD-ROM\'s maximum throughput. A 2x drive is what\'s supposed to be on the PS3. The 11Mbps you quote is the maximum for 1x DVD-ROM speed. A 6x DVD-ROM drive operates at maximum speed of 66Mbps, and the current drive in the 360 is a 12xDVD-ROM drive, so 12 * 11Mbps = 132Mbps. But that\'s maximum speed. The actual spec calls for speed between 66-132Mbps. So, the 12xDVD-ROM (66-132Mbps) drive in the 360 is capable of being faster than the 2x BD-ROM drive in the PS3.

Of course, you also have to take into account that DVD-ROM drives are Constant Angular Velocity and BD-ROM discs are Constant Linear Velocity. That means that on a DVD-ROM, the data on the inside tracks is read at roughly half the maximum speed and closer to the maximum speed on the outside tracks. It also means that it never experiences top throughput unless the disc is full. BD-ROM, on the other hand, has constant throughput, regardless of where the data lies on the tracks. Of course, this also assumes no read errors, which will slow down throughput. So, the BD-ROM drive would outperform the DVD-ROM drive on reading from the inside tracks. The bottom line is, it matters where the data is on the tracks.

However, as pointed out, if the data is on the hard drive, it\'ll move faster than the optical drives without a problem.

[Paul2]

THX,

that\'s a very good summary and nice detail information there.