What I wish the PS3 did...

[ganthc]

Besides getting profile 1.1 and DTS-HDMA fixed, there are some other areas I wish the ps3 was stronger in. For one, I wish that it would be able to zoom. HD-DVD doesn't have this feature as much either, and only Smallville: Season 5 seemed to have a zoom feature. Secondly, I wish that the ps3 could do screenshots. You'd think it would be easy since the player has a hard drive, and it could just store those screen captures till I was able to put them on a thumbdrive.

Anyway, these are just a few things I was thinking about when watching a movie.

[Astrakan]

Originally Posted by ganthc

I wish that the ps3 could do screenshots. You'd think it would be easy since the player has a hard drive, and it could just store those screen captures till I was able to put them on a thumbdrive.

I'm sure it's pretty straightforward technologically speaking, but wouldn't taking screenshots of movies and games technically constitute copyright infringement?

Considering Sony is a pretty big content provider they probably aren't interested in enabling their consumers to infringe on their own copyright.

Just guessing here. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

KM

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by Astrakan

I'm sure it's pretty straightforward technologically speaking, but wouldn't taking screenshots of movies and games technically constitute copyright infringement?

Considering Sony is a pretty big content provider they probably aren't interested in enabling their consumers to infringe on their own copyright.

Just guessing here. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

KM

I only say this because of movie reviews. If you want to have screen grabs in your movie review, it would be nice to get a snapshot of what bd or hd-dvd does differently than sd-dvd. My laptop has a dvd software player that has screenshot capabilities. If screenshots were illegal, then I bet it couldn't be included on the software, right?

[Astrakan]

Originally Posted by ganthc

If screenshots were illegal, then I bet it couldn't be included on the software, right?

I'm not so sure about that. Technically people could use it to take screenshots of home movies and stuff, which may be the logic that makers of PC DVD players use when including it in their programs.

Again, just talking out of my ass.

I do agree that it'd be a cool feature.

KM

[ganthc]

Yeah, it's possible that it's not allowed. However, I thought US Law allowed for copying of photos if it's used for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research". So for a movie review, it should be allowed, I would think. But I'm not a lawyer.

It would just be nice to do so for high def movie reviews.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by ganthc

Besides getting profile 1.1 and DTS-HDMA fixed, there are some other areas I wish the ps3 was stronger in. For one, I wish that it would be able to zoom. HD-DVD doesn't have this feature as much either, and only Smallville: Season 5 seemed to have a zoom feature. Secondly, I wish that the ps3 could do screenshots. You'd think it would be easy since the player has a hard drive, and it could just store those screen captures till I was able to put them on a thumbdrive.

Anyway, these are just a few things I was thinking about when watching a movie.

Both formats active protect AGAINST screenshots with their DRM. All of those Xylon direct framebuffer screenshots that I reference to demonstrate the quality of HD DVD vs. BD need to be taken from a AACS-decrypted stream (using one of the decryptor programs). i.e. the copy protection needs to be broken just to take a simple screenshot!

Why they do this is beyond me, but right now you have to enter the legal grey-zone to take a direct framebuffer screenshot AFAIK.

[Derb]

If ya have to break the freakin AACS key per title basis to grab a screencap, I applaud these people.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

If ya have to break the freakin AACS key per title basis to grab a screencap, I applaud these people.

The only other way to do it would be to feed it into a screencap device, but Xylon's shots are clearly 1:1 pixel direct framebuffer shots so that method is not possible due to HDCP. Part of the reason he doesn't have more comparisons is that he does need to break the AACS key/copy protection in order to make the comparisons that he does AFAIK. He did not start posting these framebuffer shots until after AACS was broken, so the timing makes sense. Another reason DRM needs to die off...

Are studios afraid that they won't be able to sell us desktop wallpaper via microtransactions for $2/screengrab if we could take the screenshots ourselves from the HD DVD/BD or something?