I think this Next Gen transition is going to be a whole new ball game for Sony & Microsoft because of the HD graphics & internet connection on the PS3/Xbox 360.
Bear with me as this is going to be difficult to preface: The entire CE industry is taking us for a technology ride. They look 10-20 years down the road to see what might be possible and develop roadmaps for new TV resolutions and features. Due to chicken and egg issues they release features like 1080P and blu-ray, which requires 1080P, years before it becomes an accepted by the FCC standard for Over The Air broadcasts. Smart TV started in ?2009? but won't be officially used in the US till 2013 with ATSC 2.0 but was implemented 2011 with hbbTV DVB in the EU .
Sony was criticized for including blu-ray and 1080P in the PS3 as it added to the costs. Why introduce 1080P in 2006 and 3-D in 2010, no one had a 1080P TV in 2006 and no one had a 3-D TV in 2010, who would watch it? 3-D is going to be part of ATSC 2.0 along with 1080P and XTV in 2013
(6 years after the first blu-ray and 1080P TVs released).
ATSC 3.0 in the US is going to follow the international standard to be implemented (hardware) by TVs produced starting 2018. Since it's an international standard, the TVs we buy from Korea, China or Japan will already have ATSC 3.0 tuners and CPUs that can handle downconverting or displays that can handle 4K to 8K resolutions. To Chicken and egg prepare for this like we had with; 1080P, 3-D and blu-ray, a 4K blu-ray is going to be released next year (2013) and the PS4 will support 4K blu-ray, 4K and possibly 8K video streams as well as new HDMI port resolutions that will be standards for next generation TVs.
(6-7 years after 4K blu-ray is released we will see the FCC authorize ATSC 3.0 (2020)). Lots of assumptions in the dates above.
Some are now knocking Sony for supporting 4K in the PS4 as who has or can afford a 4K TV and it adds to the cost of the PS4. IF you understand the above, the reasons for a VERY expensive launch PS3 become clear and the reason for including 4K in the PS4 is obvious. This time 4K blu-ray is going to cost only a few dollars more than 2K blu-ray in a game console. The added speed/FPS needed for 4K blu-ray can also be used for multi-view
"Eyefinity view" or to support Head mounted displays, TVs and handhelds at the same time.
gofreak found this:
http://www.semicontaiwan.org/en/sites/semicontaiwan.org/files/SiP 3D IC_Teiji_Yutaka_SONY.pdf
2010 April 22 System Software Ver3.30 Every Single PlayStation® 3 (PS3®) supports Stereoscopic 3D (S3D)
1. Game Industry struggle for seeking the new exciting experience
2. Reality is the critical trend of Gaming
3. Interactive S3D brings you to next Level
4. Do not mind wearing 3D Glasses Game is the Concentration-required Media
5. Relatively Easy to add S3D functionality to 3D Game
5 Major Characteristics to explain Graphics Evolution
3D is the key word of Modern Game 3D Graphics
S3D Graphics World’s First Real-time 3D Graphics Game Console END-to-END 3D Graphics Improve the quality of Real-time 3D Graphics “Reality”is the key trend of the Home console games
FPS (First Person Shooter)
Free World / Sports / Driving
Games Become Real-World Simulator thanks to the improvement of Quality in Graphics S3D Adds new dimension of Reality to the Game
S3D with Glass 2x Render Performance 2 eye views
Naked-eye S3D 10x Render Performance 5 2 eye views
Interesting, rumors are 300FPS (from Sony CTO) 10 eye views (5 S3D) at 30 FPS each and the target of 10X GPU performance. I guess this is where the specs for next generation come from for Sony. They want to support glassless 3-D on 4K TVs with the PS4.
Page 21 in the Sony PDF gofreak found surprised me, I didn't realize the 5 views for glassless S3D (4K TV) were separate images that have to be supplied by the source. This makes sense when I think back to examples of those same TVs supporting 5 different video streams at the same time, just move a few inches to the right or left and you can view a different video stream or select one in your viewing area from a remote.
Can the above information be used to predict that the PS4 chipset and AMD are going to support S3D using shutter glasses with 5 3-D panels oriented as in the above picture of Eyefinity view from AMD which I assume is at this time only 2D. This is more than double what we are expecting as to GPU work unless there is some trick in rendering.
More than 5 video streams has been expected but not game GPU rendered S3D 5 views. Beast indeed. This needs discussion, what's coming is more than we expected.
http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/12/maasaki-tsu-interview.cfm said:
Sony’s target is to get latency for a typical playing experience to below 50ms for framerates of more than 300fps. Now, 50ms is an absolute best performance level to start with – most displays actually increase it – for framerates of about 60fps ceiling. Moreover, the target is not for 1080p resolution, but reflect a drive towards 8kx4k.