Brian's Brain

Continued from 'Ramble On: Monday Evening Musings'....

Last week, as part of my series of recent hands-on writeups on Sony's PlayStation 3, I pointed out that as a cost-reducing move, the upcoming European version of the console would software-emulate PS2-and-prior titles versus hardware-accelerating them on the 'Emotion Engine' IC. I predicted, and subsequent news has corroborated, that this feature-restricting move would likely spread to other retail geographies. This was obviously not a determination that Sony made only a few weeks ago, when we first heard about it....leading me to wonder just when they made it?

I 'spect the redesign decision happened just prior to Sony's announcement early last September that the PS3 launch in Europe and other PAL territories would be delayed (blamed at the time on limited console supply). After all, figuring out how to software-emulate the largely incompatible PS2 hardware across 'over 1,000 titles' (I'll believe it when I see it) is not a problem that Sony's software engineers can solve overnight. Which leads to my other wonder....who's helping them? Transmeta certainly knows a thing or two about emulating an x86 processor via Code Morphing technology, and Sony's collaboration with Transmeta on IC design and 'other unspecified projects' has been public knowledge since early 2005.

Transitive Technologies, the developer of the algorithms that Apple licensed to form its PowerPC-emulating Rosetta scheme, is another possibility that comes to mind. When Sony announced the Europe production push-out late last summer, I remember thinking to myself 'I wonder if they're delaying the intro because they're doing a cost-reduction redesign', but I never put those particular musings to cyber-paper. I'll try to be more confident of my gut feelings in the future, and to dig deeper to see if I can validate those feelings with facts.

To wit, back in January during his CES keynote, Bill Gates unveiled the upcoming IPTV client software for the Xbox 360 to be offered in conjunction with partners such as AT&T and Verizon. In the days leading up to the show, persistent rumours floated around that Gates was also going to announce a beefed-up version of the console, code-named Zephyr, with a bigger HDD and a HDMI output.

Rumours of a HDMI-equipped Xbox 360 have been floating around for a long time; back in December, for example, I pointed you to some fuzzy photographs purportedly of a HDMI-inclusive console that first hit the web last July. And the advantage of a larger-than-20GB HDD for rentals and purchases of high-definition movies coming down over a fiber optic-based IPTV pipe are obvious. Are the movie studios insisting on a DRM-inclusive HDMI link between the console and display as a prerequisite to offering Hollywood blockbusters over IPTV services? And, if so, is Zephyr a real product, which'll appear in conjunction with the rollout of those IPTV services later this year? I'll keep digging, and report back any interesting nuggets I uncover. Until then, I welcome your thoughts.