Sure, we mentioned the PS3’s ‘hidden’ extra features to Firmware 3.30 in April, but only tonight have I realised just how fantastic this last update really was. Yes, they’ve stripped out OtherOS but really, when you dig beneath the surface a little on this last one, you’ll find that Sony really do give just as much as some people think they take away.
I’ll explain. I recently bought a Panasonic all-in-one receiver amp thing. It plays DVDs, but that’s not why I bought it – I bought it to enable my PS3, Xbox 360 and whatever else I fed it to play back Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS surround sound. Surround sound is just as important as HD visuals to games and movies, in my personal, humble opinion.
Anyway, despite saying DTS on the box (and playing DTS DVDs just fine) the damned thing won’t play DTS over optical, which is how my sound is hooked up. Apparently it’s an issue with most Panasonic all-in-one kits – call it cost saving, whatever, the only DTS playback I got was via DVDs inserted into the machine itself. Until Firmware 3.30 came around.
Sony, you see, fixed everything. The latest update added something called BitStream Mixing (it’s under the Video menu under Settings). Set that to ‘mixed’ and the PS3 will play DTS and Dolby 5.1 in their original raw PCM format. This means that the Panasonic doesn’t know it’s DTS getting piped to it, and will happily play back all 6 channels in crystal clear surround sound regardless.
So, for the first time, my PS3 and Panasonic combo is playing Quantum of Solace in 5.1 surround sound. DTS on a system that doesn’t, shouldn’t decode DTS over optical. Now, this is one feature I wouldn’t be happy losing in a future firmware update, let’s hope Geohot doesn’t find a way to access the hypervisor via the TosLink cable, eh?
