Serial ATA

The main advantages over the older parallel ATA interface are faster data transfer, ability to remove or add devices while operating (hot swapping), thinner cables that let air cooling work more efficiently, and more reliable operation with tighter data integrity checks.

It was designed as a successor to the Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA), and is expected to eventually replace the older technology (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA). Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial cable.

For the last few years the SATA connection has been making it’s way to the high speed DVD recorders, as it has become also the main stream method for connecting hard drives, and is a standard feature on every computers motherboard these days. In optical recorder drives the legacy PATA connection has sustained it’s position surprisingly well. This will change in the next generation though, as Blu-ray drives need the higher bandwith provided by Serial ATA.

In this article we are using two recent drives by Pioneer Electronics. The Pioneer DVR-215 is a SATA drive, while the Pioneer DVR-115D is connected using the good old PATA. Besides the connection method, the only difference of these drives is that the Pioneers D-models do not support the DVD-RAM format discs.

Hardware installation

Our hardware setup for this test was a bit challenging. Our test bench computer has an onboard Intel SATA controller, but it was reserved by the RAID hard drives. Even though we had read and heard about people’s poor experiences of using a PCI SATA controller card with a SATA recorder, we decided to give it a go. Our efforts failed in this matter, and after various different PCI controllers (one of the was a totally wrong model, and our own mistake) we gave up on the idea. We started with a cheap Silicon Image 3112 chip based card, which was supposed to work with Pioneer and Plextor drives, but the system refused to boot with this configuration. With a Promise based card we got the system up and running, but the drive was not detected properly, and the system was stalling constantly. With these attempts failing we were forced to use the onboard Intel controller. The drive was immediately detected and working as expected so we could begin benchmarking.

The performance of SATA vs. PATA

First we performed a recording test, by using a number 16x speed Datawrite (CMC Magnetics) media that these drives are able to burn at 18x speed. The image on the left is the Pioneer DVR-215 and on the right is the 115D. Click on the images to have a closer look.

Couple of observations can be made from the graphs above. While the SATA connected drive seems to produce a bit higher average CPU load (2%), the device recording buffer is constantly at 100%. The PATA connected drive produces less CPU load, but the buffer level is constantly decreasing as the data rate accelerating towards the end of the disc. The recording speed of these two drives was identical (media can cause slight variance in between discs). Next step was to try the read performance. Once again 215 on the left and 115D on the right.

All the measured performance features produced identical results. We repeated these tests a number of times to cancel out any disturbances that might be produced by the test environment, and the results remained equal from test cycle after another. There was one exception though - the burst transfer speed of the SATA connected 215 model was constantly about 10MB/s higher. Next we decided to try the recording again, this time by recording a real image file from the RAID hard drive, which was now connected to a PCI SATA RAID card instead of the motherboard. 215 on the left, 115D on the right. Click on the images to have a closer look.

The real life recording test by using ImgBurn confirm what was already shown in the first graphs. The buffer of the SATA connected drive remains at 100% (screenshots are from the 95% recording point), while the PATA connected 115D is bouncing around 80% at this point.

Conclusion

First of all I must conclude that the Pioneer DVR-215 is an equally great drive than the 115D, with the possible benefits of the Serial ATA connection. The performance test showed that there is measurable difference in the connection method, but in these test cases they did not result in real-life differences in recording or read performance. However in some conditions the SATA connected drive could potentially give a smoother ride, thanks to it’s ability maintain the device recording buffer at 100%.

Which one to choose then, if one has both options available? I think the answer depends on the PC hardware. If I was building a new system with on-board SATA, I would choose the SATA connected 215 model. If one has an older PC, like our test bench, the SATA is an interesting option but the possible compatibility issues with the SATA controller must be understood first. However, under no circumstances I can recommend a SATA drive in combination with a PCI SATA controller card - it may work for some, but it has also failed for many and your mileage may vary. The SATA connection doesn’t seem to give that significant benefits that it would be worth buying a separate controller for the job.

Preconditions

• mkv2vob software. Download from here and install to appropriate folder
• .MKV Matroska video file
• Optionally a matching subtitle file (.srt)

Using mkv2vob

While using tsMuxeR for converting .MKV files for PS3 one may have encountered files that have no audio or video playback, even though the file itself is accepted and the PS3 goes into the video playback mode as expected. In such cases the mkv2vob can solve the problem by transcoding the audio and/or video streams to a compabile format. mkv2vob is a front-end application for txMuxeR, Mencoder, BeSweet and a number of other audio/video conversion tools. It analyzes the files and automatically performs the required actions. It can even encode subtitles to the video stream.

Note on transcoding: Converting audio or video content from a lossy compression format to another always produces degrading in the audio or video quality. In some cases the difference is slight and neglectable, but the impact can also be quite severe, depending on how the conversion process is perfomed and the content itself.

Configuring mkv2vob

Before starting the conversion process, it is important to go through a few configuration options of the mkv2vob. Under the configuration tab you will find a few options to adjust.

• Preferred audio language defines the audio track to be used. If the chosen language audio is not found, the first audio track is used
• Set Video Transcoding to Automatic. Using this setting the mkv2vob will transcode if necessary, but only performs remuxing if the content is already in a usable format
• Choose your Preferred Subtitle Language. If the subtitle language differs from the language of the audio track, the subtitles will be encoded to the video. You can override this setting by forcing the mkv2vob to always encode subtitles. Subtitles can be included from a matching .srt subtitle file.
• File Splitting defines the target file size
• Output File Extension defines the extension of the resulting file. We have used the default .m2ts with success, but mkv2vob help suggests that .mpg would offer most playback compatibility. We have not tested the .mpg however. (Give it a try and post your experiences below!)
• The Transcoding Codec is an important setting as it defines the output quality and encoding speed. MPEG-2 is fast, but produces rather rought results at these bitrates for high definition content. x264 is the slowest, but should produce best quality. XviD (MPEG-4) should be somewhere in between these options in terms of quality and speed.

Starting the conversion

With the configuration set, the actual usage of mkv2vob is very easy and straight forward.

• Choose a Source File to be converted
• Choose a destination directory
• Click Add File to send the file into the processing list, and mkv2vob will immediately start the conversion.

Our example file here has a non-compatible video stream for PS3 usage, so the video needs to be transcoded. The transcoding process can be quite lengthy, especially if you have chosen the x264 codec and you have a lengthy video file so be patient. In case no transcoding needed, the mkv2vob remuxes the .MKV file very quickly - typically in just a few minutes.

After the conversion process has completed, you will have file with the chosen extension (see Configuration) that can be played in the PlayStation 3. Burn the file on a DVD or transport to PS3 using other mediums (USB stick or hard drive) and you are good to go!

This time we show you how to convert .MKV (Matroska) files into Blu-ray or AVCHD format. The AVCHD is a fairly new format introduced by Sony and Panasonic mainly for video camera recording, but the PlayStation 3 has native support for this format. Most likely some Blu-ray players also support, or will support the AVCHD format. Generally the AVCHD is nothing new - it is basically a Blu-ray file structure and content recorded on a regular DVD media. The media capacity is lower than with Blu-ray, so the quality is not as good but still AVCHD can store high definition 720p movies on a single DVD-R.

The using AVCHD format has a few advantages over the .m2ts method:

• DVD-like playback experience with chapters and auto-start in PS3
• Multiple audio streams are supported
• Support for subtitles (currently not supported with tsMuxer 1.7.6, but this feature is expected in the future)

If one has the ability to use Blu-ray discs, then there is the obvious advantage of huge recording capacity. But as Blu-ray recorders are at the time we are writing this rather costly and rare, we focus on AVCHD. However the same rules should apply for Blu-ray, but this is not tested.

Preconditions

• tsMuxeR software. Download from here and extract to appropriate folder
• ImgBurn software. Download from here and install
• Matroska .MKV video files with AVC (h.264) video and AC3 audio streams

Make sure you have some free space on your hard drive as a file with roughly the same size than the original file will be created in this process.

Using tsMuxeR to author a AVCHD or Blu-ray disc

Once again the process of remuxing the files and authoring the AVCHD / Blu-ray disc is a very simple process using tsMuxeR. Through the process the video and audio remain untouched, so the quality is not impacted and the process is very fast.

Perform the following steps:

1. Open a .MKV file with AVC/AC3 content using the Add button
2. Observe the track info for AVC profile information. If it shows a value higher than 4.1, then use the Change level function to adjust it down to 4.1
3. Choose to Create Blu-ray disk as Output
4. Click browse button and choose the name and location for your file
5. Click Start muxing to begin

As a result a complete Blu-ray file structure is created to your destination folder. Note that this process will increase the file size of your video, so if you have an .MKV file exactly the size of a DVD-R (4.4GB), then it may not fit on the DVD-R in AVCHD format. The next step is to record it using ImgBurn.

Using ImgBurn

The recording process for AVCHD or Blu-ray is not very different from regular DVD recording. In AVCHD / Blu-ray file structure there are two root level folders to record, and the file system must be set to UDF 2.50.

Perform the following steps:

1. Add folders \BDMV\ and \CERTIFICATE\ to be recorded
2. Under options choose File System UDF 2.50. Note that this change is persistent, and will be effective next time you start ImgBurn, unless reverted before that. Also be sure to have Recurse Subdirectories checked
3. Click the icon to start recording
4. The ImgBurn may prompt you to auto correct file systems settings - accept the proposed change. It will also prompt you for a Volume Label, where you may enter a title for the disc if you wish.

Watch the recording process go, and after it is done you are ready to watch AVCHD/Blu-ray on your PlayStation 3. Just slip in the disc and the PS3 will recognize it as a video disc, and auto-start playback. You can now switch in between multiple audio tracks (if available) just like using a DVD. With the defult settings the tsMuxeR will also place a chapter point every 5 minutes for skipping back and forward in the video.

Preconditions

• tsMuxeR software. Download from here and extract to appropriate folder
• Matroska .MKV video files with AVC (h.264) video and AC3 audio streams

Make sure you have some free space on your hard drive as a file with roughly the same size than the original file will be created in this process.

Using tsMuxeR

The conversion process using tsMuxeR is a very simple one. It consists of adjusting a few settings, which you can see highlighted in the screenshot on the right.

The video or audio content is not actually converted at all. All tsMuxeR does is that it extracts (demuxes) the video and audio from the Matroska .MKV file and wraps them (muxes) to a .m2ts transport stream format. The video or audio remain untouched, so the quality is not impacted and the process is very fast.

Perform the following steps:

1. Open a .MKV file with AVC/AC3 content using the Add button
2. Observe the track info for AVC profile information. If it shows a value higher than 4.1, then use the Change level function to adjust it down to 4.1
3. Choose M2TS muxing as Output
4. Click browse button and choose the name and location for your file
5. Click Start muxing to begin

After a few minutes you should have files named filename.m2ts and filename.meta. Now all you need to do is to burn these on a DVD-R(W), and slip the disc to your PS3. The PlayStation recognizes the file on the disc allowing high definition video playback!

I bought my device from Germany, as there seemed to be the best deals avaiable for us Europeans. The German starter pack came with two wireless controllers, and two games: Uncharted - Drake’s Fortune and Need For Speed: Pro Street. Overall a very nice pack to get you going.

Out-of-the-box readiness

I think Sony could improve the first impression their product makes. First of all, there is no HDMI cable included (as it has been complained from the beginning), which is absolutely stupid for a HD device. The wireless controllers are charged with a USB cable, but the cable provided with the device is about 1 meter long - not exactly long enough to reach the sofa, when you want to get your hands on with the device! After the connections were made there were some configurations to do, wireless setup, user account creation and so on.

When I got the wireless Internet up and running, the device let me know that there was a firmware update available. It was a procedure of downloading, accepting the EULA, flashing and rebooting. Now finally I was able to slip in the NFS: Pro Street game and start playing - or, maybe not. NFS Pro Street told me that the game was about to be updated, and the download was a mighty 722 megabytes! Luckily I am on a 8mbit cable, so it was only a matter of 15-20minutes, but at the same time I wondered how would the 512kbs or 1Mbit cable owners like waiting a few hours before they can start playing. So with all the hassle, I beleive it took around one hour until I had my first game going.

First impressions: The good

I have owned all previous PlayStations, so this was an upgrade from PS2. While the PS2 was just a gaming machine, the PS3 impresses with it’s functionality. It has upscaling DVD playback, which looked good and most importantly with the additional Blu-ray remote control, the DVD playback usability is now as good as with any DVD player. I watched some HDTV content I downloaded from the net and burned to DVD’s, and they worked very nicely indeed. I had only two games to go with, but the Uncharted - Drake’s fortune really impressed. Amazing visuals, enjoyable game play and an entertaining cinematic experience. I was also very pleased with the nice amount of playable demo versions of games that were available for a free download. A demo of the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 raised great expectations for the game.

First impressions: The bad

While Uncharted and some of the demo games were great, apparantly all titles do not yet fully utilize the next generation hardware. The NFS: Pro Street was actually a very bad experience, especially after playing around with the GT5 demo. Graphics were bad and looked more like PS2 than PS3, playability was terrible and in every way the game was much worse that earlier releases of the NFS series on PS2 and other platforms.

And as I hinted in the first paragraph, I ran into immediate problems with the device. The PS3 will primarily serve as a media center, and gaming will be the secondary function of the device. I had read from the reviews that PS3 is very quiet device, and heard it myself with friend’s consoles, but my unit was damn noisy. After just few minutes of gaming, or 15 minutes of DVD playback the PS3 fan started blowing like a vacuum cleaner - literally! The noise was unbearable, and made my PS3 totally useless as a media center, and it was very annoying while playing too. Quick check around with the Google, and I found out that many Europeans that have bought the 40GB edition are experiencing the same - and the difference to a unit with a normal noise level is really huge. So pay attention to the noise level of the PS3 fan if you are about to buy one!

A quick call to Sony representative, the PlayStation back to original packaging, to the post office and this first impression review session was over. I get back to in two weeks when I get the device back.

Following recent media speculation that Blu-ray is becoming the primary standard for playback and recording of HD High-Definition (HD) content, consumers can not only buy systems in confidence, the technology is becoming more affordable too: Pioneer’s Blu-ray ‘Combo’ drive for PCs that plays Blu-ray movies and writes to DVD has fallen below the £100 mark.

The Blu-ray Combo drive has the appearance of a DVD or CD and is easily fitted into any standard PC drive bay in around 10 minutes. Multimedia PCs are designed to complement home environments and are increasingly geared for movie playback from the Blu-ray Combo drive with powerful processors, graphics and sound cards complemented by contemporary flat screen displays. Such PCs are also easily connected to living room entertainment set-ups so users can enjoy the ultimate movie experience on their HD-ready flat screen TVs.

…

‘Blu-ray has developed unstoppable momentum and media and analysts have predicted that the technology is rapidly becoming the de-facto HD storage and playback format if it’s not already.’ says Chris Tampsett, Sales Director, Pioneer Europe Multimedia Division. ‘As well as the surety that they are buying a product that has widespread and pretty much unanimous support among move studios, consumers can now enjoy breathtaking HD movies whether on their monitor or living room TV for less than £100. Add in high-quality DVD writing and the product is a great way for end users to see why HD is causing so much excitement.’

Source: Pioneer Europe

AnyDVD HD now with BD+ support

Film studios that have switched to Blu-ray may have crowed a little too early because the much-praised BD+ copy protection is an ad absurdum affair now, too. With today’s release of version 6.4.0.0 of AnyDVD HD it is now also possible to make backup security copies of Blu-ray discs protected with BD+.

Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group will have to revise his statement from July, 2007 regarding BD+: “BD+, unlike AACS which suffered a partial hack last year, won’t likely be breached for 10 years”. It is worth mentioning that since he made that statement only eight months have gone by.

Peer van Heuen, head of High-Definition technologies at SlySoft adds: “Admittedly, we are not really so fast with this because actually we had intended to publish this release already in December as promised. However, it was decided for strategic reasons to wait a bit for the outcome of the “format war” between HD DVD and Blu-ray. On top of that, we first wanted to see our assumptions confirmed about the in the meantime released BD+ titles regarding the BD+ Virtual Machine. We are rather proud to have brought back to earth the highly-praised and previously “unbreakable” BD+. However, we must also admit that the Blu-ray titles released up to now have not fully exploited the possibilities of BD+. Future releases will undoubtedly have a modified and more polished BD+ protection, but we are well prepared for this and await the coming developments rather relaxed”. Van Heuen adds jokingly: “The worst-case scenario then is our boss locks us up with only bread and water in the company dungeon for three months until we are successful again”.

Giancarlo Bettini, SlySoft CEO, adds, “We are convinced that today’s release will give the high-density market new impulse. It remains unclear just what direction this will take. On the one hand, it can give Blu-ray a boost because the end-user has the certainty in knowing now that a backup security copy can also be made from Blu-ray disks protected by BD+. On the other hand, one or more film studios may want to reconsider their withdrawal from HD DVD and Toshiba could also grant the high-density DVD a reprieve. HD DVD certainly deserves a second chance, particularly since HD DVD hardware has obtained a higher market share within the last months than its BD counterpartfrom SONY. In any event, I wish all those involved a happy Easter from the bottom of my heart.”

Source: SlySoft, Inc. press release

The PCLinuxOS uses a somewhat different approach. Instead of pushing out an entirely new distribution versions twice a year, they have been incrementally updating the distribution in terms of application versions and system core components. This is often titled as the rolling update approach. The previous full release of PCLOS is the 2007 version which was released almost a year ago. It shipped with Firefox 2.0.0.3, OpenOffice 2.2.0, KDE 3.5.6 and so on, but with the rolling updates philosophy it is still up-to-date after applying the updates with Synaptic. A PCLOS 2007 user still has latest stable versions of applications, and a fairly new kernel as well.

The approach that PCLOS has chosen makes distribution boring and extremely non-challenging. First of all, the PCLOS seems to be very stable and doesn’t have any of the embarrassing bugs that the bleeding edge distributions have. The upgrades are incremental, so the risk of regression errors (new bugs introduced by updates and fixes) is very well managed. This is not the case with distributions that make a new release every 6 months, as they seem to be able to break a lot of things in between the versions. In other words using PCLOS you miss all the anticipation of waiting bug fixes and the excitement of installing your system for scratch twice a year, not to mention the feeling of guts and glory if one is brave enough to perform a system upgrade to the latest release.

Seriously speaking, I think the 6 month development cycle is hurting the popularization of Linux operating systems. The whole point of frequent cycle is to keep the development pace fast. Indeed, desktop Linux distributions have made amazing progress for the last few years and are now more and more considered as suitable for regular desktop user as a Windows replacement. However, now that Linux has caught up with the competition in basic features and usability, the path to success would be to finalize, fine-tune, stabilize and productize the distributions. This finalizing effort takes time and does not fit to the twice a year upgrade cycle. After all Microsoft has ben stabilizing Windows XP for seven years and a new service pack is still to be released!

Another problem is that due to release frequency the Linux distributions way too short product life cycle - the main applications may only be offered updates for about a year or so. This is very unfortunate, as key applications are showing rapid progress, like the OpenOffice for an example which has been improving a lot recently in every updated version. Linux by nature is a very well upgradeable system, so why this feature is not utilized more? Instead the users are pushed with releases that are buggy on the release date and have a very short life-cycle - both of these characteristics are very unappealing for the Joe Average.

The Linux distributions should look more into the rolling updates approach, slow down the release cycle to at least 12 months. Product life cycle should be extended to three years, to provide stability and predictability for home and small office users. Many Linux distributions have trouble working out a business model, so perhaps the extended life cycle with applications updates might be a feature that people would be ready to pay for? Linux would be very suitable for small and home offices, but no entrepreneur is willing to reinstall the computers every year.

Luckily PCLinuxOS is different and I can continue the boring life of actually working with the operating system, instead of working on it. Radically simple!

Microsoft and Xbox 360 fans have been bragging with the better game line-up, lower price and that the Blu-ray would be a mistake by Sony for the PlayStation 3. Now that Microsoft has more or less lost the edge on these areas, and Blu-ray is proving to be a valuable addition, they once again go for their war fund. While Sony is mostly operating on the consumer electronics market, Microsoft gains huge revenue streams by selling air, namely Windows licenses, for the PC vendors. They have all the money in the world, and while they have done multi billion losses with the Xbox, they are not afraid to do some more damage for their bank balance in hopes of gaining market share on the console market.

The announced price reductions are significant. The 20GB model prices is slashed down by another €80 and the low-end non-hard drive model is reduced by £40 in the UK market. The console market has often been noted as being a very price sensitive business. It remains to be seen how the consumers respond to these changes. Sony has better overall offering with PlayStation 3 at a higher price point, while Xbox with the new prices goes moves closer to the Wii price range. It is speculated that Sony would not respond to the price reductions, at least not immediately. Their focus seems to be on delivering more value with interesting game bundles, like the GT5 Prologue.

The extension .MKV stands for MatrosKa Video. It has also an audio variant .MKA, which derives from MatrosKa Audio. Matroska files are container files, and for the end user they are very similar to .AVI files. Just like .AVI files, the .MKV files can contain different types of audio and video.

Most commonly .MKV files are used for distributing High Definition video encoded with x264, which is free AVC/h.264 implementation. Read on to learn how to use and play .MKV files!

In order to play any video you need to have a splitter for file format and decoder for audio and video. The splitter’s job is to dig out the video and audio from the file and feed the data to the dedicated decoders. This is the case with every video container format, even with AVI. Unlike Matroska, the AVI format is natively supported by Windows operating systems and no additional splitters are needed.

You have two choices to get MKV files playing:

1. The easy way: You can use VLC player which has built-in splitter and decoders
2. The more advance way (recommended): You can install external splitter and decoders for audio and video

Note: A fairly powerful CPU is needed in order decode and play the x264 High Definition video smoothly.

Option 1: The VLC Player

VLC is probably the easiest solution of all since it’s able to play MKV files without any external codecs or splitters. Just download VLC, install and you’re ready to go.

If you like to use other media player than VLC, see more detailed instructions in the next page.

Option 2: Install Splitter and Decoders

First you need to install the Haali Media Splitter. Installation is as straight forward as installation of any Windows application. On the last installer page there are some options for you to select. As the name of the application suggests, Haali’s splitters isn’t just a Matroska splitter but it can also be used with many other formats. If you want just the Matroska functionality, keep the first two checkboxes ticked.

Enabling MP4 support is also a good idea, because you will most likely need it at some point. But as said already, the rest of the options won’t affect the Matroska playback. In the screenshot, you can see the settings I like to use.

If you have problems with playback, even if you had installed Haali’s splitter, you’re most likely missing the required video and audio decoders. The solution for the problem is ffdshow. The video in a MKV file can be virtually anything. But usually it’s either Xvid/DivX or H.264/AVC. Same applies for audio side: it can be anything, but experience has shown that AC3, DTS or AAC are good guesses. You should enable support for these formats during installation, though the settings can be changed later on as well.

As I already mentioned, you can use whatever media player you like, but if you are in a need for a good player, you should try Media Player Classic.