Playstation 3 owners have been treated fairly well with the latest bunch of firmware updates, but according to SCE CTO Kawanishi and AV manager Kanehide, there’s a lot more stuff to come. In this interview held by the Japanese AV Watch, they’re talking about the recently added features and future updates.

Thanks to gunnerhkjp on the Neowin forums, we can read the article in proper English. It’s a pretty interesting read, but unfortunately these engineers still leave certain details about upcoming firmwares in the dark. People that have been dying to see some specific features will find some answers in this interview, for example why the Playstation 3 isn’t able to play DivX movies.

Question: Upconversion was added half a year after the release. Please describe the process leading up top it.
Kanehide: Sorry to keep you waiting for half a year.
Kawanishi: I said this in past interviews, but if we did a normal bilinear upconversion, then the picture quality would just be the same as what is normally done by TVs and computers. Since we had the Cell, we thought we had to do better than that. Taste factors greatly in the quality of upconversion, so we had to have various critics analyze the picture quality. That is why we couldn’t get the feature out in time of the release.
Kanehide: I think we finally got it to a level that is not embarrassing as a product. We have gotten good reviews from critics, but it was tough considering the critics work with AV equipment that cost the same as 100 PS3s. We have gotten feedback from them regarding several failure patters for upconverting, but we are getting closer to the goal. I think we can improve another 30 to 40%.
Kawanishi: And there’s still power left in the cell processor.

Question: What improvements can we expect?
Kanehide: I think we are currently making improvements that is easy to see. I expect much of the upcoming work to be a lot less visible, but never the less important. Improvement in the NR process is one such improvement.
Kawanishi: A lot of attention is put in the upconversion quality, but as HD contents become the norm, then picture enhancement for those contents will become more important.

Question: How about upconversion of 1080i BD titles to 1080p?
Kanehide: We are currently assesing such feature internally, but it is difficult to do until the Blu-ray spec is finalized. Blu-ray spec is always being updated, and we have to make sure that there is enough hardware resource left to accomodate the updates. Even if we could do various updates and addition of functions now, we have to avoid using up the resources which may lead to us taking away such updates to accomodate spec updates.

Question: Does that mean you have to leave some processing power and memory for spec updates like network functions?
Kanehide: Maybe. Even if we could implement 1080i to 1080p upconversion, which is VERY heavy on the processor, the level of quality will have to be tuned.

Question: Regarding sound. I think nobody expected the SACD function of the PS3 to be so complete.
Kanehide: We didn’t intend it to be such a featured function, but we decieded that it would be one of the things we concentrate initially to get a handle on the Cell processor. We were only able to do 24bit/88.2kHz degimation, but got it up to 24bit/176.4kHz. We worked the the department which makes Amps to really get a feel for how sound is processed. When SACD is playing, cell had nothing much to do. So we concentrated on how to use the cell to improve the quality of the sound further. The know how we got from the process for immense, although it took us away from the the realm of playstation and into the world of high end audio.

Question: Looking at eh SACD playback, it seems emphasis was placed on sending PCM over HDMI more than the quality of the analog outputs.
Kanehide: The reason for that is simple. Although the analog output quality of the PS3 is very high, it really can’t win against AV amps costing thousands of dollars. Where we can compete in is the processing power of the Cell. So we concentrated of passing good PCM data to the amps through HDMI. PS3 cell processor is a lot better than the chips found in AV amps, so we figured we will do all the processing on the PS3, and pass the result to the amps, getting much higher quality. Ofcourse, the only connection that can pass sound data at that quality turned out to be HDMI.

Question: How about optical out?
Kanehide: Optical out does not have the copy protection mechanism necessary for SACD output. Its unfortunate.

Question: How out CD upsampling?
Kanehide: Its being worked on. CD don’t have the restriction on optical out, so it will be easier to use.

Question: There is a lot of demand for a jukebox function. How about functions like lossless transfer into the PS3 and album shuffle? Also, how do you see the link with portable players?
Kawanishi: We haven’t really decided on the positioning of the PS3 as a music player. We don’t know how much people want a music player that requires you to turn on the TV, for example. SACD really pushed the PS3 in terms of audio, but we have to guage user demand. But Sony produced many products, and I could forsee the PS3 becoming a “mother ship” to all the equipment. Ps3 really is a feature rich player, but the basis for all this is that it is a game console. (laugh)

Question: Linking to games, the 360 has a feature to allow music in the HDD and network to be played back as game BGM.
Kawanishi: PS3 already has such function in the system software. It is up to the game developers to use the function. Same goes for pictures and videos.

Question: The upscaling routine is different for BD/DVD, video files, and games?
Kanehide: Yes
Kawanishi: The games require a lot more processing power, so less is left for upscaling.

Question: Right now, output from the GS (PS2 graphics chip) is upconverted. Can the GS output higher resolution by itself?
Kawanishi: Currently, the upconverion is done at the final stage of the output. For PS2 software, it would be difficult to increase the resolution natively. PS1 is a different matter, since it is software emulation.

Question: Why only client for DLNA? I think PS3 should have a server function.
Kawanishi: The primary reason is that PS3 does not have a tuner. Another reason is that consumers are not yet familiar with DLNA, and emphasizing the server function may lead to more confusion. I personally feel that DLNA has a lot of restriction that may make it hard to use. I think the easiest way is to allow network browsing of files by using samba, for example. People who are using the DLNA function right now are people with high PC literacy. So we tried to make the PS3 DLNA clinet as compatible as possible with various PC DLNA servers. We also tested with various NASs with server functionality.

Question: One thing about video file playback. It seems that quality is not constant, and picutre quality falls from time to time.
Kawanishi: We don’t have an answer to how much quality we can guarantee from playback of video files created by PCs. Although there is standards such as “mpeg-4″, there are many cases where the files contain data that are way off the standard.
Kanehide: We have codecs in place that play back data following proper standards, and functions to improve the quality of these picutres. We need more work on handling data that is outside the standard.
Kawanishi: For now, out main goal is to allow playback of as many standard as possible.

Question: From that point of view, how about playback of WMV and Divx?
Kawanishi: The problem with those formats are that they are not industry standards like “mpeg-4″, but format that is locked in by various corporations. But I understand the demand (laugh).

Question: Your intention for remote play is to make people play outside the home?
Kawanishi: Yes. There are SDKs out to allow game developers to integrate remote play into their games, so it is a matter of time before such games arrive. However, it is now suitable for all types of games. There is a certain amount of latency involved.

Question: The biggest problem with the use of remote play right now is that the PS3 has to remain turned on when you leave the house. Is there a solution to this?
Kawanishi: Wait and see (laugh).

Question: How about allowing usage on other than PSP?
Kawanishi: Good question. Officially, no comment. But if you can imagine, it should be possible on any terminal. The only problem is support and service quality.

Question: What is the current system software development span?
Kawanishi: We try to get one out every quarter.

Question: For how long?
Kawanishi: The scary thing about the PS3 is that we can continue to add updates as long as there is space on the HDD (laugh). We won’t stop though, since adding new functionality is a lot of fun. We really enjoy getting feedback from the customers, and finding thing we really didn’t think of.

Question: PS3 is a very powerful hardware, but as more processing power is used, electricity consumption and fan noise increases. For AV equipment, noise is a big factor.
Kanehide: So far, we are not worried too much since we have plenty of processing power left even at peak usage. On the other hand, from a software programming point of view, we have arrived to a stage where things work as they should. But there are plenty of optimization left to do. We have to balance function with load and noise.
Kawanishi: Nothing yet comes close to the load that Folding@Home applies. And I can see the possiblity of a fanless PS3 in the future, just like there was for the PS2.

Question: Which areas do you think the PS3 has the most chance of growth?
Kawanishi: For Audio and Visual function, it will evolve in the current route. PS3 has many input / output capability, and processing the input for various use will be interesting.
Kanehide: There are other functions for Audio and Visual that are upcoming. Wait and see.

As you can see, lots and lots of possible new fancy stuff, more remote play, a new extensive firmware upgrade every quarter and so on. It’ll be a matter of time to see how much of this stuff they manage to implement in the end. We are definitely looking forward to it!