Using AI Appropriately

I had the pleasure of helping develop the PlayStation 5 video-game console when I worked in Research and Development at Sony Interactive Entertainment. One of the advantages of the hardware is that the file system is fast enough so it is not necessary to keep multiple copies of digital assets. What does that mean? When you create a virtual world, it is made up of a number of digital assets such as trees, rocks, buildings, or any number of other things we find in the real world. Most of the time, those assets are used over and over again. For the sake of an example, a forest is made up of a lot of trees. There may be only 5 different tree models created for a game and then they are reused many times to give the illusion of a forest. With the PS4, game designers would copy those 5 trees hundreds of times. That isn't necessary on a PS5 as you can have just the 5 tree types and point back to each one on the file system any time you need it. Assuming each tree requires 4KB of memory (an arbitrary value pulled out of thin air) and you have 1000 of each tree in a game, the PS4 would require 4MB for each tree used while the PS5 only needs 4KB. Theoretically PS5 games should be significantly smaller than for other game consoles. This becomes very helpful for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 that required 2 Blu-ray disks for the game. For physical game disks, it saves a bit of money and for digital downloads, they don't take as long to put on your system.

So what does that have to do with using AI appropriately? It boils down to why game developers only make 5 tree models. Most gamers don't slow down and look at every tree in a forest to see if it is different than all the others. So why take the time to create more than 5? If you can throw the problem at a generative AI program, you can let it create hundreds of different trees. This provides a level of uniqueness currently missing in a lot of games. This totally eliminates the benefit of the PS5 over other gaming consoles as its games once again become bloated. The reality is that while the PS5 doesn't require duplication of digital assets doesn't mean game studios are using the feature. You will still find copies of digital assets spread throughout quite a few games. Why not make the games more unique?

I have been thinking about this issue for the past couple of days and came up with another area where the use of AI should be applied. I walked through my kitchen this morning to get myself some breakfast. My floor is a high-quality laminate with a simulated pine surface. While pine is great looking, it is a very soft wood and makes horrible flooring that is easily scratched and dented. Using a high-quality laminate allows it to be almost indestructible yet look beautiful. The downside to a laminate is that there are only about 5 patterns on the boards. They repeat quite often and if you look closely you notice a lot of the boards are the same. The laminate floor company could use AI to create 100 different patterns instead of just 5. This would create a much more unique floor.

Yes these two solutions for generative AI don't seem to be high priority. After all if they were, companies would spend the effort to make their products more unique. The beauty of using AI is that products can become more unique and special without humans having to spend more time making it happen. You will still need those humans to fine-tune what is generated but their time can be spent being creative and not doing repetitive and mundane tasks.

 

Getting the Most out of my PlayStation 5

When I first got my PlayStation 5, I kept it on my desk in my home office as I used it for work. Now that I am no longer working for Sony Interactive Entertainment, I have moved it into my theater room. I now have it connected to my brand-new 85-inch television. Unfortunately it was not as simple as plugging it into my TV as I had to also connect it to my surround-sound system.

Yesterday I posted about the importance of refresh rates and why 120 frames per second or Hz is significant for the latest televisions. I want to preserve the high refresh rate from my PlayStation 5 and that just isn't possible if I plug it into my current television receiver which is then connected to the TV. My receiver only supports 60 Hz at 4K and I do not want to spend money replacing it right now. I probably will in the future but for now I want to keep using it. So how do I keep the high video quality and also keep the high sound quality?

I can't take full credit for this as my oldest son helped me figure it out. The solution is to use the audio return channel or eARC HDMI output from the television. The high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) has been around for over 15 years and has evolved to allow for various scenarios like this. When I set up my PlayStation 5, I plugged it directly into my new television using one of it's two HDMI 2.1 interfaces. The second is used to connect the TV to the receiver. Now what happens is the picture and sound are sent to the television from the PS5. The sound is then sent back to the receiver for that shake-the-neighbors experience. HDMI works both ways so that any devices connected to the receiver use that same HDMI interface into the television.

One would think that with a PS5 I wouldn't need to connect any other device. It streams video, has a DVD drive, a Blu-ray drive, and can play 4K Blu-ray disks. I also have a PS4 Pro connected to a PlayStation VR as well as an old VHS video cassette player, from Sony, of course. The moment you connect your PS VR to your PS4, you lose the ability to play games in 4K without having to swap cables. Rather than deal with that, I just kept my PS4 Pro and use it with my PS VR. I also use it to play video games with my grandson and keep a healthy mix of age-appropriate games loaded on it. As for the VHS tapes, their quality is really horrible even with 4K upscaling. You never know when you may need to watch an old video though.

My son and I connected everything and then started watching Return of the Jedi on Disney+. While we enjoy the movie, we wanted to make sure the sound and picture were in sync. After all, nothing ruins the experience of a movie when you hear an explosion before you see it. The lip movement not matching the dialog can also be really annoying, which is why I prefer subtitles to dubbing for non-English movies. Fortunately both the TV and the receiver have mechanisms for delaying one or the other. In my case, the sound led the picture. I went into the receiver settings and added a 10ms delay. That improved things somewhat but wasn't perfect. I upped the delay to 20ms and everything synced perfectly. If it had been the other way around and the picture led the sound, I would have added the delay to the television.

Once we got the timing worked out on the PS5, I had to go in and check it on the PS4 and VHS cassette player. The PS4 is in sync but there is a 20ms delay on the VHS. I can turn off the delay setting in the receiver when I play video tapes to solve that problem. As I doubt I will watch a lot of VHS tapes, I'm fine not worrying about it. I can probably set custom parameters for each device and save them to the receiver but am fine with how things are set up now.

Should you find yourself with a new PS5 and an older receiver, just connect it directly to the television. Then use eARC to pull in your surround-sound receiver. You may have to adjust some settings but once you get it set up, you will be amazed at the quality.

A Late Christmas List

Normally I am much more together and have my Christmas Gift Idea list put together long before now. This year I have been procrastinating it. Part of the reason is that I have pretty much all of the material possessions I could want. Getting more just means I have to find a place for it all. My house is overflowing with stuff to the point that it is time to start getting rid of some of it. Perhaps it might help you to know what things I would keep as I mentally catalog my computer equipment.

One of my favorite gadgets is my color laser printer. You can find them for around $200 and I highly recommend one. A lot of people don't print because they think it is bad for the environment. I agree but sometimes you need to print something and if you are going to use a sheet of paper, you might as well print it in color. In this day and age, I think a black-and-white printer is a waste of money. There is probably a joke in there about how it will practically print money. Just don't try that at home or the secret service will come after you.

Sticking with the theme of printers, my next favorite gadget is my 3D printer. If you have someone on your Christmas list that loves building prototypes or playing with computer aided drawing (CAD) programs, a 3D printer should be on your list. They can get rather expensive and so I only recommend one if you can get away with a less-expensive model. I still enjoy my Creality Ender 3 and think it is a great beginner printer. I must confess though that my son uses it more than I do but that is why I got it.

My next recommendation would be for dual monitors if you have someone on your list that doesn't already have them. While in Japan this past week I did not have the luxury of dual monitors on my laptop and I really missed it. With a bit of searching you can find a second monitor that will work with most computers for only around $120. I suggest a minimum resolution of 1920x1080p. All of my computers have dual monitors at work and at home.

Another peripheral that is often overlooked is a USB CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc drive. My last several laptops have not had internal drives and that is fine most of the time. However every once and a while you really need one and when you do, you need it badly. I have one that I keep on my desk at home and another one that I have in my office at work. They both come in handy every so often.

Finally I have one more recommendation for those of you that might have a really tight Christmas-gift budget. I do not have enough phone charger cables. I use USB-C for one of my phones and a Lightning connector for the other. I carry all sorts of spares and am amazed at how many times other people need to borrow them. On occasion I need them too. A couple of each would make great stocking stuffers.

I don't think there is any big surprise in this list. Perhaps you might not think about how important a color laser printer is or how useful a spare phone charging cable can be. My experience has taught me that they are and you really miss them when you don't have them.

Disc vs. Streaming

Recently I mentioned the Disney+ video streaming service. After playing with it for a while, I now have to ask myself what to do with all of the Disney DVD and Blu-ray discs I have. This is not a new problem as I originally owned them all on VHS video cassette. Over the years I have systematically replaced all of my favorites with the DVD and Blu-ray equivalents. Now I don't need any of them as I can get them all on Disney+ wherever I am in the world.

The move from physical copies of media is something the music industry faced over the past decade. Go try to find a CD of your latest favorite song. It can be tough because people have stopped buying CD discs. For a while, people were buying individual songs on services like iTunes. Now everything has gone to streaming. If you want to listen to a specific song, you just go to YouTube and pull up the music video which may or may not actually be a video.

I don't plan to get rid of my Blu-ray collection of movies any time soon. There are a number of my favorite movies that are tough to find on any streaming service. I am still looking for one of my favorite movies on disc that I used to have on VHS. Most people would think it is not that great of a movie but I really enjoyed it as a teenager.

I am also waiting how long it takes for people to tire of paying the monthly fee for access to movies. If you watch a movie several times a week, then paying for the streaming service makes sense. However if you only watch once or twice a month, there are some people that will justify pay-per-view, owning a disc, or owning the digital rights to favorite movies.

Ultimately I think the movie industry will follow the music industry and we will stop purchasing physical discs. While my current preference is to own physical media, I may be in the minority soon. The writing is on the wall.

Hardware is No Longer Enough

I went to a company's presentation on Tuesday where they talked about how well sales are going. This company is known for producing hardware but have discovered that hardware needs infrastructure. Now half of the company's sales are for online services. That is a big shift in business.

The Apple iPod is probably one of the first instances where it became clear that hardware is no longer enough. When they released the original music player, Apple knew that they also needed a marketplace where users could go to buy content for the new device. They then invested in the infrastructure necessary to create an online music store. Furthermore they did the job well and have grown it to also include software for their mobile phones. Google had no choice but to match that investment in order for Android phones to even be considered an alternative to the iPhone.

Now we see the same thing happening for other consumer electronics companies. When video game companies released the first versions of consoles, all games came on some sort of media. Nintendo created cartridges while Sony started with CD ROM's. The latest versions of video consoles continue to support Blu-ray disks but both Microsoft and PlayStation have online stores where you can purchase digital copies of games.

Think about other consumer-electronic devices. How long will it be before Cannon and Nikon create online services that interact with the next-generation camera equipment? Companies should be looking at this new revenue stream and embrace it. Those that do will succeed while those that don't will cease to exist.

Disk or Digital Download

This evening I watched the movie Cars 3 using a digital streaming service. This brought up a conversation about purchasing disks on movies or streaming them. My personal preference is to purchase disks and my oldest daughter echoed that sentiment when she pointed out that she tried to watch Cool Runnings on a streaming service but it is no longer available. When you own the disk, you never have to worry about that problem.

At the office we have similar discussion going on: are disks better than digital downloads for games. Once again my preference is a physical disk. I do see how a digital download can be better though. I travel between Utah and California weekly. When I play a video game from a disk, I have to carry that disk with me back and forth. If I purchased the game as a digital download, I would just need to download it to my console in California and my console in Utah but only purchase it once. Then I wouldn't need to carry a disk back and forth.

The reason we watched tonight's movie as a digital download is that nobody felt like going to a store to purchase a disk copy. I just turned on my TV and ordered it through one of my online services. I also had a free coupon so I didn't even have to pay for the viewing this evening. Ultimately I will be going to get the movie on disk as it is one I want to keep in my video library. That way when the grand kids show up, I can just pull out the disk.

What would be nice is a service that lets you buy the movie or game online. Then they ship you the disk so you can have a copy later. That is the best of both worlds.

The Achilles Heel of the PlayStation 4

Last night I practiced my guitar as my daughter came in and asked if I wanted to watch a movie. Being in the middle of a song, I wanted to finish it before hanging out so I told her to get started without me. She headed down to the TV room and booted up our other PS4. The only problem is that I was in the middle of my song using Rocksmith on the console in my bedroom. The PlayStation 4 does not allow you to be logged in at the same time on 2 different physical machines and that is its Achilles heel.

I had to laugh as my daughter yelled up a sincere, "Sorry," when she heard me tell my wife why I suddenly stopped practicing my guitar. Last night was not the first time we encountered this problem and probably won't be the last. My daughter could have used the dedicated DVD player or our PlayStation 3 but prefers to use the PS4 as it does so better than any movie player available today.

There is a very simple solution to getting booted from my PS4: create a user on it in the TV room specifically for watching movies. I could even name it something like "Movie Watcher." That way when someone else in the house wants to watch a movie, I get kicked off my console in the bedroom.

PS4 First Impressions

The new PlayStation 4 has some impressive features. It also has some problems. Most of the problems I have encountered are software related and so I know they can be fixed with an update. The biggest problem is that there is an update to begin with. I got wind that the update was going to be huge and so I downloaded it to a memory stick yesterday. Then when I turned on my PS4, I held the on button for 7 seconds and listened for a beep. This put the console in safe mode and allowed me to install the update. Then I could begin playing games. Unfortunately the PlayStation Network is so overwhelmed with people logging in and trying to install the almost 1 GB update that I couldn't download any of the new PS4 games and am stuck playing the only game I purchased on disk so far: Killzone Shadow Fall. Don't worry, I ordered a couple of more games this afternoon.

The first thing I noticed was how superior the graphics are over the PS3. Don't get me wrong, the graphics on the PS3 are incredible. The PS4 is just that much better. We are playing both PS4 and PS3 games this evening and so it is easy to notice how much better the PS4 really is. The PS4 games have intricate detail while the PS3 ones looks plastic and fake.

We also tried to watch some movies on the PS4 today with mixed results. DVD's played just fine. Some Blu-ray disks worked without any problems on the PS4 while others didn't. Speed Racer played flawlessly and I felt it looked better on the PS4. Neither Chasing Mavericks nor Avatar would play. As for 3D Blu-rays, I don't think they are supported yet. The only 3D disk I own is Avatar and I was not even given the option of 2D or 3D, just 2D and that didn't work. No worries though as I still have my 2 PS3 units that play them just fine. I have also not been able to get to the PlayStation Store because of connections problems.

I'm sure it will take a bit to get the kinks worked out of the PS4 and so don't feel bad if you have to wait a bit before you can pick one up. I also talked with the folks at my local Gamestop and Best Buy stores this evening. They are both getting more shipments soon and so you should be able to get one before Christmas if that is what your family wants. The trick to finding one will be to ask the store when the next shipment comes in and being their that day. Otherwise you run the risk of someone else getting your console.

3D Television

Two years ago I purchased a new television for my bedroom. I picked up a nice 32-inch HDTV from Sony at Costco. It was a nice purchase that increased my old bedroom TV size quite a bit, yet small enough to hide in a cabinet when not in use. We got so accustomed to watching the new TV that it was only a matter of time before I replaced the family one. That time came a few months ago and it has been nice.

I can't remember the year I bought my Hitachi Ultravision, but it was probably close to 15 years ago. I picked up a bunch of speakers and a really nice Pioneer receiver at the same time. I put everything together in my family room and had a THX certified theater in my house. I probably would have replaced the TV a while ago if I didn't worry about all of the other audiovisual equipment as well.

Finally I decided to replace both the TV and the receiver as everything is now moving away from RCA jacks and going towards HDMI connections. My experience with the TV in my bedroom had me looking at Sony products and I decided to get one of the R550 televisions capable of 3D. I also picked up a nice receiver with a ton of HDMI inputs. It arrived on a Friday and I had it all set up before going to bed.

I had resisted getting the movie Avatar on DVD or Blu-ray until I got a 3D capable television. So the next day, I hit the local discount store and picked up a Blu-ray copy that was way overpriced. I have to say that it was spectacular. Not wanting to buy another expensive movie, I downloaded Jack the Giant Slayer from Sony's PlayStation Network for $5. The movie was only mediocre, but the 3D effect made it well worth my time to watch.

Yes, I will admit that 3D is a gimmick. However I have to say that I really enjoy watching movies in 3D. I even turned on the simulated 3D while watching Chasing Mavericks and the waves were really spectacular. Considering that the price difference between a 60-inch television with 3D and one without is only $200, I highly recommend spending the extra money. I also recommend Sony's R550 series as they use the same passive 3D glasses that you get at the movie theater. The only problem is that you may never want to leave your home again.