[mythtv-users] PS3 keys

[Raymond Wagner]

On 1/17/2011 02:27, Nick Rout wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 4:34 AM, Jacob Mansfield<cyberjacob at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 3 January 2011 15:23, Dean Collins<Dean at cognation.net>  wrote:
>>> lol does that count as blackmail ...pay me and we will work with you not
>>> against you?<spam(?) link removed>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Dean
>> 1 what on earth is this
>> 2 what does it have to do with a ps3
>> 3 what does it have to do with mythtv
>> 4 why is it posted on the mythtv mailing list if it is about a ps3
> 3. Info about cracking the PS3 would assist in making it an even
> better/more useful machine,
>
> 4. Ultimately perhaps resulting in a mythfrontend (or an xbmc port, or
> something useful!)

The crack gets you three things: access to the 7th SPE which was 
formerly used to run the hypervisor, access to a few dozen MB of memory 
formerly used to run the hypervisor, and access to the GPU for OpenGL 
support.  Just because you can access the GPU doesn't mean OpenGL will 
magically work, you still need to write drivers for it.  Even were that 
to happen, the GPU does not provide any sort of hardware decoding, that 
all has to be done on the CPU.

The removal of the hypervisor frees up a _single_ SPE.  Linux on the PS3 
has had access to six of the seven for the last four and a half years.  
At current, the best they have managed is partial offload of MPEG2, the 
equivalent of XvMC.  Everything else must be run on the rather limited 
in-order PPE.  The extra SPE will provide the system exactly no 
additional worth as a media player.  Beyond that, the system is 
painfully low on memory, and will be swapping just to boot into Linux 
and start up a 1080p frontend.

The PS3 has absolutely no worth as a Linux media player.

> In reality isn't this crack likely to result in greater hardware sales for Sony?

Why would Sony care?  Sony subsidizes the price of the hardware to 
encourage sales.  They take a hit on each unit sold, under the 
assumption people will be buying lots of games and movies to use on the 
system.  If you crack the system to run Linux, or homebrew games, or HPC 
applications, Sony is losing money.  It is in their best interest to 
keep the system locked down, and keep you using it for their intended 
purposes.