Is there an article detailing how the PS3 is better than a standalone?

[rawn o'neal]

I am trying to find an article for a friend who is undecided on to get a ps3 for his bluray player or a standalone, i have searched but come up with pages and pages of results, do any of you have the article or review on why the ps3 is a better blu-ray movie player than a standalone player?



thanks in advance.

[Zyclone]

im sure someone else can give you a more indepth answear but at $600 you get a new gen gaming console plus a blu ray player. If you have a net hook up you can download firmware and what not for your ps3 that will add more to the console and the blu ray player. plus because the ps3 has all that jazz for running games it also makes the player one of the fastest on the market.

So i guess decent price , good player , plus games if thats your bag makes the ps3 are better choice over the current stand alone players.

[rawn o'neal]

Thanks Zyclone, I explained this to him, but he is a "stats", "why and why and why" type of guy, so I will add your info to our conversation.

hopefully i can find an article reviewing and comparing on why the PS3 is the better player compared to standalone players...


thanks anyway, i will check back tommorrow to see if there are more replies.

[cawgijoe]

Here are some reviews.....keep in mind that some of these are older and there have been firmware updates since....the main ones, upscaling capability added for SD DVD playback and I believe 720p playback.

For what it's worth:

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/hd-...e-console.html

http://ultimateavmag.com/hddiscplayers/1206ps3blu/

I would say that the PS3 is the best bet right now for a Blu-ray player. As time goes by and the standalones become more sophesticated and less expensive, and if all you want if BD playback, that may change.

If the format were to fail, which I highly doubt, the PS3 is still a gaming console and you should be able to recover more of your cost if you were to sell.

Just some thoughts. Hope this helps.

[sportsfan8]

I also weighed the option of either the PS3 or a standalone BD player. Ultimately, I decided to go with the BDP-S300 mainly because I won't be playing any games at all, and I wanted a DVD player that could also HD upconvert to 1080p.

IMO, I think that's also why Sony lowered the BDP-S300 to $499. They wanted to distinguish the price point from the PS3.

[Iceman_II]

People who choose the standalone over the PS3 are COMPLETELY missing its potential as a media center. It not only plays MP4s from memory sticks etc (and a good 700Mb/Hour 720p MP4 is hard to tell from an HD-DVR recording) but more importantly, you can bloody well STREAM video from your PC to your PS3

The PS3 is NOT a stand alone, it is NOT a game system, it IS a damn fine media center. And by relying on the power of the cell processors to do the heavy lifting instead of hardware for things such as up-converting, it is infinately upgradable compared to standalones.

[WickyWoo]

People who choose the standalone over the PS3 are COMPLETELY missing its potential as a media center

I really wish people would get their definitions right. PS3 is standalone in every definition of the word. You're talking about a DEDICATED player. And people who choose dedicated decks are choosing them for the 6-channel analog out, the far superior DACs and the dedicated and tuned data pipelines specifically for movie playback

And I wouldn't be counting on the Cell as this miracle worker. Considering that film playback is essentially one fat pipe, those extra processors aren't doing much

Anyone who works in high end electronics will tell you that having dedicated specialized hardware beats the generic every time when it comes to what you can ring out of it in the long run.

[Amon37]

What do you think that standalones will be able to do in the long run that the PS3 will not?

[WickyWoo]

DEDICATED

Read the above.

[Iceman_II]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Anyone who works in high end electronics will tell you that having dedicated specialized hardware beats the generic every time when it comes to what you can ring out of it in the long run.

As long as "what you can ring out" is a technology available in the snapshot in time when the product was produced.

Far superior DACs??? They may be "marginally" superior, but I seem to recall NO reviews where ANY dedicated player significantly beat the PS3 in picture quality... if there is one, please enlighten us.

And people who care about audio do NOT by players because they decode, that is what audio components are for.

Dedicated and tuned data pipelines for movies? Hate to tell you this, but the data throughput for video games is pretty stinking high as well.

While you "wish people would get their definitions right" I wish people would stop throwing up chaf in attempts to minimize the quality/utility/performance of the PS3, simply to justify their purchase of a "dedicated player"... All it amounts to is a show of pretension.

[inaz4sun]

Read CNET's review.

[sportsfan8]

I don't think anybody is seriously (not in this thread, at least) "minimizing the quality/utility/performance of the PS3." People make their own decisions based on their system at home, certain features, etc. Some people don't need the media center features of the PS3. Hey, we should be happy we're all in the same club. Blu-ray kicks ass.

[WickyWoo]

Far superior DACs??? They may be "marginally" superior, but I seem to recall NO reviews where ANY dedicated player significantly beat the PS3 in picture quality... if there is one, please enlighten us.

Depends on how you define signifigant. I'll freely admit that right now you're right, but like with DVD players I don't think you'll be right 2 years from now.

And people who care about audio do NOT by players because they decode, that is what audio components are for.

Right now they do, until HDMI 1.3 recievers hit and something less than a good used car

Dedicated and tuned data pipelines for movies? Hate to tell you this, but the data throughput for video games is pretty stinking high as well

And those pipes are tweaked for games. Not movies, though they do fine.

While you "wish people would get their definitions right" I wish people would stop throwing up chaf in attempts to minimize the quality/utility/performance of the PS3, simply to justify their purchase of a "dedicated player"... All it amounts to is a show of pretension.

I'm not. The point i was making was that the value as a media hub does not outweigh the value of a solidly built dedicated player, especially to an enthusiast, and it won't take long for there to be plenty of decks that do pass the PS3 in quality.

[Rup_Muk]

Rawn,
Welcome to this forum.
I guess your "friend" has already decided that s/he wants to go blu - and now the decision to be made is whether to put down 600 moolahs for the PS3 or 500 big ones on the S300. There are quite a few compelling reasons already provided - and here's my $0.02...

The PS3 is both a BR player and a game console.
The PS3 can be configured to load LINUX and function as a computer.
You can read e-mail with a huge HD "monitor".
You can instigate chats with friends.
When PS3 Home is released, you can be a member of an online community.
You can download trailers, game demos, games from the PSN.
You can backup data on an external hard drive.
You can upgrade to a larger hard drive.
You can stream photos, music, and videos from your LAN computer.

In other words, the PS3 is what Microsoft and Apple and Dell envisioned their media centers would be.

Want more reasons? Ask again.

While I had commiserated over the purchase of the PS3 in Dec '06, once I had it going, I wondered why I ever thought so much about it!

Thank you to you and your "friend" for going BLU!!!

Rup.

[WickyWoo]

The PS3 is both a BR player and a game console.
The PS3 can be configured to load LINUX and function as a computer.
You can read e-mail with a huge HD "monitor".
You can instigate chats with friends.
When PS3 Home is released, you can be a member of an online community.
You can download trailers, game demos, games from the PSN.
You can backup data on an external hard drive.
You can upgrade to a larger hard drive.
You can stream photos, music, and videos from your LAN computer.

I can already do this on a strange device known as a "PC", which can also magically be hooked up to said TV, and holds a lot more stuff, and not on tiny expensive laptop drives, and there's no need to stream what's already there

And might I add, my media machine was built from spare parts from other machines

[devils3023]

No need for your smart ass remarks here.... Everyone here is a blu-ray fan whether they own a ps3 or dedicated blu-ray player. If you prefer using a dedicated player and a pc for everything else that's cool, but don't put down those that chose the ps3 as an all-in-one solution/media center...

[supersix4]

I think the ps3 is the better choice bc of how much better it is at updating things all that I mean if some new sound / video thing comes out other people might have to replace there players with the new one where ps3 owners can just dl it and use it bc of all the gb storage / power

[ForceMd]

Everyone is giving good advice, but I think most are getting sidetracked or missing the point.

@sportsfan8
The PS3 now supports HD upconversion of DVD video with some caveats.

1) Upconversion of DVDs is only possible via HDMI

2) Currently the PS3 upconversion while excellent, is not the best. It will certainly beat any sub $100 HDMI DVD player, but as far as I have read on various forums (mainly AVS) it doesn't beat the best players such as the Oppo 971. I'm not sure how it compares to the BDP-S300.

@WickyWoo
While I have no doubt that future stand-alone blu-ray players will surpass the quality of the PS3, the fact is, currently, there is little to no difference between the quality of the PS3 and the best blu-ray stand-alone (again, I don't know how this fares with the BDP-S300). So, unless the BDP-S300 is significantly better in terms of PQ than the PS3, or the OP's friend is willing to wait for the better stand-alones, then there is no reason for him/her not to consider the PS3 based on its additional features.

@sportsfan8
Again, since the quality of stand-alone players and the PS3 are currently so close, I don't see much reason not to consider the PS3 based on the additional features it provides. IMHO there are only a few good reasons NOT consider the PS3 as a blu-ray player
1) form factor; The PS3, while well designed (I like it) still looks like a gaming console.
2) controll; the PS3's bluetooth remote limits its integration into the rest of a home theater setup via an all-in-one remote such as a Harmony.
3) as already been pointed out, analog audio output for use with existing high end home theater systems.

@WickyWoo post #15
Yes you may be able to do this all on your current media center PC, but add blu-ray capability and an HDCP compliant video card to your PC and tell me how much it costs.

I consider myself lucky because I only picked up the PS3 just before the "big" 1.80 update. I must admit that if I had picked one up at it's early stage before this update, I would have been severely disappointed and might have returned it. (I'm not much of a gamer, though the PS3 has begun to restore the gamer in me also. I currently have RFOM and even picked up some PS2 titles :both GOW games and Shadow of the Colossus). As of now you cannot beat the functionality and the quality that the PS3 offers as a home media system.

[inaz4sun]

And add to all of that, if you own a Sony HD camcorder you can play your native HD files on the PS3 and it plays the AVCHD discs directly as well. That is the main reason I bought mine.

[WickyWoo]

@WickyWoo
While I have no doubt that future stand-alone blu-ray players will surpass the quality of the PS3, the fact is, currently, there is little to no difference between the quality of the PS3 and the best blu-ray stand-alone (again, I don't know how this fares with the BDP-S300). So, unless the BDP-S300 is significantly better in terms of PQ than the PS3, or the OP's friend is willing to wait for the better stand-alones, then there is no reason for him/her not to consider the PS3 based on its additional features.

Dedicated players. Please use the right terminology. The PS3 is standalone in every sense of the word

Yes you may be able to do this all on your current media center PC, but add blu-ray capability and an HDCP compliant video card to your PC and tell me how much it costs.

But why would I do that, especially when the VGA/DVI connection offers no downsides?

You tout the media center capabilities of PS3. I'm addressing those. I would never use a PC for my primary media playback. It's for trailers, downloads and DVR, the latter of which I'd love to replace with a dedicated box if I could get one cheap without signing up for TiVO (don't want to rent one from cable and don't have cable)