Brand New PS3 Owner Review (Xbox 360 Owner)

[bcatwilly]

Well, I finally jumped into the HD movie arena by going for the Amazon deal after the PS3 price drop. I have no idea who will win the format war, but it does seem that more movies that I would want to own are exclusive to Blu-Ray, and I use Blockbuster who threw their support behind it now too and has Blu-Ray movies at my local store also. On to my impressions.

1. Setup

It was very easy to setup, and the built-in WiFi was perfect for my room setup so that I could have one less wire and easily update to the latest 1.82 firmware that gives you all of the goodies that made me jump.

2. Interface

While the interface certainly is usable enough, I must confess that I prefer the visual punch of the Xbox Live interface much more.

3. Blu-Ray Movie Playback

I watched Apocalypto as my first Blu-Ray, which others seem to say is one of the better quality transfers. I am currently watching on a Sanyo Z4 720p projector on 120" screen until I can hopefully upgrade to a 1080p projector to show all of the detail (much more to be gained when viewing movies at these large sizes of course) present in the 1080p Blu-Ray movies. I love broadcast HDTV like ABC Lost on my projector, and I could certainly tell that the Blu-Ray movie was HD quality. I can't say that the jump with my particular setup was HUGE due to how large a picture I project at 720p, but it is definitely HD compared to my 480p standard DVDs before.

4. Standard DVD Playback

I had not purchased an upconverting player yet, so I had no prior experience with that. I had read very good reviews on how the PS3 handles this with the new 1.82 firmware. I was VERY impressed in my initial testing where I toggled the upconversion on and off during the same scene , obviously source material is not true HD but it sure sharpens up the picture nicely.

5. Media Center functionality

One nice thing about the PS3 compared to the Xbox 360 is that it will search for any standard "Media Server", not just Windows Media Center. Of course I easily had it working with Media Center from my desktop PC with Vista installed.

6. HDV Camcorder Footage Playback

This feature was honestly the clincher that allowed me to justify the purchase of a PS3. I have a Canon HV20 HD camcorder. The "raw" captures from the camcorder using the free HDVSplit tool are MPEG Transport Stream (.m2t) files. Note that the PS3 also will play the AVCHD .m2ts files.

Until the cost of Blu-Ray burners and media is reasonable in the next couple years, I can copy about 20 minutes of my straight captured HD video as a .m2t file onto a standard DVD (single or dual layer) that plays great at its highest quality in the PS3. So basically I can "archive" an hour long MiniDV/HDV tape to 3 standard DVDs (can be had for about 33 cents a piece nowadays) so that I have another backup copy of the highest quality footage captured from the camcorder AND just pop them into the PS3 and watch them any time that I want also

7. Games

I haven't even tried a game yet, not the reason I bought one because frankly there doesn't seem to be much on it yet compared to the Xbox 360. People talk about MotorStorm so I may try it out. I would love it if they had Twisted Metal on the PS3, that game was a blast.

All things considered I am a VERY happy PS3 owner