BR Player advice from a 360 / HD DVD Fan

[sparksj]

I own an Xbox 360 and bought in to HD DVD when it came out. I, like many, was mad when HD DVD lost. Liking all the extras that came with HD DVD, I thought I would have to wait until October to get a Blu Ray player because I wanted profile 2.0.

Being an Xbox fan, I kind of bought in to the whole “never get a PS3” thing, since I didn’t want to support a competing game console. So, being an analyst by profession, I set out to look for the best Blu Ray player. However, the facts always brought me back to the PS3.

I decided I was too old and too emotionally intelligent to be stupid and boycott the PS3 for such a dumb reason as being loyal to Microsoft. This is the joy of capitalism. If Microsoft wants my loyalty, they will have to earn it by producing a better product. Until then, my purchases will be based on which company offers me the best bargain for my money. And, at this point, PS3 offers the best Blu Ray option for the money.

I have had the PS3 for about three days now and felt the need to write this from the perspective of an Xbox / HD DVD fan. The purpose of this is to keep other Xbox fans from making the same mistake I almost made and avoid the PS3 because of the whole 360 - PS3 rivalry.

At first glance:
I’ll admit I was reluctant to purchase the PS3, but I had to based on what it offered. Upon taking it out of the box, it took me only about 1 minute to set it up. The first thing I did was set it up on my wireless network (Since I never read directions) It took me about 2 minutes to find the mac address so I could enter it in to my router filter. The connection process was easy and flawless. The next thing I did was update the firmware. That took about 2 minutes. Then I put in one of the 5 BR discs I bought. Everything worked perfectly and load time was only about 5 seconds. I’ll list more pros and cons later. But first I want to talk about what impressed me the most.

Having had my 360 set up to stream video and music, I decided to try that on the PS3 too. I expected it to be a harder process than the Xbox, since the 360 was meant to connect via media center (I’m running Windows Vista). To my surprise, the PS3 was actually easier to set up than the box (not that either was hard). There were three simple steps.
1. Set up the IP address to be allowed on my firewall.
2. Set up the files to look at in Media Center.
3. Add the PS3 to my media shared services.
4. Turn on the PS3. I didn’t even have to enter a code like on the 360.

That was so damn easy and the streaming quality is terrific.

Now, since I’m being so wordy, lets go right to the pros and cons

Pros:
Wireless connectivity
Very quite (My DVR hard drive makes more noise than the PS3)
Very easy menu system (You won’t have to waste time reading the manual)
It looks nice (I like the shiny black box)
Fairly nice remote although back-lighting would be nice (even though I had to buy it, I had to do the same for the 360)
Streaming works very well
The PS3 can read WMV files, so I can use the same video encodes for both the 360 and PS3.
PQ and SQ are great. I admit that I can’t tell a big difference from HD DVD on certain movies, but I do notice much better PQ on Disney movies. I still think PQ is more a factor of the studios effort to encode rather than the format itself. But then I also am running it through the TV speakers on a 1080i 50 inch plasma TV. So, I’m not going to argue the PQ and SQ issue. I can just say that on my equipment, there’s no big difference.
Price – This is a big factor. For everything you get, I can’t see why anyone would get a stand alone player (unless they want the extra audio decoders that the PS3 doesn’t have).

Cons: I can only think of 2 cons. One is specific to us Xbox fans.
1. As an Xbox fan, you will need to swallow your pride a bit to buy a PS3. I came to the realization that it’s stupid to be loyal to one system. They both have their benefits. Just be a capitalist. If someone offers a good product for the money, and it fulfills your need, then buy it.
2. The only other thing I can think of as a con is that the Bluetooth remote makes me feel stupid. I keep pointing it at the PS3 as if that would help. “Duh! It’s not IR… quit pointing it at the PS3 dummy”.

Overall, I am very pleased with my decision to get the PS3. Any Xbox fans looking at getting a BR player should really consider it. It offers so many other benefits that I didn’t mention above. Just do the research.