PS3 as a Blu-Ray Player?

OpticalSerenity

I've been playing my video games on an x-Box then a x-box 360 for a long time. But, ever since I got a Samsung 1080p LCD (46") i decided I want a Blu-Ray player.

Well, needless to say, the PS3 is very attractive on that front due to price, and the fact that it does have Folding@Home built in.

I'd probably never play games on it though.

So, how does it stack up as a Blu-Ray player?

Oh, and I own a PSP, and I've heard it has some interactivity with a PSP?

cheddar

It's one of the top Blu-ray players out there. The 1080p picture quality is at the top tier against Sony's own stand-alone and others. And the audio quality has many options since it's HDMI 1.3 compatible for the future. Meaning you have optical out for regular Dolby and DTS. You also have HDMI for uncompressed PCM with TrueHD (It already converts TrueHD to multi-channel PCM) and DTS-MA via firmware updates. And with TrueHD and DTS-MA receiver/pre-pros slated for release later this year, only HDMI 1.3 can pass the HD audio signals to these components for decoding.

TrueHD Blu-rays are slow in coming so far, but Fox has released just about everything in DTS-MA and Sony and Disney release in uncompressed PCM.

A few cautions:

Sony and other stand-alone players should drop in price as new players are released leading up to Christmas. The console might also drop in price at some point.

It doesn't yet do upconversion so standard DVDs play at 480p.

It doesn't have analog outs so you need at least an HDMI 1.1 compatible receiver to listen to all the uncompressed PCM goodness.

The AV remote (or game controllers as well) is bluetooth instead of infra-red. So you can control it from the next room but you can't use a universal remote on it.

Otherwise, it's just an outstanding player. Great PQ and AQ and it plays games. It doesn't have a lot right now, but I'm not sure why you would be excited about Folding@Home but not plan to play any games. They'll release over time and if you're a gamer, why not play them?

powerlord

Cheddar is right,it does have the optical audio out though and the sound is beautiful.

tommyboy

OpticalSerenity wrote: »

I've been playing my video games on an x-Box then a x-box 360 for a long time. But, ever since I got a Samsung 1080p LCD (46") i decided I want a Blu-Ray player.

Well, needless to say, the PS3 is very attractive on that front due to price, and the fact that it does have Folding@Home built in.

I'd probably never play games on it though.

So, how does it stack up as a Blu-Ray player?

Oh, and I own a PSP, and I've heard it has some interactivity with a PSP?

It depends, you say you will probably never play the games. Well, if you might,go ahead and get it. but if you aren't going use it they way it was designed, then just get a dedicated blue-ray and save a few bucks. Either way you will get great picture and sound quality.

Shizelbs

IIRC, the PS3 is still currently the cheapest BR player right now.

Metric

I use my ps3 pretty much for movie playback only, although that has also been limited, im contemplating a dedicated machine, i hear the version 2 units are better.

I did see a refurb samsung for 349 on tech bargains the other day.