Sony's PlayStation 3 gets re-reviewed: Blu-ray abilities smiled upon
By Darren Murph 
posted Jun 6th 2008 3:46PM
posted Jun 6th 2008 3:46PM
[Via BLORGE]
posted Jun 6th 2008 3:46PM
The amount of electronics thrown away rather than recycled in 2007.
The EPA reports that 82% of electronics disposal in 2007 ended up in the garbage (mostly landfills) rather than a recycling center. (source: EPA, July 2008)
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I don't know, it's still pricey in my opinion. The last two DVD players I purchased were each under $200-- in fact one was under $100, so the PS3 at $400 for the cheapest model is still out of my comfort zone for a movie player. And that it wouldn't work with my universal remote is a bit of a concern. Both my DVD players are operational and each support upscaling. So it's not like I need a replacement.
I'd like to see a name brand Blu-Player thats $199 or less which supports IR and is Profile 2. If that happens, then I'll be intersted.
Well I guess eventually you might see one... but I hope you're ready to wait at least another year +.
400 dollars is a great value. PS3 acts not just Blu-ray movies and games, but as a Media Server so you can access pictures, music, and videos from your PC. Has a 40GB or 80GB hard drive that can store all of your media. The only Video Up Conversion i've truly approved of was the PS3, up conversion is 20 times better than any stand alone.
Since your not using your HDTV, can i have it?
You are forgetting that the PS3 is easily upgradeable where as 99% of the others are not. So two years down the line when there is a major upgrade to firmware the PS3 most likely will be able to upgrade. Will you be able to say that about a sub $200 box?
I know that paying another $55 isn't the ideal solution, but you can get a PS3 to work perfectly with an IR universal remote if you use an IR2BT:
http://ir2bt.com/
You even lets you Power it on and off with a remote.
Count yourselves lucky in the US. Its £300/$600 for the 40GB model with just one game for the PS3 in the UK. That's 50% more than you guys pay. We wont see prices here like that for at least 6-8 months.
I'm waiting for the price to come down here before I invest in one. And for GT5 to be released, of course. Until then, my now redundant HD DVD player and 360 will be getting some good usage.
I don't have any quibbles whatsoever with the PS3 being the best Blu player on the market. It's simply true. The other players out don't support the necessary upgrades to deal with the changes that are finally implementing the features that catch Blu up to HD-DVD.
That, as a person who liked HD-DVD is a very good thing. I don't mind losing the format as long as it's defining features are merged into Blu, which is what should have happened all along, and I really don't understand why Sony stood in the way of it...
However, as a game machine, the PS3 isn't at the top of the heap by a long way for me.
The PS3 is incredible value for what it contains. I think it needs a slim model is long overdue because its certainly a bloater but I can't fault it for the functionality it has.
IT's funny, I actually wanted SONY to fall flat on it's face with the PS3 right before they launched... and they almost did. I especially hated the fact that the PS3 omitted IR. It was a lot of SOny hate going on in my mind for reasons I don't even remember anymore (oh yeah, lik sang, those sony BASTARDS!!). Fast forward to now, Sony continues to impress me with the PS3. I am very happy I picked one up. It's definitely worth the $400 even without the games. Love my BD movies and am looking forward to growing my HD movie collection. I also have the itch to buy a game or two for it, but my gaming is mostly 360... just can't beat it's library.
"IT's funny, I actually wanted SONY to fall flat on it's face with the PS3"
Um I think they did, they just managed to pick themselves back up.
At $299 (I picked it up Wednesday and got the $100 Walmart gift card) It's hard to ignore as well. Gotta wait a week to get the HDMI cable from Microbarn since the lowest price I could find locally was $29 for 6' but even with the composite cable it looks good. I couldn't see buying a game console for $600 or even $400 but an upgradeable BD player and media extender that also plays games for $299 I can get behind.
You're credability went out the window with the words "composite cable".
Your credibility went out the window with your failure to spell "your" correctly.
He probably meant component--an easy mistake that really anyone could make, and quality wise, there isn't really a difference between component and HDMI. With HDMI, it's really just an issue of convience, and having 1 cable instead of 4-5.
No, he probably meant composite. The PS3 doesn't ship with a component cable, and I don't think he's the kind of person to mail order an HDMI cable while buying a component cable from best buy or target for twenty bucks.
Should he have gone on a 1-week crying jag about how he is without HDMI in order to preserve his internet cred? Life gave him a week of lemons and he made lemonade.
Jeez, the internet can even complain about others not complaining.
This WOULD be a good Blu-Ray player, but lack of support for IR remotes like the Logitech Harmony makes this thing absolutely useless.
Make me a PS3 that can handle IR remotes out of the box, without additional hardware, then I'll be interested. Until then, I'm keeping my money.
Even with no On/Off .. The Nyco Blu IR thing is like $10 and works great with my Harmony One ..
My Harmony 880 works fine with it.
there is a solution that is superior to the nyko option because it does power on/off. Cant find the link for it atm.
You're looking for the IR2BT: http://ir2bt.com/
IR should die and the sooner the better. The potential for bluetooth is so massive that Sony (and every other CE) should be pushing to use it. If you think universal remotes are great, imagine what they could be like if a single button click discovers all your devices, or if the remote can show info from the device such as now & next, current track, room temperature or whatever. A single remote could literally control your entire house.
Is it really necessary to "re-review" the PS3? It's a game console, it plays blu-rays. It got some firmware updates. Whooptie-doo. Thanks for the "oh by the way we still love our PS3s!" Arstechnica. News, this isn't.
Well, technically the reviewers they are specifically speaking of didn't
love it the first time they reviewed it. In fact they gave it a
pretty mediocre score. So this time it's more like "Well... now that
we've had some time to think about it... " or "Well, in light of
recent developments and changes to the system."
That being said... I am glad I got a 60 GB model before they scrapped
production of them. I swapped out the hard drive on mine for a 300 GB
one so what I was really interested in was built in Wi-Fi and
Backwards Comp. though hardware, not the emulation software the 80 GB
uses. I never owned a PS2 so this gave me access to a huge library of
games in addition to all new features on the PS3.
The BT/IR thing has never been an issue for me, but I can see why it
would annoy people who have a single universal remote setup. There is
that cheap adapter to fix this, but I've never used it so I can't
speak for how good it works.
cclaunch, the point of the review seems to have escaped you. The PS3. has dramatically improved in many ways thanks to maturing firmware and a raft of decent games. So much so in the reviewer's eyes that they've given it 9/10, up from 6/10.
PS3 doesn't have bitstreaming for advanced audio codecs, and it's a hardware limitation (apparently), so it's not a PERFECT blu-ray player, soon enough it will be knocked off its perch.
Actually, there is no difference between decoding advanced codec in the player vs doing it in the receiver. Since I own a HDMI 1.1 receiver, I am actually glad that they implemented the internal decoding.
So you're the kind to yell at your kid as being a failure for getting a 95% instead of 100% on an exam, I see. Must be fun to want perfection in everything. Get ready for a disappointing life.
There's no advantage to bitstreaming this data. The PS3 can decode it as well as your amp and pass it losslessly over HDMI (the only things these can be bitstreamed over anyway) to your amp. So perfection is maintained.
The PS3 cannot bitstream SACDs though, which means it has to lossily downconvert them to 172KHz/24-bit PCM.
Fry's $7.99 & Up Specials 6/6 - 6/10
Fry's has the following Blu-ray titles on special from Friday, June 6 until Tuesday, June 10:
$7.99
Blackbeard
Curse of King Tut's Tomb
10.5: Apocalypse
Poseidon Adventure
Final Days of Planet Earth
Category 7
No Gut No Glory
The Last Sentinel
$13.99
Goodfellas
Blood Diamond
Last Samurai
Eyes Wide Shut
Training Day
Bullitt
Blazing Saddles
Alexander Revisted
Deliverance
Dog Day Afternoon
The Getaway
Lethal Weapon
$19.99
Blade Runner
$27.99
Meet the Spartans
Semi-Pro
Longest Day
Sand Pebbles
Patton
Cloverfield
There Will be Blood
$28.99
The Eye
I thought it was in 7 minutes....
In math class today, we learned that 7 *is* less than 30!
I'm going to say DUH?
The 1st PS3 review to now would be different because so many new features have been added (strictly from a media playback perspective).
The price has also come down since then so you technically get more for less. This isn't news, its common scense and I doubt many people care because firmware upgrades are expected for all systems in this gen.
this is one of the best deals to ever hit tchnology and i dont know why poeople arent getting it yet
the cheapest BD player right now is $300
so if this matched that, you would get a full-HD game console made by a reliable company and a 40 GB hard drive for another $100
thats a great deal in my mind
especially from a company that charges astronomical prices
I need asus to make one of these as a PEEES3
then it would come with a triple deck atom
and in white
for a lot less(its asus, what do they have to lose?)
Yes, thanks to hoarders who plan on selling them on eBay. I'd rather wait than reward one of those f**kwads for their greed. If other people would do the same, then this kind of sh*t would stop.