Poll: Will you buy a PS3 Slim to use as a Blu-ray player?
By Richard Lawler 
posted Aug 29th 2009 12:00PM
posted Aug 29th 2009 12:00PM
posted Aug 29th 2009 12:00PM
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The only real benefit I see (OK hear) is the noise reduction aside from the price reduction. Otherwise, it still has the same advantages and disadvantages as before.
It's slimmer, we get it already.
Power reduction too.
and it went from grill to door mat motif
Nope.
I would prefer a proper (and at least 1/3rd cheaper) quality standalone every day of the week
(Amazon USA have the Panasonic 60 @ $200 right now).
PS3 loads faster? Pfffhhhh, a few seconds, so what?
Power reduction?
So what, again?
It's not the big deal some want to make it out to be.
It's still using 3x the watt rating of my standalone when playing blu-rays (75w v 25w) according to the recent engadget review.
It now being able to bitstream properly is a bonus (some here claim is worthless anyways) but whatever, I just do not want a game console as my Blu-ray player thanks.
Noisey?
Yes, they can be.
After all the original hype & comment when they first came out the truth is that when the fans start up they are intrusive & noisey.
Again, no thanks.
Should be a heat reduction as well.
Still the best reason to choose a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player over any other player is firmware upgrades.
Rather than have your Panasonic discontinued in 6 months and abandoned 6 months later the PS3 is far more likely to keep the firmware upgrades coming.
The original PS3 will outnumber any other Blu-Ray player for quite a while extending its lifetime even further.
Pingles
None of the name-brand CE manufacturers have abandoned their early players, nevermind current ones - and certainly not a brand like Panasonic.
Even LG recently stepped up to make their long discontinued BH200 tri-format player 'profile 2.0' compliant
(and amazingly this was even after offering a $75 rebate to owners when it looked like they were not going to bother!)
In fact I'd suggest you're far more likely to see more regular firmware updates related to video playback issues on a dedicated video player than the game console
(and that's before we go near the whole issue, regularl & repeated firmware updates are not IMHO 'a good thing' to be lumbering this video format with anyways, not if it is serious about going mainstream).
You would have thought they'd put IR in it. It's not like Sony can't make IR remotes....
I'll get a PS3 as a games console, maybe. Not as a Blu-ray player.
Why? Last time I checked Joe "HD" Kane and Criterion use it as their reference player.
Engadget- Whats this "too slow" bullshit, maybe your "unit" is defective, because i know your ps3 is.
I'm more likely to buy a old preowned fat one after they drop in price when this comes out in the UK in September.
I'm somewhere between "yes" and "no ir ticks me off enough that I'm not quite pulling out the plastic". But I think I'm past the tipping point and will get one soon enough.
My PS3 60GB is starting to give the dreaded "invalid disc" on movies it played before, so I think I'm going to dealing with a slim soon...
When I can record TV with it is when they have me sold.
PlayTV - Europe ftw
I had to vote - "something else".
I already have an 80 GB PS3 (the earlier 80 GB model with the 4 USB ports, memory card readers and PS2 backwards software emulation). I'll be keeping it. But I'm seriously considering getting a Slim for a second room.
That's what i've done this week, i put the new slim in the living room due to the bitstream capability, i have the fat ''lauch model'' in the bedroom and i might put it on ebay to get another slim instead. The slim is much more quiter at iddle (but about the same when in full action).
I put my Launch 60 GB Fatty model on Ebay .. i do not need the Ps2 or Linux .. i am not trying to make a quick buck .. i just hope someone will get buy for what they need and i will get a SLIM for BD player .. I have 2 360's for gaming
If I bought a slim, I'd probably make it the main PS3 and put the fat in another room. The slims look neater use half the power and make less noise.
Nope. Should have IR, Linux support, and a CableCard slot (to turn it into a cable-ready HD DVR). If this is the best Sony could do, no wonder they're in trouble.
It's a Playstation before anything else. Cable card, that's a good one.
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. To my knowledge, Sony originally envisioned PS3 as a multipurpose media device, which was uncharacteristically astute of them. In Europe it's being used as a DVR. But Sony has inexplicably retrenched from the original vision. Instead of removing features, for a few bucks more Sony could have expanded the PS3's appeal and therefore its market. It's this myopic (and generally wrong) we-know-better attitude that's gotten Sony in trouble.
its a playstation, everything else is just to make people pick it over an xbox.
I love Linux as much as the next nerd but removing it won't affect sales much.
As for IR, it's clear Sony have made their bed on the matter. Go buy an IR/BT adapter. Again it won't affect sales much.
As for cable / satellite / terrestrial reception, I agree to some extent that it would be awesome if Sony produced a model with some kind of receiver/recording capability. Look at Japan as example of a country which would go CRAZY for a PS3 with a tuner and recording capabilities. They love their DVD/BD recorders over there. In Europe, Sony have already PlayTV that turns a PS3 into a DVB-T twin tuner. However, it's a question of cost and there are massive differences between regions. Even somewhere "standardized" like Europe uses multiple flavours of DVB-T with more emerging all the time for HD etc.. Sony are never going to make everyone happy.
I feel the expense of such an endeavour would be a waste of time except for well defined markets like Japan. Even there it might compete with Sony's other products so it would be self defeating. Outside of that the best you can hope for is a dongle appears which like PlayTV enables some kind of reception.
I am one of those "freaks" who bought the Slim simply as a Blu-ray player. I know to most folks that it doesn't make sense to spend the money to see the DTS HD Master logo suddenly appear on your receiver's screen--but I love it! Go figure.
Actually, I had planned to abandon the PS3 last month when the highly acclaimed Oppo Blu-ray player was released. After all of the hype over the Oppo, and at twice the price of the PS3 system, I was struck by the fact that the original PS3 (and now the Slim) out- performed it on almost all respects--especially upscaling DVDs. Reviewers are heaping kind words on the Oppo player while I think that the Sony PS3 is a far better Blu-ray player.
My only objection to the Slim thus far is that, if you use the system like a component in your AV set up shelves--you can not see the red or green light indicators. Given the fact that the new unit is so quiet, you could actually waste power should you find yourself forgetting to turn off the system after going on to other things.
Indeed, I've yet to se any player under $1500 beat the PS3 in overally speed and quality of image.
That's a comparison I'd really like to see. The upscaling of the PS3slim versus the Oppo BDP-83.
I'm leaning to the Oppo for the SACD and the analogue outs, but truly I'd mostly use it for watching my older DVDs...
Overally? Really??
I thought they had tested the Samsung BD-P3600 with the PS3 and the BD-P3600 was faster. Am I not remembering this correctly?
The ps3 has a setting to automatically turn off after a certain amount of idle time. That shouls save you any lost power from forgetting to turn it off.
Oh, and I guess I'll post my reasoning. I just want a standalone Blu-ray player. I don't need more gaming stuff as I don't have time to play the stuff I currently have.
I'm hoping to snag either an old Samsung BD-P2550 for its HQV chip (but slow load times) or the BD-P3600 for it's speed and feature set. I have heard that it does a phenomenal job of upconverting, just not QUITE what the HQV chip produced, -- but I think I could live with that.
But, yeah. I've never wanted to get a PS3, actually. Call my crazy, maybe?
Since when is the PS3 a slow BR player? It has always been considered one of the fastest BR players being that it is a giant computer. I don't understand that comment in the poll.
Engadget tested the speed of the slim vs the fat and it was slightly slower loading discs, but this guys tests actually don't agree
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&thread.id=4032196
Nah. I would use the PS3 as a gaming machine, but not for blu-ray. Just like I used my PS2 for gaming, not as a dvd player. As far as blu-ray stand-alone players go, I still lean towards the OPPO BDP-83 for the under $500 players. I am a bit of a Sony fan, and their BD players are not bad, but the OPPO is just hands down a better machine. I wish it was Sony's machine, so that it would sync up nicely with my 46" Sony XBR8 & Sony DA6400ES receiver, but oh well. It's not that important for it to sync (bravia link wise) that I'd pass up my OPPO for anything else, even a Sony unit.
Oppo BD-83 for me!
Its my home media hub. All my music on there, over 150 movies stored on there, BD movies, and now (in the UK) soon we'll have the video store. HD+Digital Downloads = PS3
Best damn BD player ever.
is there a solution for the IR deal?
Yep! http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/gaming/playstation_3/cables/devices/5732&cl=gb,en
I'm not buying a blu-ray player until I can get a standalone for $50. Enough said.
Walmart has one for $100. It won't be long before Durabrand starts making a Blu-ray player for you. Just watch it cause it could catch fire!
i bought the slim for gaming and bluray. i cant help but laugh at the people who buy other bluray players when they already have a ps3, what a waste of your money, who cares if the standalone player loads a little faster or has some more inputs just put the movie in the PS3 and watch it and save your hard earned money for something thats really needed.
tbh for pure bluray, I'd get the oppo standalone player. Much better PQ.
If I would be happy doing things the 'sony' way, (with mp3's videos etc) then the PS3 could make quite a nice general media player.
I was wanting one for a gaming system, but then realized that the amount of games and time spent on the 360, that its not logical to by the ps3.
Now as a blu-ray player alone, thats a pretty expensive player when now the average price is 199.
But I would tell anyone who does not have a gaming console and needs a blu-ray player that the ps3 is your best choice if you see yourself gaming someday.
Nup. Haven't bought any new Sony crap since their rootkit fiasco. Most of their stuff is painfully crippled in some way.
Lol.
The rootkit was how long ago? And who wrote it? Oh wait, NOT Sony! They licensed it from a 3rd party, who nobody every bitches at.
Sony makes tons of great products. Are their TVs hindered? No, you can actually playback MPEG2 TS to their older TVs via iLink. And they're some of the best LCDs on the market today. Oh, and their receivers? Their Reader (100 books on mine, 2 are from the Sony store... go figure). The PS3? Oh, proprietary OS not cracked... kinda like the 360 and Wii, except hackers figured out to chip those.
And which division did I name actually decided to rootkit the CDs? None of them.
Yeah, let's NEVER forgive Sony and punish OURSELVES by not buying their great products. But you still have music from Sony though. That'd be the true irony.
-Pie
Won't be buying a blu-ray player until they have a 3D Standard
I thought I was hearing things in the podcast when someone commented that the PS3 is noisy/loud, I think it was Ben.... now here it is again.... inference that it was noisy. The PS3 is virtually silent, even with a disc in it it's much quieter than it's gaming competitor the 360 and I suspect that other competing blu-ray players make the same about of noise.... very little. As an owner of the BIG PS3 I'm not sure I'm adding another rig to my household but have always liked it as a blu-ray player and gaming rig... even a great web browser, it was killin it with the Hulu for a while. running Media link I can stream content to the PS3....
IR...IR...IR its called progression get on the fucking bandwagon or get a shitty xbox. Bluetooth is better the RF and IR.
Putting an IR on the PS3 would be like putting a backup steam engine on a Space Shuttle.
i have the 160 and 40 and i am going to get 2 of the slim ps3 one in each room i am so happy
the new ps3 can bitstream i just install my 6,000 home theater system i my living room thank you sony for listing to your fans, the best console out there i love watching blu-ray movies with my family and playing games.
Certainly wish my fat PS3 was quieter but would never spend the money to convert to a quieter machine. Still happy with my PS3 as a Blu-Ray player and still fine with exactly 0 games for it.
I will be buying it for a blu-ray player because it is finally capable of bitstreaming to my reciever which can decode more accurately than the PS3.