PS3 will very likely be US$399 by Christmas. The originally thought of $499 price will be too high considering all games will still look like XBox 360's (Mainstream PS3 releases will be direct port of..) and by then there will be atleast one XBox 360 model priced at the magic $199 sweet spot.

As far as using a PS3 for a movie player - I'd think twice about hammering that little plastic drive too much. The 1 year warranty is there for a reason and if you go by the PS2 DVD experience the thing will start grinding your disks pretty quickly.

I would not buy a plastic three in one stereo with radio, cd player and tape cassette and stick it in my loungeroom because if the nob falls of the tuner, or if the little plastic cog in the CD gets jammed, or if the tape spills out - I have to throw the whole thing away. Such devices also tend to be cheaply made & appear a little tacky. The same way I would not buy a Playstation with computer game console, built in bluray player and clock radio all housed in the one plastic case. The warranty is 1 year and the track record of reliability is pretty poor.

Having said that, I think there are people who will buy this kind of thing and this market segment of people who tend to blow their minimum wages on these kind of trinkets will likely be more interested when the pricepoint gets down to $299 and is bundled with some free movies and a McDonalds free meal voucher.

Bluray & HD-DVD are out of date. Neither will get to critical mass as the market is becoming very very fragmented.

(1) Streaming
The reality is people are downloading more & more and large media and Telecommunications companies are developing attractive streaming services. I would say this delivery mechanism is already begger than either formats and is growing much faster.

(2) DVD upscaled
A good proportion of the market isnt buying any new technology. The reality is that most movies look fine on DVD and people have a big library that they already own and share with their freinds. Upscale technology is extending the quality to the point most people dont care about HD for the magority of films.

(3) SD-Memory
The growth now is not so much in high def but in access to low def films & video clips. IE: movies being played on portable devices and everyone is saving to hard drives and using cheap, fast, reliable SD Memory. I have about 50 movies for my GP2X hand held stored on Imation 2GB & 4GB SD cards. My portable pocket drive is 120GB and I have a mix of music, movies and games on it for my trips away.

(4) Hard Drives
Whilst my portable drives are low capacity my home media center has more than 2 Terrabytes of capacity. In a few months Seagate are releasing a cheap 1TB hard drive, so I'll buy two of these and loadup another 500 - 1000 DVD movies and if I need some high def then I'll just save a few of those too!

Whats left?
There will be some consumer spending crumbs maybe for both players - personally, I'd take the HD-DVD because its region free, has more reliable media, and better performing players at the $299 price point. If there is anything that I still need after all of that, I guess I could look at a Bluray but the crumbs will be pretty small by then...

$299 for the A2 - This looks pretty damned good to me!

These movies are crap. It's like saying "come try out our restaurant this week and we'll serve you up 5 courses of the previous nights left overs - Free!"

"10. I agree with Dr Love, I hate people with this sorta atitude. Racism would die alot quicker if people stopped getting in a tissy fit over everything.

Remember the sony ad for the psp?"

YES I DO AND IT WAS RACIST. LOW CLASS SONY MARKETING TO FEED OFF THE DESIGNED EFFECT.

Phony products are better, as nothing quite blows like a Sony:

Sony Quality control: One pixel in PSP screens - OK, One SPE in Cell - Yep Normal, any Sony battery blows - Thats fine, Cybershot 104A power supply - 100% failure check. Now ladies & gentlemen introducing the Sony Blew-ray with added blowiness! all with our famous we will dick you around 12 months limited quality warranty!

All this Sony blowing and quite a bit of Sony hype blowing out the other end. Little Kaz and Philly boy look like they enjoy taking blows from Ken in the Japanese communal baths too!

25 - 50GB capacity OK but what is the transfer rate Phil? Answer: half the speed of a DVD... Sony are morons, bloody morons.

It's painfully slow, unreliable high capacity storage that is expensive & has just a one year warranty on the drive, and the media cant be backed up.

I will not buy the game but will pay someone full RRP who hacks this shit out and burns me a clean game.

For those that see adverts - just slag the companies you see advertised. It's war isnt it? Get with the spirit of the game and announce open season on any brand thats visable.

I know the PS2 slim breaks in about 18 months but Sony has been getting good at making things blow much faster these days.

PS3 should give bad read errors straight out of the box. Sony ships pre-broken with the Blow-ray. So I guess in that sense they are Limited editions: Limited Quality and strictly Limited Warranty.

Target sales person: do you want oven mits with that PS3 order?