PlayStation 3 as Blu-ray player, how does it rate?
Sony's PlayStation 3 definitely had a tough holiday season, with a disappointing launch lineup of games, odd incompatibilities and shortage of consoles; it outsold the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 but not much else. Luckily we're not just interested in the system for games, it also carries the status of being the cheapest and potentiallymost advanced Blu-ray player available. How well suited is it for a home theater environment? Home Theater Blog and Ultimate AV recently put the unit through it's paces to find out and had mostly good things to say. In terms of old school DVDs, it's lack of 3:2 pulldown or any upconversion via HDMI is obviously disappointing, while Ultimate AV found the picture "soft", HTB noted otherwise perfect scores on the HQV test disc. Both liked that the system loaded and began playing Blu-ray movies considerably faster than other players, and had nothing but good things to say about the picture quality -- with the exception of the included movie, even on a 50GB discTalladega Nights looked "flat" and "compressed" -- despite still leaning towards HD DVD in overall sharpness. They weren't able to test out any lossless Dolby TrueHD soundtracks, but uncompressed PCM soundtracks on Sony Blu-ray movies blew away their lossy DD and DTS equivalents. If you can get around the lack of an IR receiver for standard remotes, both considered the PS3 an attractive option for anyone considering a Blu-ray player.
Read - Home Theater Blog
Read - Ultimate AV
