Sony PlayStation 3

By now most of America has a general understanding of the PlayStation 3, most likely from the mania surrounding its holiday season launch to the many comparisons to its competitors, the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii (I still can’t get over that name). Readers who are seriously into gaming will no doubt have already read several reviews of the system from a gamer’s point of view. I think the real story behind this product is much more than just gaming, and it should appeal to a much larger audience.

As a casual gamer myself, one who grew up with pong, blip football and Intellivision, I was impressed by the specs and gaming experience this thing offered. But from the moment I first hooked it up to my home theater system (actually, about 20 minutes after I hooked it up, because there are several set up steps to go through) I was taken by the product’s potential beyond gaming.

First off, and most importantly, the PlayStation 3 is nuclear bomb in the high definition disc format war. The system supports the Blu-ray disc high definition format out of the box—Xbox 360 requires an additional $200 external drive to play HD DVDs—at full 1080p resolution through an HDMI 1.3 connection, making it the first Blu-ray device to do that. At $600 (for the premium version), it’s the least expensive Blu-ray player out there (as of December 2006) and arguably the best. Its startup time for playing Blu-ray discs is considerably faster than the Samsung player, which launched earlier in 2006. The PS3 is of course also a standard DVD player (though it doesn’t upconvert standard DVDs) and CD player—which at least one other Blu-ray player is not—and even supports the Super Audio CD format. That last point is sort of moot since the SACD format never really caught on with consumers.

The 60GB hard drive opens up a lot of options for non-gaming uses. The system is compatible with both MP3 and AAC digital music formats, and loading your MP3 files is easily done by simply connecting your MP3 player to one of the PS3’s USB ports or you can use the media card slots (Compactflash, SD or Memory Stick) or a CD. Once you’ve loaded all your music, the content can be searched by artist, album, track or genre fairly easily and quickly. Digital photos can also be loaded in the same way and viewed in a variety of methods on your television. In one method, the photos stream across your screen as if they’re falling on a light table. It’s very cool. You can even play music while viewing your slideshows. I created a folder of old Christmas pictures and set it to play a slideshow while playing a selection of Christmas MP3s when guests were visiting. Videos from digital cameras can also be shown.

The online experience is integral to the PS3 (and the Xbox 360 for that matter). The premium system includes Ethernet and Wi-Fi while the cheaper system ($499) skips the Wi-Fi. Getting on-line required jumping through several setup menu hoops at first, including two system software updates, and the connection to Sony’s network for online gaming was sometimes spotty—a result of rushing the system out to stores before all the ducks were in a row—but once those issues were worked out, online was a pleasure. The system includes a Web browser that, once you get used to navigating with the game controller, is pretty easy to use. It’s interesting that with several years of Microsoft marketing various forms of WebTV, it’ll probably be the PS3 that ultimately brings Web browsing to more people’s TV sets.

Sony has a PlayStation store online to support the PS3. It offers some game downloads and movie clip demos, but it’s not nearly as robust as the Xbox 360 video download service. PlayStation 3 downloads, at the time I write this, amount to just a few clips of Sony Blu-ray movies (the downloads are in 1080p resolution, MPEG4 format), some game demos and a few simple game downloads (for purchase). Downloading content was pretty slow over my Wi-Fi/Verizon FIOS network. A 2.5 minute movie clip took about 7 minutes to download. If Sony really wanted to capitalize on the power of this system, it would start offering better content online. Since the unit’s internal hard drive is upgradeable, there could be acres of room for storing full high def movies if Sony begins to offer them.

The controller looks very similar to the controller from the PS2, but in this case it connects to the system via a wireless Bluetooth signal and includes a rechargeable battery. The controller does use a motion sensitive mechanism like the Wii, but it’s not as intrinsic to the games—yet, at least. The system does not come with a standard remote for navigating movies, but third-party accessory companies will begin to offer them.

Now, all is not perfect with the PS3. It already has required a couple of system software upgrades. The network can be buggy, and the fan noise can be bothersome. Some users have taken issue with the Bluetooth wireless controller (which I happen to like). Even though it features a digital video output, the system doesn’t up-convert standard definition DVDs to HD, which any $100 DVD player does these days. Some users have noted that the system actually down converts some game resolution on HDTVs that display natively 1080i rather than 720p or 1080p—that would only apply to CRT-based TVs, which are fading out of existence these days.

Home theater fans should really look at the PS3 as another component rather than just a video game machine. Built for HDTV, games and high def movies look incredible. While the machine is capable of 1080p resolution, and is the first source device to use the new HDMI 1.3 spec, some of the games are encoded in 720p, as are some Blu-ray movies. Watching on a 720p, 50-inch plasma TV, all the games were impressive. The sci-fi shooter Resistance was about the best-looking game I’ve seen, and the player detail on NBA 07 was also stunning. The machine’s powerful Intel Cell processor works overtime to keep backgrounds dynamic and close-up details realistic. Blu-ray movies mostly looked great as well, though they varied greatly depending on how efficiently they were encoded.

Overall, I think the PS3 is a wonder of a machine, and a compelling addition to anyone’s home theater system. Gaming, of course is its first order, but it’s an excellent high definition movie player, a very good music and picture server and a great way to easily get online in your living room.