Meet me in Montauk...: Format neutral with the PS3

Puzzle Fighter II HD demo. Viks and I are addicted to this game.

For the inner geek that just needs to know -> I love the option to display the soundtrack specifications, the encoding format, the bit rate meter and the movie progress status bar! So cool!

Black Hawk Down

Contrast in physical size: Sony PS3 vs Toshiba XA2 HD DVD player

Neatly packed and well cushioned. Good sign.

I do wonder how many PS3 owners use their machines more for gaming or Blu Ray movie watching.

HD movies have become an obsession for me. I applied the funds from my Denon 2910 sale toward a new PS3. Sony Visa card had a $150 cash back deal and I just couldn't pass it up. I was originally going to wait for a cost effective HD DVD / Blu Ray combo player but like most products that are on the bleeding edge there will be a significant price premium. The 1st gen combo player from Samsung and 2ng gen LG will have an MSRP closer to the $800 - $1K range. If I were to guess I'd say there will be a $500 combo player by next summer at the earliest and maybe a $2-300 combo player by winter 2008. Rather than wait for combo player to hit $2-300 range which I don't really need anyway, I figured why not get a PS3 which is a relatively mature, high quality Blu Ray player and arguably "the smart choice" for relatively cheap now and have the ablilty to enjoy both formats today and maybe even dabble in a PS3 game or two?

Yes, I realize the world does not need another PS3 review but it's my blog and I can write whatever the hell I want! I will just mention some (or maybe a lot) of my initial impressions..

The Good:

Blu Ray disc playback: I don't own enough reference quality Blu Ray discs yet but so far Black Hawk Down looks very nice. Despite what the Blu Ray disc review sites say, Immortal Beloved seems to suffer a bit from overcompression (maybe due to it's single layer 25GB platter + usage of older MPEG2 codec).
Blu Ray disc sound: There are no analog outs. You either output audio via optical SPDIF or HDMI. My surround decoder is Dolby Digital only and does not have HDMI so I can't yet take advantage of uncompressed PCM soundtracks or the newer surround formats like Dolby True HD but the tried and true 5.1 Dolby Digital sound via SPDIF is still very nice to my ears.
Well built and well designed. No feeling of cheap build quality here although the PS3 is made in China. No offense to my fellow brothers / sisters in China but I am a bit paranoid about the lead.
The slot loading is fast and the disc start up time is fast (faster than my Toshiba XA2).
The PS3 does run pretty hot but the fan noise is not THAT bad as some forum posters would like you to believe. In fact, our Motorola Moxi HD DVR is much noisier.
Easy to navigate and switch between Blu Ray movies, gaming, downloading, etc.
There are a LOT of quality gaming demos, HD movie trailers, and game trailers you can download for free. You can queue up a list of files to download and watch a movie or play a game and set the downloading to occur in the background. I didn't think I would care too much about downloaded content but now that I have used it, I really dig it. When downloading is done, it gives you a little pop up (as long as you not in movie I think). Going off on a tangent -> If it weren't for the US having such antiquated broadband infrastructure (compared to say S Korea, Japan, etc.), I can really see the acceptance of downloading content like movies and games taking off. I think it's just a matter of time. Actually my company stock price is betting on this so I do have an interest in the broad acceptance of downloading HD movies and games coming sooner than later. For the old school collector like me who very much likes to have the physical disc in hand, I think a business model that could work and entice me to adopt the downloading method would be something where you can pre-order an HD movie and for a small additional fee you can have exclusive access to the full HD movie before the general public can even get the "hard copy" of the disc on "DVD Tuesday" but still get a hard copy on the Tue release date. However, one caveat could be that the DL version would use lower bit rate encoding to minimize the file size like do today for HD movie trailers which could result in poorer PQ.
The Elitist Home Theater Snob attitude reversal: " Meh... I wouldn't use a gaming console as MY primary Blu Ray disc player..." I initially felt this way. But once you've seen the stellar Blu Ray playback performance, start Folding@Home, playing games in HD resolution, downloading and watching HD movie trailers all in one sleek device, you realize: "Wow, this integrated concept is pretty damn cool. " I am in agreement with the OP from the smart choice thread.

The Bad:

This is a nitpick but I don't like the touch sensor power on/off and disc eject button. I realize it adds to the "sleekness" or whatever but when I press and don't get a reponse, I don't know if I didn't press hard enough or the right area. I don't have this problem a lot but when I do it is a slight annoyance.
Not a knock on the PS3 but rather the Blu Ray format itself -> some Blu Ray movies like Kingdom of Heaven Director's cut are authored only with lossless DTS HD Master Audio tracks which as of this writing no current Blu Ray player can decode ( but AFAIK, all BR players can extract the "lossy" DTS core track which are compatible with legacy recievers/SSPs that have DTS support ). This affects me in that my Sony SSP does not have DTS decoding so for the time being I can at best output as 2.0 PCM and use my SSP to convert to Dolby Pro Logic (not DPL II ! I'm talkin' -old- Dolby Pro Logic).
As of today, given how the PS3 is designed it is widely assumed that the PS3 will be able support profile 1.1 and 2.0 for interactive features & web support with a future FW update but there is no guarantee at this moment. But for the price paid I am willing to take this risk.
As of today, it is also assumed that the PS3 will be able support DTS HD Master Audio bitstream output support with a future FW update but there is no guarantee at this moment. Ditto above re: the risk.
Where are the good games?

The Ugly: