So with the recent demise of HD-DVD as a viable High Definition physical video format I’ve been kicking around the idea of making the jump to Blu-Ray and all of it’s glory. This thought was helped when my brother bought a PS3. And since he is not a game one can only assume that he bought it for Blu-Ray movies. And over the course of the last month or so as I’ve mulled this decision over in one form or another I kept hearing about how integrated the PS3 was and all of the other normal chest thumping when the users of one particular technology smell blood and indecision in the water.
I honestly had not been bombarded with so many reasons as to why the PS3 was superior to every other platform out there since Jr. High when Donny Witt and I used to spend hours on end taunting each other as to which was the greater the 16-bit system Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Hey when your 13 these things make a difference. And just for the record the Super Nintendo still kicks the Sega Genesis’s little white butt!!!1!11!!0ne
However I digress, so through some weird combination of coworkers, an alignment of stars, and a promise to not hack or break anything I have been loaned a PS3.
Que jaw dropping… for those of you keeping track the last time I owned a Sony system willingly was 1996 when I bought the then state of the art Sony Play-station using money from my job at Albertson’s. I had sold it within a year and bought a N64 which I still have to this day. I do have a PS2 that my brother gave to me, however I have not hooked it up and have made no attempt to. In the ten years since I sold that first Play-station I’ve bought two other Nintendo systems and when I’ve played them I’ve enjoyed them immensely. Key phrase “when I play them”. I’m a PC gamer and I hold a special place in my game playing heart for all things Nintendo as I’ve often stated here I don’t care much about games other then are they fun? And my general experince with Nintendo games is I often find them to be immensely fun!
So what gives with the change of heart? First off, at $400 the PS3 is a bargain of Blu-Ray player right now and will be BD 2.0 compliant when that spec comes out. And since Blu-Ray is a Sony format you know damn well that any future profiles will be supported by the PS3. Second it’s backwards compatible with that gianormous library of PS2 games and more then a few are sure to classics when we look back on them in 10 or 15 years (classics in the way I see “Super Metroid” and “The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past” as great games of my youth). Finally all of the new gaming platforms support some sort of link to your PC so you can play movies, show pictures, and stream music to your living room (sorry Windows only apparently Mac/Linux et all don’t want to support or just don’t care to support anything that would make their platforms accessible to the box in the living room (yes Tivo does run a Linux Kernel, but it’s heavily modified and we will get to why that is not a media platform in a bit)).
So for the past 5 days I’ve been playing with a PS3…
It’s more fun then I expected so it’s got that running for it. The downloadable games from the Play-station Network makes ALOT of sense and I do I really like it. Even if the selection is somewhat limited at the current time. Hooking up with my home network was no worse an experince then the Wii or the Tivo was. It’s a good media server for the front room of the house and I could see me streaming things to the PS3 with out to much of a stretch of the imagination. The games were “OK” I had a couple loaded onto the Hard Drive (Teken 5 being the closest thing to a “A” title and unless your a 12 to 18 y/o male a fighting game won’t hold your interest for long). Teken has held up suprisingly well over the last decade or so and I have to give the the developers credit it’s still the fighter to beat. “Call of Duty4” was a abysmal experince…. the game looked good, but I’ve never liked FPS type games on a console with the loan exception being the “Metroid” games. I’m a PC gamer first and foremost and “COD4” on the PS3 reminded me of why this is in spades.
So what finally turned me completely off to the PS3? My cable provider! One of the big points of the PS3 is that you can stream music and videos off of it onto your PSP over the wireless network in your home or the internet! And the PSP can play Tivo To Go files too! Imagine my utter dismay when I was presented with the following screen.
And this is true for about 85% of the shows on my Tivo, there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason other then for some obscure reason Cox sees fit to set the copy protection flag on certain programs. Ultimately this what led me away from the PS3/PSP combo more on principle then problems with technology. Since if you look on current TIVO and PSP advertising they each tout how you can transfer tv shows from your Tivo to your PSP! This killed it for me right here.
That and after watching “300” on Blu-Ray I could not tell a difference in picture quality, but the sound did seem improved. Not enough of a reason to switch physical media formats. But enough to give me faith that Apple may be onto something with the Apple Tv.
Good night and good luck.