PS3: Best entertainment centre available?
While it's debatable whether Sony's current-gen console (the PlayStation 3, for the cave dwellers amongst you) is the best games console on the market, it is surely a competitor for the best entertainment hub available today. Given, hardcore gamers will claim that you buy a console purely for the games it has on it, but increasingly, today’s modern consumer wants the talking wide-screen MP3 video player in their car to tell them when to turn, all the while downloading new maps off the internet via WiFi – presumably so that they feel like they’re driving KITT from Knight Rider (which would make them the Hoff?) So one can only assume that they would want a similar all-in-one experience at home. The question is; does the PS3 get the job done?
Blu-ray
Apart from assuming the role your favourite exclusive alter egos, from Solid Snake to Nathan Drake, PS3 owners can use their shiny new console for a plethora of other features that you might usually expect to buy separately. The most popular of these, of course, is going to be the built in blu-ray player. Now, blu-ray discs may be more expensive than what the competition uses, HD-DVDs, but that’s simply because they allow almost double the data storage and better security features in comparison. And with the rising popularity of the blu-ray format, video rental stores such as Blockbuster and Netflix, and sales outlets like Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Costco and Target – the latter said to be largely ‘blu’ – the high quality HD movie and box-set rentals are just more available a PS3 owner than an Xbox.
To think, a standalone blu-ray player retails from £160 ($265) to upwards of £1000 ($1650) for top models – at the cheapest level that’s £20 ($33) more expensive than a 40GB PS3, which also acts a blu-ray player and 1080p DVD upscaler, a current-gen games console, and can do so much more!
True HD sound
With unrivalled HD picture, the PS3 could only be the stuff of audiophiles' wet dreams if it had the sound quality to boot. And boy, audiophiles call the nurse now, it delivers in spades. Already supporting the popular sound format of Dolby TrueHD, only two months back Sony added the option DTS-HD Master Audio so that gamers and home cinema enthusiasts could tune their HD audio exactly how they want it.
DTS claim that the recent addition of HD Master Audio is "bit-for-bit identical to the studio master", with up to an outstanding 24.5Mb/s on Blu-ray - bit rates to match the true HD video quality you will no doubt enjoy!
Media docking and internal memory card reader
Most PS3 models also ship with an internal memory card reader and standard USB ports, except the cheapest model. In the same way, you can link up your external media drives and USB devices, turning the PS3 into an all-in-one media dock. Using this, you can display all your home movies, entire digital music collection, and high resolution photographs – of course proudly showing off every single pixel of your gamer’s colossal HDTV of choice. Yes, you can do most of these things on an Xbox, but it’s handy to have the card reader installed out of the box.
PlayStation Network
Besides the offline functionality that’s pretty standard for games consoles, the PlayStation Network (PSN) offers a vast array of features – and
as we’ve seen, with more to come in the near future. The key features available to someone who wants a great entertainment system here are the integral internet browser, access to download HD TV, movies, music and other media, and game updates and downloadable content. In addition to this remote play also allows a PSP owner to access their console’s features over the network.
PlayTV
If that’s not enough for the square-eyed TV addicts out there, Sony
has been said to be launching an interesting device PlayTV, for the PS3, in September. For around €99 (£80), this adds the additional functionality of turning your already jam-packed entertainment centre into a freeview box, with an interchangeable hard drive and 1080p upscaling. Again, that alone would set you back around £100 ($165) at the cheapest level, on top of your stand-alone blu-ray player and media card reader.
Sky TV deal
And if you want more TV still, European PS3 owners will be glad to know that The Independent
reported today that Sony have struck a deal with BSkyB (Just ‘Sky’ to us Brits), to provide Sky TV programmes over PSN to PSP users. With any luck, this will hit on the PS3 too in the near future. This, of course, would be in addition to already having blu-ray, media streaming, docking, downloading, and freeview functionality already.
And more to come...
On top of all that, we've still got
more PSN expansions to come, and a
PS3 Motion Controller to add a new, third dimension to everything we've already got. So when the fans and bloggers are setting themselves alight, or buying a Nintendo Wii in protest for price cuts, they may want to reconsider all the extra value that the PS3 has to offer.
Let us know what you think, sign up to the forums to comment!
If you find this article useful, please Digg it above to spread the love.
