Sony did a pretty good job on the PS3...

[TheHeadFL]

I bought into the format war in November with the cheap A3s. Over November and December I got 28 movies, all of which I enjoyed greatly. During that time, the only problem I had was with Bourne Ultimatum, which I wasn't able to reproduce.

I had 2 weeks off for Christmas/New Years from my job, so I decided to go get a PS3 and a couple games because I've really been itching to play The Orange Box, which I could get on 360, but the Blu-ray player makes it a no-brainer. This was about a week before the Warner announcement.

Well, I now have 8 PS3 games, including Warhawk, Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed, and Motorstorm. (Which I got used, thanks 80gb guys) I'm overall very satisfied with the gaming experience. The built in wireless works flawlessly, and not having to pay for PSN is great. Have a USB wireless mouse/keyboard hooked up for web browsing and messaging and I've got all my MP3s hooked up via external USB hard drive.

Blu-ray playback is, of course, awesome. Having access to the other half of movies is great, too. The loading times are nonexistent, and I haven't had a hiccup yet. I never really had a problem with the load times of the A3 (just the initial bootup), either, though.

Overall I'd give the PS3/Blu-ray experience two thumbs up. I am not a fan of Sony, but they did a good job with the console all around.

However, some problems I did get a bit irked by:

- The Blu-ray remote is basically worthless and I find I never use it. Feels cheap.
- Menus on most of the Blu-ray discs I've tried (about 20 in all, including a bunch of rentals) are kind of hokey. They remind me of SDVD. Prefer HD-DVD as far as this goes.
- Wish that when I paused a Blu-ray movie, it showed me my progress (time to go, etc) like HD-DVD does. I really liked this feature. (Yes I know you can call this up via the bitrate meter, but who wants all that garbage on their screen?)
- Wish that when I pause a Blu-ray movie, the PS3 wouldn't keep the controller indefinitely alive and therefore draining the batteries even when not in use.
- Forced previews suck. This isn't specific to Blu-ray, but a lot of the Blu-rays I've watched go overboard. 3:10 to Yuma for instance.
- I want PiP again. This was a really cool feature that I am looking forward to in future Blu-ray discs.
- A3 upconverts better. (IMO)

Anyway, just thought I'd post here and say that I am throwing my hat in with the Blu-ray crowd from here on out. HD-DVD is probably dead. Someday I'll rebuy my HD-DVD movies on Blu-ray (but only when they are cheaper), and I'll probably buy 100% Blu-ray with the exception of maybe American Gangster or something of that nature. (Zodiac is tempting me, too)

[fireb0x]

It's awesome that you have had good experience with it so far. For some reason, I find that all my Universal HD-DVDs have very clunky menus. The paramount ones are great, but universal is pretty meh. I have maybe 1 or 2 blu-rays that I can think of that have slow menus (pirates: world's end and "the holiday"). Hopefully we will see more PiP now that the spec has been updated. I am not really a fan of interrupting my movies, nor am I a big "extras" kind of person, but I supposed people who are interested in it find great value there.

Either way, on the gaming side, Warhawk and Uncharted are epic games. You should pick up Ratchet and Clank, which is also a fantastic game for anybody who likes games.

I would also suggest picking up Super Stardust HD from the PSN store (It's only 9 bucks). That is probably the best arcade game on any console to date.

[Squozen]

There is a 'TIME' button on the remote that you have apparently missed - check it out.

Agree with previous poster, Super Stardust HD is awesome. Also, PixelJunk Monsters just came out on the PSN store and I've been playing it obsessively. Check that out too.

[smcrawford]

Back in July 07 when the 60gig PS3's were $499 the Target going supposedly Blu-ray exclusive rumors hit the news and I decided the war was over. Our Wii wasn't being used, the 360's HD-DVD add on drive wasn't being used, the original xbox console wasn't being used, a cube was gathering dust had we had some game disc gathering more dust. The result was a Gamecrazy trade that got us a 60 gig PS3 for $220 cash. That's how we ended up in the Blu-ray camp. By the end of the first week we had watched more Blu than we had HD-DVD's on the 360.

My old HD-DVD add on drive is still sitting on the shelf at that Gamecrazy store as I write this and they no longer acept them in trade.

Jump a little early but for once landed ok.

[jackdoe]

I agree, forced previews do suck. Also, you could just push select on the PS3 control pad to figure out where you are in the movie. As for my own experiences, I find that it is a very good player. My only problem with it as a Blu-ray player is the fact that it signs me off of PSN while I watch a movie.

[TurboSpool414]

Well I could definitely echo a lot of the OPs points.

Originally I had a 360, and then I bought an HD DVD add-on and about 12 movies. All this time I knew I wanted a PS3 if for anything just to play games on. It being a Blu-ray player is a massive plus, as well as the fact that you can easily install Linux!!! Being a programmer the Linux bit had me extremely eager to get a PS3.

This X-Mas I got the PS3, and really am extremely satisfied. As far as hardware goes, I think it kicks the crap out of the Xbox 360. It is nice to play games that are loading off of the hard disk and not by some god awful DVD drive.

Anyway, I now have about 10 Blu-rays and am about to liquidate my HD DVD collection (I can't post links yet but look for my post in the HD DVD trading forum). Sony, against immense criticism made one hell of a good choice, from a business perspective. By bundling Blu-ray into the PS3 that had an upper hand in the format war that HD DVD obviously could not match. In the beginning it was a possibility, but with the Warner decision (among other things) Sony really sealed the deal by having a legion of people like myself who wanted the PS3 for reasons other than Blu-ray in the first place.

Like I said, the fact that the PS3 is one of the best BD players around is just a huge bonus for me. It will become my sole HDM source for some time.