Spaceknight

Reviews of the old "fat" PS3 say it's a great Blu player. Is that still true of the new Slim model? Did all those hardware and software changes affect its performance?

What about upconversion? How good is a PS3?
I currently use a Toshiba A3 for upconverting, and it does a great job. I've seen other upconverters that don't do as good a job. I can still see a difference though compared to HD TV channels. This is an important feature for me since I've got a lot of standard DVDs, and I think Blu discs are still too expensive for me to replace something I already own. (Why am I looking for a player while nitpicking disc prices? Cause I realized new disc prices are not nearly as relevant as the small price to get Blu from Netflix


------------------ updating this!
I picked up a PS3 Slim a few days ago.

IMHO, it's a better upconverter than the Toshiba HD-A3 that I was using before.

The only negative I've seen about the upconverting was a non-anamorphic widescreen that looked terrible, but I'll say that's mainly because the disc is sub-par to begin with. I need to play with the upconvert settings a bit, a few titles have looked a little grainy, but again that may be the source being a low bitrate transfer, as I said they don't look worse than the A3, which is my only point of reference so far.
Disclaimer - my TV only goes to 1080i, not 1080p. so I'm upconverting to 720p, not 1080i.

other stuff of note,
Disc load times are incredibly fast for DVDs, and pretty good for the few BDs that I tried. Bootup time for the system in general is fast, too. So I don't know why everyone keeps talking about load times as being an issue.
Also, a huge boost over the A3, it will eject discs immediately, the A3 used to have to boot up before ejecting. (not a huge issue, but a recurring pet peeve of mine if the last thing I watched was still in the tray, given the time to load the next disc and deal with unskippable menu nonsense.)

down-side... the lack of a true remote. I'll be buying one of those IR-to-Bluetooth adapters to connect my Logitech Harmony for PS3 control. Would it have killed them to include an IR port? That said, how often do you need a remote while a movie is playing? So depending on how much you watch various bonus materials that require a lot of navigating it's not much of an issue.

I haven't done much with the multimedia capabilities, yet, but they look pretty cool. For example, it immediately recognized my laptop on my home network and I could browse my photos on the TV without moving them on a memory card. So even without using it for a lot of games, I can see it has features that are really worth the price over a plain BD player. For those who do like games, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time is awesome.

gunm

I believe the main difference A/V-wise is the Slim does bit streaming for Dolby True and DTS-HD. Visually, I think it's the same.

E Unit

The new slim is supposed to run a lot quieter as well.

The A3 is good, but only goes to 1080i, whereas both PS3's are up to 1080p. I prefer the PS3 as an upconverting player, but i believe there are more who believe the opposite.

Superman07

^ reviews state that the slim drive is actually louder than the fat.

E Unit

Which reviews? I've read about 3 so far and all say it's much quieter.

http://reviews.cnet.com/consoles/son...-33765068.html

Nick Martin

The slim's drive is supposedly louder when actually loading any disc, regardless of what it is, but the actual playback is supposed to be silent.

Spaceknight

my current TV only goes up to 1080i maybe some day that will change.

Though I usually keep my HD Tivo set to 720p because it looks a lot smoother. So I understand how 1080p would be the same benefit over 1080i. It's the difference in color depth (and the occasional color banding) that I notice more than the general image quality.



as to the Slim being quieter, I'm reading two different things from reviews,
1) the *fan* is quieter on the Slim.
2) the *drive* is slightly louder on the Slim, though some reviews go on to say that's only when seeking and it's not an issue with sequentially reading a movie disc.
so as a whole it's louder and quieter.

E Unit

Funny, I got the A3 because my former TV was 720p/1080i - until today actually.

Interesting stuff about the fan being quieter and drive being louder. Guess I'll gold back and see.

shaun3000

Who cares how loud it is while loading? So long as it's quiet during playback, that's all that matters.

blued888

I think it's louder when seeking. As movies are sequential, I don't think it'll be much of a nuisance.

Another thing, the PS3 Slim can reportedly bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA.

LorenzoL

According to these reviews, is not so great for DVD and CD playback.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3335

al_bundy

i'm probably going to pick one up in a few months. $50 over the price of a normal blu-ray player is a small price to pay for all the extra functionality

Spaceknight

Seems the reviews were done with the old firmware, since version 3.0 wasn't pushed out until yesterday.
Based on comments like this http://gizmodo.com/5350709/the-ps3-s...th-firmware-30 I would suspect the old firmware was not at all optimized for the new PS3 hardware.
So I wonder how much of the load time issues have already been fixed.


unfortunately, I still can't find any info about upconversion. maybe I'll just buy one, do my own test, and return it if standard DVDs look terrible.

Sdallnct

I actually prefer my A3 over my fat PS3 for DVD playback. I use the A3 for my "every day" player.

And if the slim goes thru the FW issue the fat originally had, expect significant improvement as FW upgrades come out.

RockyMtnBri

I'm going to grab one after the holidays as a second PS3 and a third blu-ray player. I'll swap out my current 60 GB (upgraded to 320 GB) PS3 and move it to the family room. The new one will go in my media room - it'll be nice to see the decoders light up on my receiver for the uncompressed audio formats!

Buster-Brown

glad they finally came out with the slim version... hopefully the wife give the ok to purchase.

Howiefan

Hmm I just got the Slim today and I have a weird problem. Whenever I'm on the main screen, I see like tons of pixels flashing all over the screen, especially when the background is black. The picture looks fine when I'm playing games or watching DVDs/Blu-rays so I guess it can't be because of my HDMI cable?

Leechboy

I had a similar problem with my 60gb PS3. It turns out my tv needed a firmware update.

RockyMtnBri

You and me both, buddy! Especially since I already have one! Don't forget to submit your paperwork in triplicate and give the acquisitions board enough time to review your request!

al_bundy

netflix is coming to PS3. for now you have to order a free DVD with the software and next year there is going to be a firmware upgrade with built in netflix