PS3 Superior than Stand-Alone Blu-ray Players

via guidetohometheatre

The PS3 unequivocally earns its keep as a BD player for a home theater environment, although the non-gamers among you will certainly want that optional Blu-ray Disc remote. It's not quite good enough on standard DVD playback to unseat very good, up-to-date, standalone DVD players, but in all other respects it earns top scores.

Compared to Samsung's BD-P1000 and (briefly) Sony's BDP-S1 as BD players, the PS3 is superior in absolute picture quality to the former, and more than holds its own with the latter. And it kills both in terms of startup and disc access speed and overall ergonomic prowess and stability. It's just bullet proof, and aside from being the coolest looking piece of gear ever, it's the only next-gen player so far that behaves like one in every respect. And of course, its connectivity and audio decoding features are tops too, although you really need an AVR or pre/pro equipped with HDMI 1.1, or later, to unleash its potential.

All of the above would be enough to earn the PS3 a rave review as a BD player even if it were on par with the prices of the standalone BD players. But it's not- even the upscale $600 PS3 is by far the least expensive BD player available.