Sony PlayStation 3 (40GB) review

Average user rating

7.9

very good

Average user rating from 9 users

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Sony PlayStation 3 (40GB) user reviews

April 16, 2008

Posted by: riddion

"Pricey but worth every penny"

What I like:

Great picture and sound. A really great Blu-ray and SACD player

What I don't like:

The fan can be a quite noisy

Review:

I have had the PS3 since last September and I have loved every minute of it, especially I replaced my amp with HDMI inputs so I could get the HD sound.
There has been one thing that had irritated me so much, the lack of a DTS-HD MA decoder. Now that it can decode the soundtrack, I must say that it is one of the very best Blu-ray players out there. In addition to this it is also a great SACD player. The sound is converted to PCM from DSD, but he converted sound is 24 bit 176 kHz, so the it is much better than various others that converts the DSD sound to 24 bit 96 kHz PCM.
I have bought a lot of Blu-ray movies and the picture and sound is really great. The colors on the best Blu-rays, like Blade Runner, and the latest Harry Potter and Spiderman are simply amazing. The sound is equally great if you connect the PS3 to an amplifier that can process the sound and switch the picture to the HDTV. There is, unfortunately, no other way to get the multichannel HD sound from the PS3 than through the HDMI port. Something that I have to mention is that the PS3 does not support bitstreaming the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA soundtracks, but since it now has an internal decoder for both I really don't see the need for it.

I haven't mentioned gaming yet, which is the main feature of the PS3. I have always loved the PS2, ever since I bought it when it first came, as a gaming console. The PS3 is even better. When playing games like Resistance Fall of Man and Elder Scrolls Oblivion I really almost feel like being there. There have been times when Oblivion hanged and I had to reset the console, but that is due to some bugs in the game. I do miss the feedback when playing racing games, but I have read that Sony (and others) are releasing controllers with feedback.
I haven't tried the network feature very much so I cannot really give a fair review on that.

Something that can be a little tiresome is the noise the console produces after a while, but when playing a game with lots of sounds all over the room or movies with the HD sound you don't think about it much.
The console also is a bit pricey, but what you get is a product of great quality and since it has a network feature can the firmware easily be updated when Sony distributes it. There has been lots of firmware updates adding new features all the time. Something that newly came was DTS-HD MA decoding and support for Blu-ray Profile 2 and Live. This goes to prove that it is one of the best deals on the market and that it is a really good choice of you only want to have a Blu-ray player, since so many of the Blu-ray player out there don't have a Ethernet feature.

To close I have to say that, despite the price, is the Playstation 3 a really great buy whether you are looking for a great gaming console with a Blu-ray player or just a great Blu-ray player.