Review: using the Playstation III as a Blu-ray player

Lately, Scott has been writing a good bit about the Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD (why is this in italics? It’s a Blue Book thing. Dang lawyers.) question. And, as you might recall from a previous post, I was on the fence as to how to handle the ticklish decision situation. It seems after some late night larceny, I have arrived at, at least, a temporary solution.

Now, I have become a Apple Zombie of late. Apple Zombies are not just enamored with Apple products for their ease of use and overall elegance. There is a degree of laziness, too. We have become accustomed to just plugging something in, and letting the Spirit of Steve do all the work for us, as we quietly sip Jäger, or some other less-disgusting beverage.

All this leads me to my Blu-Ray experience. I have a wife who will give our kids nearly anything. Heck, if they told her they wanted an elephant, I would be shoveling massive amounts of poop by the next afternoon. That’s why my son has both an Nintendo Wii, and a Sony Playstation III. The latter, he simply doesn’t play with, ’cause the Wii is so much more fun. Really, it’s way more fun.

So, while he wasn’t looking, I lifted the PS III to hook up to the new big-ass HDTV downstairs. It’s a Sony TV and a Sony game console. This should be easy, I thought. They speak the same language. I’ll soon be watching my HD movies in style and comfort. Gosh, how wrong I was…

I expected getting the PS III playing movies in high-def would be an Apple-esque experience. But, nothing is that easy. Just getting the thing to send high-def was a challenge. It seems hooking up an HDMI cable isn’t sufficient. You have to tell the player HDMI is OK. All the while, it is asking you questions only on the standard def outputs. Confusing? You bet.

Let’s face it. Even a Swiss Army knife can’t be all things to all people. It simply does everything equally poorly. Just like the PS III. Using a gaming controller as a remote? Are you kidding me? And try to configure anything complicated with such a controller. Maybe a swig of Jäger isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

Then, there is Wifi. A great advance in all things electronic — especially when they configure themselves, like Apple Computers. But try — just try — to configure the WiFi on the Playstation in 5 minutes or less. Just try. Get back to me on this, OK? I’ll wait. And, it’s not like there is even a great pay-off. The web browser on the PS III is worse than Katie Couric’s ratings. And, it doesn’t come with Les Moonves to convince you things are better than they appear.

Finally, I did get everything to work. Sorta. It plays movies, seemingly in HD. The PS III came with a movie — a classic, really — Talladega Nights, the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. It does, indeed, look cool in 1080p. It’s just that by the time I got everything working, I was too tired to watch it.

Yawn.