I have been debating whether or not to get one for a few weeks. What are any of your opinions? I have an 8 year old and a 2 year old at home and we have a Wii already. We need a new DVD or Blu Ray player, which is what initially made me think about getting a PS3. When the price dropped $50 on the 320 GB with the Move accessories it had me close to getting one. I just bought an LED TV on Sunday and got it hooked up to the internet so we can watch Netflix and stuff like that. So now I'm thinking about waiting. But I still need a good DVD player or cheaper Blu Ray player since our DVD player is pretty old. Any thoughts out there? Does anybody know if the price drop is permanent?
Ps3
- Thread starter cnnc97
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Don't know anything about the price drop.
I got one back in September for my birthday and I'm thrilled with it. I bought it principally for the purpose of watching movies, but I play some video games, as well. The picture quality is outstanding. Another great thing about it is that you can connect wirelessly to the Internet for free, which means you can stream Netflix directly to your television.
In my opinion, it is surpassing the Xbox 360 as a video game machine, as well. It gets many of the major Xbox 360 titles and has a lot of great exclusive games, as well. For instance, Metal Gear Solid. Though I try to avoid video games as much as possible, I often find myself, quite mysteriously, playing them, anyway. Since I bought the PS3, I haven't touched the 360 or Wii.
I got one back in September for my birthday and I'm thrilled with it. I bought it principally for the purpose of watching movies, but I play some video games, as well. The picture quality is outstanding. Another great thing about it is that you can connect wirelessly to the Internet for free, which means you can stream Netflix directly to your television.
In my opinion, it is surpassing the Xbox 360 as a video game machine, as well. It gets many of the major Xbox 360 titles and has a lot of great exclusive games, as well. For instance, Metal Gear Solid. Though I try to avoid video games as much as possible, I often find myself, quite mysteriously, playing them, anyway. Since I bought the PS3, I haven't touched the 360 or Wii.
Just get it. I started with the Wii for my 9 year old and 5 year old, and also bought a PS3 about 8 months after that, partly for the Blu Ray player. Now, the Wii rarely gets played by the 9 year old as the graphics of the games are wildly better than the Wii. They can watch netflix from either, but you'll love the blu ray and the new TV.
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My new TV is internet ready and I got a free WIFI adapter with it, so I already have that hooked up to the internet to watch Netflix on it. So that part of the PS3 isn't really necessary for me. How many good games are there for kids? It seems like the Wii has more options for them. The popular PS3 games seem to all be FPS and sports. I like the FPS games, but I don't have the time to play much myself.
The PS3 is a great alternative if you want to watch Blu-Ray and play games.
However, as a game machine it has a lot of annoyances, IMO.
Many of the games have a required install. Yeah, just like a PC game. Blu-Ray drives are slow as molasses in January. You'll see this in Blu-Rays too. Hence, you have to install the game to the Hard Drive to help speed up the load times. Blu-Rays obviously don't install but they take a while to load up. More than a DVD.
Now not all games have a mandatory install. However, a lot of games need patches. Especially old games. The problem here, in my case at least, is that PSN downloads can take forever. I don't know why they are so slow. My 360 is on the same network and goes a lot faster. I guess that's what you get when you're paying for one online service and not the other.
I bought Burnout Paradise a few months ago. It's an old game. Had a lot of updates. By the time it was done with the initial install and downloading (and then installing!) the updates 2 hours had gone by. This is an extreme case. Most games you have up and running within 5 to 10 minutes. That said, very few games are just put in and play the first time around. I guess you could always just make sure that you're not connected to the internet or you can cancel the updates. The other thing is that PSN never lets you download in the background while playing a game. You are either forced to watch the download or at best you can surf the menus while downloading demos. As soon as you start up a game, it will stop downloading your demo. Lovely!
Speaking of demos, you better get them while you can. PSN takes down older demos to save bandwidth or some hogwash.
That said, I have a fat stack of PS3 games next to my 360 and Wii games. There are some great exclusives. I'm playing MLB 11 The Show right now!
Just know that the gaming aspects of the machine are more akin to a PC than to a normal gaming console. It's quite a shock coming from a Wii or a 360 and finding out how different a PS3 is. Metal Gear Solid 4 is a fun game, but it stops before every chapter to install that chapter to the hard drive!
However, as a game machine it has a lot of annoyances, IMO.
Many of the games have a required install. Yeah, just like a PC game. Blu-Ray drives are slow as molasses in January. You'll see this in Blu-Rays too. Hence, you have to install the game to the Hard Drive to help speed up the load times. Blu-Rays obviously don't install but they take a while to load up. More than a DVD.
Now not all games have a mandatory install. However, a lot of games need patches. Especially old games. The problem here, in my case at least, is that PSN downloads can take forever. I don't know why they are so slow. My 360 is on the same network and goes a lot faster. I guess that's what you get when you're paying for one online service and not the other.
I bought Burnout Paradise a few months ago. It's an old game. Had a lot of updates. By the time it was done with the initial install and downloading (and then installing!) the updates 2 hours had gone by. This is an extreme case. Most games you have up and running within 5 to 10 minutes. That said, very few games are just put in and play the first time around. I guess you could always just make sure that you're not connected to the internet or you can cancel the updates. The other thing is that PSN never lets you download in the background while playing a game. You are either forced to watch the download or at best you can surf the menus while downloading demos. As soon as you start up a game, it will stop downloading your demo. Lovely!
Speaking of demos, you better get them while you can. PSN takes down older demos to save bandwidth or some hogwash.
That said, I have a fat stack of PS3 games next to my 360 and Wii games. There are some great exclusives. I'm playing MLB 11 The Show right now!
Just know that the gaming aspects of the machine are more akin to a PC than to a normal gaming console. It's quite a shock coming from a Wii or a 360 and finding out how different a PS3 is. Metal Gear Solid 4 is a fun game, but it stops before every chapter to install that chapter to the hard drive!
I have a PS3 and I absolutely love it. I stream a lot of programs from Netflix and it is a great Blu Ray medium. Some of the games are great as well. Didn't think I would enjoy a game system at 60 years of age but I was wrong.
I enjoy mine quite a bit. I watch Netflix through it as well as gaming and Blu-ray movies. I have a 250 GB external hard drive connected to it so I can upload my pictures and music to it as well. It's a great all around machine.
I use mine quite a bit for watching youtube (its nice to have it on a big screen) & BBC I-Player for catching up on programmes I have missed or only partially seen.
My PS3 I have had for 3 years and I had no issues with it UNTIL I went online with it about 4 months ago. After a month of playing games over the internet the disc drive wouldnt recognise any types of discs I put in it (audio/dvd/bluray) and after enquiring and finding out that it would cost £105 to repair I didnt bother, as I could see the potential of the same thing happening again in future.
It might have been a coincidence but it does seem suspicious. Especially after 1 week before it completely stopped reading discs, I had to agree to a user agreement otherwise it would not let me connect to the Playstation network (which happily is free) to allow me to continue playing games online. There are online rumours aplenty from disgruntled PS3 users who believe that the update makes the disc read faster for improved blu-ray imaging, which in turn over a period of time, stops the console from reading discs. I dont know how much truth there is to this though.
So to recap, had the console 2 years & 11 months, never connected it to the internet & I had no issues with it. Connected the console to the internet playing games online, for 1 month and the disc drive died. I know that I may be in the playstation minority of users here, but I wanted to post about my personal experience.
My PS3 I have had for 3 years and I had no issues with it UNTIL I went online with it about 4 months ago. After a month of playing games over the internet the disc drive wouldnt recognise any types of discs I put in it (audio/dvd/bluray) and after enquiring and finding out that it would cost £105 to repair I didnt bother, as I could see the potential of the same thing happening again in future.
It might have been a coincidence but it does seem suspicious. Especially after 1 week before it completely stopped reading discs, I had to agree to a user agreement otherwise it would not let me connect to the Playstation network (which happily is free) to allow me to continue playing games online. There are online rumours aplenty from disgruntled PS3 users who believe that the update makes the disc read faster for improved blu-ray imaging, which in turn over a period of time, stops the console from reading discs. I dont know how much truth there is to this though.
So to recap, had the console 2 years & 11 months, never connected it to the internet & I had no issues with it. Connected the console to the internet playing games online, for 1 month and the disc drive died. I know that I may be in the playstation minority of users here, but I wanted to post about my personal experience.
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I am in love with my PS3s (have 3 of them). It is great for gaming, it up-converts your DVDs beautifully, and with free software (PS3 media server) it is a great media server. You just install the software on the computer with your media and run the program in the background. When you start your PS3, the computer will show up with all the drives connected to it and you simply click through to your file. It converts on the fly so you don't have to convert any of your movies.
One of the only drawbacks of a PS3 as your blue-ray player is the max Hz it can put out is 60. If you have a tv that can support about that, it can't keep up. The picture still looks great but it would be nice if I could use my tv to its full ability.
Get one. It only does everything. Plus, there's this game for it, Modnation Racers... so much fun. Just like Mario Kart, but better.
I have--er, actually, it's my son's, bought as a Bar Mitzvah gift. For him. Yeah, for him.
Since I've never owned anything other than Playstations, I can't compare it to the Wii or Xbox. I agree about the installation issues. It can take 20 minutes or more for a game to install from disk. And downloading anything is a major pain. Even with a connected Ethernet cable a 1gig game can take an hour more to download. Which is one reason I tend not to buy games or download movies.
Sometimes the PS3 has framerate issues when a lot of action is going on, but that may due more to the game than the system.
What I do like about the PS3 is that there are more 'oddball' games out there that are only made for the PS3. Also, you can use Legacy PS1 games on it (many of which are definitely worth playing over again) and even download classic PS1 games you haven't played before.
The main I issue I have with today's consoles is that nearly all games are either shooters or fighting games. There are far fewer story-oriented games than there were 10 years ago, and the imagination level among the game-makers has declined considerably.
Since I've never owned anything other than Playstations, I can't compare it to the Wii or Xbox. I agree about the installation issues. It can take 20 minutes or more for a game to install from disk. And downloading anything is a major pain. Even with a connected Ethernet cable a 1gig game can take an hour more to download. Which is one reason I tend not to buy games or download movies.
Sometimes the PS3 has framerate issues when a lot of action is going on, but that may due more to the game than the system.
What I do like about the PS3 is that there are more 'oddball' games out there that are only made for the PS3. Also, you can use Legacy PS1 games on it (many of which are definitely worth playing over again) and even download classic PS1 games you haven't played before.
The main I issue I have with today's consoles is that nearly all games are either shooters or fighting games. There are far fewer story-oriented games than there were 10 years ago, and the imagination level among the game-makers has declined considerably.
I have a PS3. I use it primarily for games. Many of the games are geared towards the 20-30 age group in the sense that these individuals grew up watching systems advance technologically. They started with the Nintendo when they were young and moved on to SNES, Sega, N64, PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox, Gamecube, 360, and PS3. That said, your children will grow into these systems, but the games aren't being made for them. I would let them stay content with the Wii as it has much more content for them (even if the graphics aren't as good).
As far as the abilities of the machine, it is at the top of the heap as far as console gaming is concerned. Others have commented on this so I won't get into it.
One thing I will offer up is to look at the home theater systems out there. Many companies are offering surround sound systems with Blu Ray players. Also, these bad boys can also have internet connectability and can stream Netflix and the like. I got a 5.1 Sony Blu Ray surround sound system for about $250 (it was an opened model, so the price wasn't too bad. nothing was wrong with the system though). There are ways to have wireless speakers if you want and it has a very user-friendly menu (similar to the PS3's). If you aren't looking to play games, this might offer more bang for the buck in that it is essentially a Blu Ray player with surround sound as a bonus.
As far as the abilities of the machine, it is at the top of the heap as far as console gaming is concerned. Others have commented on this so I won't get into it.
One thing I will offer up is to look at the home theater systems out there. Many companies are offering surround sound systems with Blu Ray players. Also, these bad boys can also have internet connectability and can stream Netflix and the like. I got a 5.1 Sony Blu Ray surround sound system for about $250 (it was an opened model, so the price wasn't too bad. nothing was wrong with the system though). There are ways to have wireless speakers if you want and it has a very user-friendly menu (similar to the PS3's). If you aren't looking to play games, this might offer more bang for the buck in that it is essentially a Blu Ray player with surround sound as a bonus.
On the flip side, it will output 24hz. Since film runs at 24hz (FPS), if your TV will match it you can get the best possible picture quality when you watch movies. No projection system, be it film based or video, runs at 120, 240. etc. They are TV selling gimmicks like 3-D or PIP (another dead fad). In fact, it is unnecessary for the player to output at that frequency since it's the TV that converts it anyway. It isn't like lines of resolution where the source and the TV have to match.
I was a sales manager for Best Buy for about 5 years, and was paid handsomely to get people to part with their cash. It was nonsense like 120hz and $85 cables that made it easy to do.
Now, back on the original point...
I agree. Get the PS3 and use it for your DVD/Blu-Ray/CD needs. It streams well, there are many great games, and the fact that it uses standard 2.5" notebook hard drives makes for an easy replacement if you ever need to. Go for it.
EDIT: Nole, I wasn't trying to beat up on you. I don't want you to take it that way.
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