Forget games will PS3 show off Blu-ray?

Stan Beer
Monday, 08 May 2006 16:04

Your IT - Home IT

Sony is to unveil the latest technological marvel of the games console era, the PlayStation 3 at the Mecca of games shows, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), which kicks on Wednesday 10 May in Los Angeles. However, the thing that's most interesting about the PS3 is not it's game playing abilities but a device that's incorporated called a Blu-ray high definition video player. Hopefully the world will be able to see that at E3.

Honestly, how long will it take to dawn upon the masses that if the advertised price of $500 is correct, then at the current price of Blu-ray and rival technology HD DVD players, the PS3 will be a steal. A little hint: Blu-ray players are just now coming on the market at $1000 while the cheap HD DVD players are $500.

Now take the PS3. It happens to be a games console, which can play all the much loved PlayStation 2 games plus all the new ones written for PlayStation 3. From reports, it also happens to be a device that can reportedly download movies and music off the internet and play them on your stereo and TV. On top of this, the PS3 incorporates a Blu-ray player.

So what we have is a fully fledged integrated home entertainment centre, with a Blue-ray high definition video player, in one unit posing as a games console. For $500! And people are complaining that it might cost $100 more than an Xbox 360 which doesn't have any high definition video capabilities at all?

Once again, just in case we've missed something. The cheapest HD DVD player available is $500. The cheapest Blue-ray player is $1000. All they are at the moment are glorified DVD players that can play a tiny number of movies in high definition format. One of them is not going to be around at some stage in the future. Meanhile the PS3 is going to be a full featured home entertainment unit which can do a heap of things including playing Blu-ray format high definition videos for just $500. If the market decides to go with HD DVD, well PS3 owners will still have a home entertainment unit and games console with a DVD player. Have we missed anything? Oh yes, Sony six months is a long time to wait.