Kevin's Watch

So once I get some good moola I'm going to get the new [i.e., slimmer] PlayStation 3, since it's a reliable Blu-Ray. I've thought long and hard my first purchases and I'm definitely not going to re-buy everything in my DVD library... That said, I definitely want to get UP! on Blu-Ray. That should look fantastic...if only I had a digital 3-D theater for it... Secondly, I want the BBC Pride & Prejudice, because it completely restores its original colors, obliterating the washed-out DVD transfers, and I just haven't seen enough Jennifer Ehle lately.

Blu-ray is awesome. Picture and audio is out of this world. I love being able to watch my concert Blu-ray and access the main menu while I'm still watching. Picture-in-picture, multiple pop-up menus, hi-res sound, I love it.

There are lots of things to consider. The PS3 is certainly a fantastic player. I've heard from one source that the slim version is noisy when it plays discs. If that's an issue for you, make sure and confirm this. Also, you'll need a receiver with HDMI inputs if you want to hear the full high resolution sound available with Blu-ray.


Once you see how good it looks, you'll be tempted to replace everything you have no DVD, at least if you're like me and you don't have 100s of DVDs.

The Holy Grail for DVD replacement isn't out yet (LOTR). We can expect that next year, at least the theatrical release. I've already replaced all my Lost DVDs. There was a great deal on the first two seasons: send in the bar code for the DVDs along with your Blu-ray receipt and get a $20 rebate per season. After selling our DVDs (which we got cheap at Target when they first came out), we're in for about $40 per season for the Blu-ray upgrade, incl. what we paid for the original DVDs. Pretty good deal.

Lord Foul wrote:So once I get some good moola I'm going to get the new [i.e., slimmer] PlayStation 3, since it's a reliable Blu-Ray.

We just traded in Beorn's non-working 40 gb PS3 towards the 120 gb slim, as a gift from his grandfather. He'll open it tonight when his grandfather arrives for a belayed 16th birthday dinner. Currently we don't own any blu-ray DVDs, but should we try it before anyone else here, I'll report on if ours is noisy when playing them.

Any news on whether the slim runs hot or not? I have the 2nd-gen PS3, larger design, but without the extra ports and backward compatibility.

It's hard to tell if any PS3 is noisy when playing discs, since my face is usually melting from the audio.

No backwards compatibility on the slim, (or very limited, if any) from what I've been told. The company that made the chips apparently went out of business. If there is any sort of work around for this, I'm all ears.

If there isn't one, we're considering springing for a PS2 for Beorn's Hanukkah gift. None of us have ever played any of the classic series for PS2, such as Final Fantasy, and Beorn is beginning to express interest in them...

Supposedly the broken fan issue has been rectified. It's so new, I guess reports on actual use have yet to be generated.

Blu-Ray is frustrating.

If you don't have a good TV and home theater system, you're not going to be able to enjoy the difference. But the real kicker is content. There's a fantastic DVD release of Rocky that's got a ton of special features, including a great commentary by Sly. Not available on Blue-Ray. For older films, this seems to be the norm (Die Hard is the same.

Cail, the first editions are often rushed to market bare bones, and then tricked-out "collectors editions" follow. The same thing happened at the beginning of DVDs. Multiple releases of movies to get people to double-dip. Internet reviews from places like Home Theater Forum are helpful to sort through the hype.