Great news for PS3 owners or those looking for a BD player!

[wbassett]

... and maybe even those still on the fence whether to get a PS3 or a stand alone DB player...

One complaint with the PS3 was that it didn't decode DTS-HD Master Audio (but it did send it to a receiver undecoded so the receiver could do the work), as of June 2008, firmware upgrade version 2.30-2.36 fixed that problem. Now the player decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, giving users the latest surround sound formats. That same upgrade also added BD Live (Profile 2.0) support, meaning users can connect to the Internet for additional downloaded content for any BD Live-enabled disc.

Now the only complaint would be it doesn't have discrete 5.1 outputs, but a lot of BD players don't have that either. This may be a deal breaker for some, but for most I think it's not.

Also Firmware update 2.53 added play-list capability, but as I mentioned elsewhere, stay away from that update. They are up to 2.60 now and I'm hearing better results and will be updating to it this weekend myself.

From launch to current date, the PS3 is one of the only Bluray players from back then that was capable to be upgraded to Profile 2.0, and really its full potential has yet to be tapped.

Full Divx support is there now, and the biggest breakthrough improvement will be if Sony ever knuckles under and finally adds NTFS support. This will be absolutely huge if they ever decide to do it, and yes they are getting a lot of pressure from owners to add this to a future update.

Add to this that Netflix Watch it Now streaming content will soon also be readily available to P3 owners with a Netflix account.

BTW, I now have 2.5TB of external hard drive storage connected to mine!

[Dan Schneider]

I have a PS3 with firmware version 2.6. I have the unit connected through an HDMI cable only directly to an Onkyo tx-sr805 in a 7.1 configured system. The receiver is indicating a 7.1 signal but does not indicate DTS or DTS-HD decoding. Under the BD audio menu I have selected LPCM and my question is this:

When I go to the sound menu the output format options are Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 then a bunch of LPCM options including LPCM 7.1 in several frequencies. Is there not supposed to be a DTS HD-MA 7.1 output format with the new software upgrades? I want to hear this thing blast out some DTS-HD and this is killing me. Any help would be appreciated.