PS3 as a blu-ray player - a few questions

[basementjack]

Hi -

I'd love to get a PS3 as a blu ray player.

Somewhere I've read it won't scale blueray - that I've got to have 1080p - can anyone confirm/deny this - I'd like to use 720p, but 1080i would be acceptible.

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Question 2 -
I have a 10% off target coupon.
I suppose my options are:

Base 20g PS3 for $450
60 g PS3 for $540.

Both have a hard drive, blueray, wireless controller, and hdmi.
any reason not to go for the $450 option?

[Dougie085]

No I believe it won't scale DVD's it only outputs them at 480p. Blu Ray though I'm pretty sure it will do it at 720,1080i/p. The only bad thing about the PS3 is its extremely noisy .

[Rodny Alvarez]

I talked to one of my friends today and he said there bringing the units(PS3) back, they are overheating and the power cord is melting because the power supply is to small, he works at Walmart.


Somebody with this problem??

[Dougie085]

I haven't heard anything about that?

[nova]

There is/was a phony story floating around the net about a recall. I can't find a credible source that would indicate the story is true.

[Snatcher]

As you've been told, it doesn't scale blu ray to 720p, so you have to use 1080i or 1080p.

About buying the 20 GB model, only if you care about the wireless and card readers, since you can upgrade the drive yourself.

I've had one since mid december, and it has been great for SACD over HDMI and Blu ray playback (with the remote, not using the regular PS3 controller)

[John Simpson]

You're correct about the scaling... or none of it.

Edit that: the new firmware is a ripper! Plays havoc with our older HD plasma, though... bright flashes or total darkness will confuse the screen, and it'll run through the mode settings trying to find 1080p. Can get annoying...

[SteveCallas]

I believe there was just a new firmware (1.8?) released for the PS3 that will allow it to do scaling on SD dvds as well as older PS1 and PS2 games. It also fixes many of the HDMI handshake issues that the PS3 has been having with various display devices when outputting 1080p.

Buyers should be aware that if you're using the optical output, the PS3 will not play SACDs. I was a bit shocked to discover that I now own an SACD player but can't get it to work! Something about copy protection over PCM streams...

I don't believe any device can play SACD over optical, you need either 5-7 coaxial cables or HDMI to support the bandwidth.

[wbassett]

The new firmware does indeed upscale. In fact it upscales a few things that Sony specifically said it wouldn't, like content on DVD+/-Rs.

I am extremely pleased with the PS3 and if you don't need analog audio, this BD player (that also happens to play games ) is one of the best players around.

Currently I got a 320GB My Book external USB drive to test it out as a media server and the preliminary tests are looking very good. I know of no other player that has this capability and this is a power house of a unit in my opinion.

[Snatcher]

Although the scaler in the 1.8x firmware does great DVD upscaling and de interlacing, it still doesn't scale 720p games to either 1080i or 1080p, is I assume it still doesn't scale 1080p movies to 720p (I only have 1080i, so I cannot tell until I go to my cousin's setup to check on his 720p set).

[wbassett]

I thought it did mention downscaling to 720p on Sony's website, but I'll have to double check that. Since I have a native 1080p set that's what I'm set at so I have never checked out the lower settings and the PS3 at them.

[bob1029]

I have heard about some issues with decoding of dolby digital signals after the 1.6 update that was released. Some people have managed to get around the hitches by toggling options, some were stuck with a completely non-functional digital signal, while others have had zero issues. I would be mildly wary of problems in this arena.

[wbassett]

So far I've had no problems with mine at all.