So my damn dvd player craped out this afternoon and I'm half thinking of picking up a PS3 as its replacement. I figure it will also give me access to Blue Ray movies which will be nice and the games. Eventually. I haven't priced dvd players in awhile so I don't know what good ones are going for. Is it worth it?
Edit - I guess I should have posted this in the hardware forums. Sorry about that.
According to the guys on AVSforums, with the newest firmware the PS3 is one of the best upscaling DVD players you can buy.
Of course you can buy an upscaling DVD player for like $50, and maybe the guys at AVSforums will be able to tell the difference, but you never will. Buy it for the blu-ray or (if there were any) the games, not just to play DVDs.
But keep in mind if you want to use a universal remote control with the PS3 you'll be out of luck, unless you happen to have a remote that does Bluetooth.
K
Like using a hydrogen bomb to kill a fly.Originally Posted by Drunkagain
+1 PS3-as-DVD-player-vote.
I'll vouch for the PS3 as being one of the best upscaling DVD players out there.
I previously fiddled with tons of settings using ZoomPlayer and FFDShow to upscale my DVDs on my computer. I don't even bother anymore, the PS3 looks just as good without the hassle. Plus the deinterlacer actually works for when you want to watch a TV show that's still interlaced on the DVDs, which is something that typically sucks balls for PCs to do.
The PS3 has completely replaced everything else I previously used for watching optical content - with the sole exception of HD-DVDs that I still need the 360 to play.
Nyko has a USB-IR adapter for PS3 (Blu-wave) which works for universal learning remotes.
Well thanks everyone. After thinking about it overnight I think I'm just gonna wait until for a price drop or two before I pick up the PS3. Or at least wait for a couple of games that I want to get released. I'll just do without a dvd player in my bedroom for a few months or pick up a cheap one if I get desperate.
Glad to hear its a solid dvd player though.
Cool Jazar, I did not know that. I am going to go order that right now. That's been the main reason I haven't used the PS3 as my DVD player.
K
So, please don't laugh at me, but, um, what exactly is upscaling? Is there some reason I should be using my poor dust-covered PS3 as a DVD player instead of the 5+ year old vanilla DVD player I've been using?
Are there some special settings I should enable on the PS3? Like an 'Enable Upscaling' setting? Or do I just pop in DVDs and get them looking better on my HD TV?
-Tom
Upscaling converts the video stream to higher resolution, making it look better on a HD tv or monitor.
The Nyko remote does not include a PS button, so you will have to turn the PS3 on/off in another fashion.
Yeah, you have to enable it- either in the settings in the XMB or you can do it on the fly by pressing the Triangle (Options) button during a movie and selecting video options. The latter makes it very easy to cycle through and see the quality difference between the settings.
Whether you see a difference or not will depend on the quality of the scaler on your TV. Assuming you have an LCD, Plasma, or DLP, your TV is already upscaling all of your non-HD content, it's just a question of whether the PS3 scaler is better than the one in your TV.
If your DVD player is that old then definitely try out the PS3 as a DVD player- It's probably more than a bit better.
Why don't supercoolawesome features like that default to on? It seems kinda stupid to include all these bells and whistles, then default them to off.
It's kind of dangerous if you don't have the right kind of TV. Standard def TVs freak out if you send them a high def signal (or even 480p if the TV is 480i only).
Same for me. I had my PC set up as a HTPC with purevideo decoding, ffdshow resizing, and media player classic playing back. It worked well but when firmware 1.80 hit on the PS3, I tried it and it looked at least as good and was more convenient than the PC, so I switched.
Can the PS3's DVD player read Divx/Xvid stuff burned onto a DVD or CD-R? Does it play MP3s? What about streaming stuff over the network? Basically how much media center stuff can it do?
I don't think the PS3 disc drive supports XVID or MP3 (although you can rip CDs to the HD) but the PS3 does have DNLA networking support for pictures, music, & videos.
The ps3 actually upscales in software, not hardware, so it is very high quality.
This explains why they didn't offer scaling in games, by the way.
...But it can upscale PS1/2 games. o_O
Er? I thought the 1.80 firmware does upscale PS2 titles, same as DVD movies.
Looks pretty good, although the picture is a bit too small, off-center and not adjustable.
Of course you can upscale Crash Team Racing all you want, and it's still a low-poly game.
Might as well have all those cores be doing something.
It's almost like they took someone who really understands video filtering, had them create the perfect set of FFDShow filters, and then loaded them into the PS3 to be used by all.
The PS3 disc drive didn't support mp3 before, but it does now.
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