It is still lacking in many respects, esp. as a media player and internet browsing tool - which is what I use my PS3 for the most.
Interesting observation, as I too bought the 60GB PS3 at launch, and primarily use it as a Blu-ray player, DVD player, and use many of it's video and audio codecs to play home movies, watch videos downloaded off the internet, and listen to music from SACDs, CDs, MP3s, and even right off our iPods, and have had little issue with it.
In fact, for the last year the PS3 has been arguably the best performing and full compatible Blu-ray player on the market, despite being half the price of many of the stand alone players.
It took only a few months for Sony to unleash the full scaling capacity of it's video processor, making the PS3 one of the best 1080p upscaling DVD players.
As anyone with a collection of SACD discs will tell you, it also is a great SACD player. Late last year Sony even added the ability to output the signal via TOSLINK.
Simply put, you won't find a single video game console that supports more media formats than the PS3:
Current Compatible Media Formats for the PS3
- Images
- Audio
- AAC
- AAC Low Complexity (unprotected)
- ATRAC
- Audio CD
- MP3
- MP4 Audio
- MPEG-4 Part 3
- SACD
- WAV
- WMA
- Video
- AVCHD (mts)
- AVI
- BD Video format on Blu-ray disc (Region Locked)
- BD Video format on DVD-ROM
- DVD Video (Region Locked)
- DivX
- Motion JPEG (w/Linear PCM)
- MP4
- MP4 AVI
- MP4 DivX
- MP4 Part 2
- MP4 Part 10 (AVC/H.2648)
- MPEG-1 (w/MPEG Audio Layer 2)
- MPEG-2 (w/MPEG2 Audio Layer 2, AAC LC, AC3(Dolby Digital), LPCM)
- VC-1 (wmv)
- XviD
(although I wish it would support FLAC, but I also understand why that is very unlikely to happen)
Nevertheless, I look forward to what the PS3 promises to deliver... but I think PS3 users - especially those of us who bought it at launch, are being kept waiting a bit too long for some of these features, a lot of which are surely not too much to ask... at let's not even mention Home
Again, as someone who has had his PS3 since launch, or more specifically since early December '06, I have not felt as if I've been kept waiting. Nor have I felt that Sony has been slow to add features and updates to the PS3... especially when you consider they have had more than 25 updates already!
I guess it all depends on what you are trying to compare it with though. Looking over
all the updates, and how much they have added to the value of the PS3 over the last 18 months
(and not just the last few months either), and I think you will have an unbelievably hard time trying to find any other console that has even come remotely close to adding and offering as much versatility and multi media playback support than the PS3.
Sure... if it was a personal computer you could do all sorts of things with it to customize it, add support for specific codecs that you personally want to use, and add software to sort and manage it all... you certainly could have a more feature filled and faster web browser, but then you also have to deal with reliability and having an operating system that crashes on occasions, and worrying about your system getting hacked and infected with viruses.
In fact, if that's what you really want from the PS3, it supports LINUX and there are plenty of sites out there where people are showing off how they have hacked the PS3 and turned it into a personal home super computer.... personally I prefer having something that not only performs at a very high level, but is also very reliable and dependable.
BTW: In case someone is getting ready to blame Sony again for the lack of an update for the Flash plugin for the PS3... as I shared in the main PS3 thread, the problem lies with Adobe. They simply have not written a Flash 9 plugin for the PS3, just as they have not for various other devices other than PCs.
It looks too awesome at night! with all the lights and stuff... It would be cool if they made a Google Earth kinda thing, just in real-time...
