Blu-Ray disk player and more

We’ve had HDTV for a while but our only source of HD video thus far has been from the HD channels our cable company provides. This weekend I decided to do something about that.

I’d been waiting to see which way the format battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD would swing and with some of the recent announcements I felt comfortable choosing the Blu-Ray Disk (BD) format.

Now selecting a BD player is not as simple as it sounds. The Blu-Ray standard is still in a state of flux with new features being introduced. I wanted something that would play all the current standards and be upgradeable in the foreseeable future.

After careful research I decided to purchase a Sony Play Station (PS) 3 as my BD player. It meets all the current BD standards and is easily upgraded via the Internet for future enhancements. It also has full HD 1080p video output with upscaling for regular DVDs.

Since my main purpose for this device is playing BD, I decided on the Sony PS3 40Gb model with is currently being sold for less then $400, a price as cheap or cheaper then most BD stand-alone players. I ordered one Saturday.

When you consider that it also plays games and music…what’s not to like. ;-)

Update: 02/01/2008

I’ve received the Sony PS3 and have connected it to my HDTV, using an HDMI connector, so I wanted to give an update on the results.

WOW, the video is outstanding and the PS3 does a great job of playing not only Blu-Ray disks but also standard DVDs. The DVD upscaling is very good. Not the quality of Blu-Ray but much better then a standard DVD renders.

When setting up the PS3 I connected it to my WIFI network and it immediately notified me that a firmware update was available. Ten minutes later I was at the latest version.

I don’t have any PS3 games so that’s a whole new area of possibilities to explore, but the 40Gb PS3 is worth the price just based on it’s capability as a Blu-Ray player.

I’m looking forward to re-watching some of my movies now.