Prologue: My Hate for Sony
It was March 24th 2005. PSP launch day. Initially, when the PSP had been announced I was fairly excited. Finally, it seemed, a company was bringing to market a handheld media/gaming device that was geared toward the more mature, adult, crowd. It was going to have built in Wi-Fi, which meant internet access, and a high resolution widescreen display for both gaming and video playback. It also helped that it looked fuckin’ sweet!
As time went on and more was revealed I found myself becoming more and more hopeful about the device. For some time I had been wanting a device small enough to fit in my pocket
but versatile enough to allow me to watch movies, play games, surf the net, e-mail, IM, blah, blah, blah. Basically the Holy Grail of personal media and communication devices. Over time, in my head, I began building up the PSP into this device.
The good news was I was able to catch myself doing this before it actually came out and as a result I was able to apply some reason and talk myself down to a point where I decided against purchasing it on initial release. The bad news was both MJS and JT decided to buy one at launch, and the temptation to take advantage of the Wi-Fi network play between devices became too much to overcome. Hence I found myself in line at Best Buy on launch day and presently thereafter the owner of a shiny new PSP.
To say I was disappointed would be putting it mildly. Of the games shipped at launch 95% where bullshit and the other 5% just couldn’t fill the gap. But what really pissed me off were the overpriced UMD movies, lack of web browser, difficulty in video playback, and Sony’s total lack of any kind of online infrastructure.
As time went on and things didn’t improve I grew more and more bitter. Finally they released the web browser and anyone who used it, instantly knew how big of a piece of shit it was. For me it was the final straw and I ended up selling the unit to a co-worker in disgust, cursing Sony and vowing to never fall into their vaporware trap again.
Fast-forward to the launch of the PS3. With the difficulties it suffered (news of developers not really liking it, disappointing initial sales, only one or two good games available at launch, and the reversal of the EMOTION engine in the 40GB version) it was easy for me to build it into the PSP all over again in my mind. I instantly saw it as more bullshit from Sony that could have been a good product but instead will get short-changed and mismanaged into hell.
Despite all this the PS3 did have one major, and possibly redeeming, factor however. It had a Blu-Ray player! Now this was before Sony had won the HD format war and HD-DVD was still a viable alternative so it wasn’t a 100% lock for the PS3 but in my mind it was the most compelling reason the console had at that point to buy it. Alas, however, I was stubborn as ever and vowed I wouldn’t buy one solely on the grounds it was a Sony product.
The format war ended (rather abruptly) and literally overnight HD-DVD was dead and Blu-Ray stood victorious on the field of battle. The die was cast and the decision on what type of HD player we’d all be buying had been made for us.
A short time later JT posted an article on this very site asking the following question; Now that the format war was over does it, in fact, make sense to buy a PS3 given that not only can it be used a Blu-Ray player but also play next-gen level games? My response was immediate: Don’t buy it! We sparred some and MJS stepped into the ring pointing out the simple logic in JT’s argument that if one was going to buy a Blu-Ray player a PS3 would make the most sense since its price was in line with stand-alone players and it had the added advantage of being a gaming console. But again I was stubborn and wouldn’t relent! It was a Sony product so it was the devil!!
So I began looking into Blu-Ray players and found that the majority of reviews did in fact confirm the PS3 was the best player currently on the market. No really a surprising bit of news I suppose since it is a Sony device after all. I found myself giving it more and more thought and before long I started questioning my real motives for hating it. Of course I knew it all came down to the sour taste the PSP had left in my mouth. I knew I was being unreasonable and operating off emotion more than anything.
So finally one night I just made the choice. I knew I was going to get a Blu-Ray player sooner or later. I had the HD television already and the Comcast HD service had, by now, spoiled me on the quality. So I was at a crossroads: I could either keep my unreasonable dislike toward Sony, buy a stand-alone player for the same price as the PS3 (screwing myself out of the value it offered), or I could drop the bullshit “hate act” and make my choice based on reason. So I got the PS3. Yes it made me nervous and yeah I feel like I’m going out on a limb but I’m hoping in the end I can find some happiness with the device and maybe even put some of my ill-will towards Sony to rest.
Part I: Un-boxing
I got home, picked up the package from the apt. office, got it inside and opened it up. Everything that I ordered is there, thank God! Good job Newegg! My order consisted of the 40GB PS3 unit, 6ft. HDMI cable, and the Sony Bluetooth Blu-Ray remote, all of which I unpacked carefully. Call of Duty 4 had already shown up a day earlier and on the way home I had stopped at the local Best Buy and picked up 300 and Burnout Paradise.
Upon opening the console box I was presently surprised to find I had gotten the Spiderman 3 version. I suppose it’s no biggie really but when I ordered it online it didn’t say anything about the movie coming with it so it was a nice bonus since I wasn’t expecting it.
Upon unpacking the cables I must say I was fairly disappointed to find only a composite video cable included. I was already aware that I would have to provide my own HDMI cable but for the $399 cost of the unit you would think Sony could, at the very least, include a component cable.
The actual unit itself is fairly large, heavy, and sports a glossy black finish that begs to be covered with dust and fingerprints. The form factor of the box doesn’t really lend itself to fitting into a home entertainment setup but for my needs it integrates itself into my simple TV stand just fine.
Part II: Hardware Setup
In terms of actual hardware setup the cable connections were easy to make, though I couldn’t help but think a longer USB cable for the controller would have been nice. The touch sensitive power button is slightly strange to use but works fairly well. All in all I was able to get the unit hooked up and turned on in less than 5 minutes.
I’ll also mention that during no time while I was performing the actions in this review did the console ever reach a heat level I was uncomfortable with. It seems pretty well ventilated and I checked it frequently while playing games and movies. Yes, it heats up, but as I said it feels like the right amount of heat given the components in the console.
Part III: Online Setup and First Experience
First things first, get the controller connected and working. Even though the controller is wireless you have to use the USB cable to get things going initially. This involved nothing more than pressing the “PS” button on the controller and in a matter of seconds I was good to go.
After viewing the initial start-up screen the system began the auto detection of the HDMI input followed by the internet connection settings and I’m pleased to say both these stages completed without a hitch. A few brief seconds later I was asked to create a user profile and this is where I ran into my first annoyance, in the form of Sony’s decision to use the same telephone style keypad from the PSP for text entry. Yes, it’s functional, and for the PSP it’s fine, but c’mon guys this is a $400 dollar “complete home entertainment system” as you tout it. You can take the time to come up with a full-size onscreen keyboard.
A few steps later and the XMB dashboard loads smoothly while playing a nice clip of soothing classical music. XMB looks nice and runs smooth! There’s a SHITLOAD of options available. It’s going to take some time to go through them all so I decided to press on with other things.
I decided to load a custom background for XMB. To this end I copied a few images from my PC into a USB flash drive and plugged it into the PS3. While the flash drive itself blinked with activity, there was no action on the PS3 to indicate it had detected the drive. Finally I decided to navigate to the Photo section and was relieved to find the flash drive listed there. Still it would be nice if upon connecting a drive the system could give some indication of detection and perhaps prompt to display the contents of the device. Upon accessing the drive I discovered another little quirk when the system performed an “auto-scan” yet failed to find any pictures. To first get around this I moved the images out of the directory they were in to the root of the drive. Despite this change a second scan still came up empty. The final solution was to access the advanced options for the drive and choose the “view all” option which finally got the contents of the drive to load. After that it correctly picked up the images and I was able to view them and use the options to set the one I wanted as the XMB background pretty easily.
On a whim I decided to pop in a CD-R disc that contained some MPEG-4 encoded video clips. I was pleased to find that in this case I simply had to access the disc and it immediately displayed the clips. I was able to playback each one easily and they looked pretty good. I tried a few other clips that were encoded in MPEG-2 and was pleased to find the system played them fine. I’ll have to test more codec’s in the future (Divx) but my initial reaction thus far is thumbs up.
I decided to get some online action going next. First, things first, had to perform a software update. The update was largely automated once I chose it from the XMB menu and took about 5 minutes to download on my cable broadband connection. Another 5 minutes for the system to install it and I was good to go. Creating an online profile was pretty smooth and I was able to breathe a slight sigh of relief as here a full-size onscreen keyboard it used. This makes the frequent text entry go MUCH faster. The biggest gripe I had with the online sign-up option was the lack of graphic avatars to choose from. There’s a total of 22 pages with something like 8 avatars per page, which sounds like a good amount but most of them are fruity, bubbly things that won’t appeal to you unless you’re either a.) a 15yr. old girl or b.) a Japanese male. In the end I wound up choosing an 8 ball. Meh. All-in-all the online sign-up process took around 7-8 minutes.
After signing up I was unceremoniously dumped back to the XMB menu. It wasn’t really clear what had changed, if anything, now that I logged online. Some sort of dialogue box giving a brief run down of online options would have been nice here.
Presently I made my way to the Playstation online store. I had read previously that the entire store was getting an overhaul soon and it’s apparent from the moment the main screen loads it’s MUCH needed. The store is basically a quick and dirty adaptation of the Playstation website and as such doesn’t really suit itself to navigation using the PS3 gaming controller. The main problem is the navigation, specifically the annoying fact that the standard buttons you use to navigate XMB, and thus become familiar with, work with unintended results inside the store. For example normally the “O” button would take you back a step when navigating XMB. However pressing “O” while inside the store prompts you to exit the store entirely instead of taking you back a page as you might expect. Bleh!
My first download was the GTA IV trailer. When choosing a video to download it’s nice that it shows you how much free space you have on your hard drive, but it doesn’t show you the actual size of the video itself until AFTER the download starts! It would be nice if it showed that info before the download begins! Another gripe is the fact the trailer was only available in 720p. Maybe I’m nitpicking but one of the big draws of the PS3 is its ability to do 1080p. In my opinion all downloadable video content should be available in this format.
After the download was completed I found myself once again confused and disappointed as I wasn’t presented with any option to play the video! In fact, I had to exit the entire store and navigate to the video section in XMB to find the video. Another small inconvenience, yes, but an inconvenience nevertheless. The video itself ran smoothly and looked good. Can’t wait for the game! It looks like a shitload of fun!
I briefly poked around the options for the video itself and discovered it allows you to add some meta-data to the file in order to group it into an album. Probably an option I personally won’t use much but it’s a nice thing to have for those that may have lots of files.
Back in the online store I decided to check out the free wallpapers and was disappointed to find only 3 pages of content, all of which, had to do with games. Bah! Good thing you can make your own wallpaper! The video trailer section is equally shallow (3 pages) and doesn’t even have the latest trailers. Its possible what’s here are trailers for only Sony movies, which wouldn’t surprise me. On the plus side the trailers do offer a choice between 720 and 1080 video resolutions. There is also a section for Blu-Ray movie trailers (trailers of movies already on Blu-Ray disc) but in all honesty I have NO desire to watch any these videos.
Rounding out the store is the Game Demo section which from my brief foray into it looking promising. As I was anxious to move on to other things, I didn’t hang around here long and download any demos, but once I do I’ll post an update with my thoughts.
Part IV: Games
I purchased Call of Duty 4 to go with the console and later, once it arrived, picked up Burnout Paradise. One of the things I noticed about the games was not all of them support 1080p. On the back of the each game case you can find a list of what resolutions are supported. For CoD 4 both 720p and 1080p are listed with Burnout only supporting 720p.
I decided to try CoD first and after sliding in the disc I was presented with a message informing me the game had to be updated! Bah! The good news is the update only took about a minute to download and install so I wasn’t that bad. After the update the game loaded and here were I began to scratch my head. As I mentioned earlier the game says it supports 1080p on the box and the Activision and copyright screens are, in fact, displayed in 1080p. However when the opening cut scenes and game menu load they are only at 720p. Firing up the actual game itself also shows it’s only running at 720p. There’s no option in the game menu pertaining to resolution so I’m a bit confused as to exactly what’s going on. Not really wanting to spend the time to figure it out just then I decided to put the issue aside and simply get some game play in.
The game itself looks beautiful and runs very well! Without going into excessive detail concerning the actual game content (I hope to do a full CoD 4 review in the near future) I will say the game is pretty KICK ASS! I’ve only played the first 5 or 6 missions but already it’s been the most engaging game play I’ve enjoyed since the Half-Life franchise and on some levels surpasses it! Anyone who’s a fan of FPS games and hasn’t played this game is really missing out! It’s available for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 so pick it up if you haven’t already!
Next I popped in Burnout which loaded right up without requiring any sort of update. As I stated above Burnout runs at 720p and looks really good! Even though this version doesn’t have the “Crash Breaker” mode, found in previous games of the franchise, the city is now completely open ended (similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted) and very big! The makers of the game have preserved all the fun and high speed action in the actual races and the graphics look better than ever!
So other than the quandary with the display resolutions (which hopefully I can figure out) I was overall pleased with the look and feel of the games.
Part V: Blu-Ray Movies
As I mentioned earlier the console came with Spiderman 3 and I picked up 300 separately once everything arrived. I also ordered the Sony Bluetooth Remote to hopefully help ease playback operations.
I decided to try out 300 first and after sliding in the disc it only took a few seconds to load up and begin playing. I have to say I wasn’t particularly blown away with the video quality and in some spots I could actually see some graininess. Don’t get me wrong it looked HD quality but I suppose I was expecting a somewhat better look from a movie like 300 in full HD. Despite this I ended up watching half the film and still enjoyed it. For comparison I tried Spiderman 3 next which, indeed, looked better than 300 and much closer to what I expect from a Blu-Ray movie.
For its part, the Bluetooth remote works very well and is pretty snappy in terms of response time. The setup of the remote was also pretty easy with the only step involving registering it with the console. This is accomplished via a wizard in the XMB options that makes connecting and managing Bluetooth devices a breeze.
Overall so far Blu-Ray to me seems like just another format. Granted it looks much better but I think I’ll need to watch some more movies and explore some disc features before I begin to really appreciate it. The good news is, though, I’ll now be able to provide reviews of Blu-Ray movies!
Part VI: Conclusion
Keeping in mind these are only my initial impressions of the console I will say, so far, I’m fairly pleased with it. While there’s some software quirks and functionality I’d like to see worked out and improved and the online store needs a MAJOR overhaul (which as I mentioned will be happening soon) and I still have a concern over whether or not it’s worth the price I paid I’m going to try and remain hopeful (if slightly cautious) for the PS3’s future.
I plan on providing more updates and insights as time goes on and I use the system more and learn it’s “in’s and out’s”. Stay tuned!
