Sony PS3 Slim review
by Pierre Boisvenue. Sep 23, 2009
Being able to watch a movie on my own schedule has always been a challenge and
frustrating. The cable companies do provide video on demand yet occasionally I
wish to be able to view it on my IPod Touch and perhaps on my regular plasma.
This is a challenge since I need to first record the movie, if possible,
transfer to PC and encode to MP4 then transfer to IPod.
Of course I could buy the DVD yet now stuck if the disc is scratched and still need to encode to MP4.
I cannot justify the price since I mostly watch a movie only once. Or the thing
I hate the most is go the Video store to rent a movie if its available, watch it
in the allocated time then return it to the video store and it’s just not
environment friendly. Let just say that the experience is just not there yet for
me anyways and this is why that the capability to download of the internet
movies provide the best experience for me personally. Now I have for a while
connected a small PC directly to the plasma and watch the movies on my schedule
and not even have to watch it in one sitting and prevent me the encoding time to
DVD disc. But that means having to use turn the PC on and switch on dual
display, copy the movies from USB or WIFI not a seamless experience.
Then I thought that perhaps the IPod touch TV out would be an acceptable solution but
unfortunately on a large screen did not cut it. After hearing about the Zune HD
a got a bit exited about its capability to output at DVD quality and the same
time stumbled on the PS3 capability has a media player. Its capability to play
all sort of media including DivX really got my attention and that a reduced
price smaller, slimmer was just being release let’s say the timing was pretty
good. Being able to watch a movie off an externally attached USB device was also
a big plus. The PS3’s ability to stream off a server movies via WIFI is
something I looked at briefly and said to myself I would look at that at a later
time and went and bought the PS3 slim for its media player capability only as I
was not interested in it has a gaming device yet and not paying attention to its
upscalling capability, the capacity to improve the video quality of movies.
So I unplugged my old PS2 leaving a free component slot for me to connect the PS3,
connected the fiber optic cable and turned it on to be greeted by the beautiful
XMB interface. I then proceeded to have WIFI connected. I then told myself
that I should try reading up on using windows vista as a server to figure out
how I could get Windows 7 ultimate to do the serving of media files. I was very
pleased to be able to see my upstairs PC and media from the PS3 XMB interface
downstairs via WIFI. I selected a movie randomly on the PS3 and was again exited
to see a DivX movie in a very acceptable quality. With the PS3 ability to
download game demos, I proceeded to download Bioshock 2 just for fun to evaluate
the graphical capability and was blown away by the opening scene. I then
proceeded to look at the Metal Gear Solid 4 demo and was pleased and bought the
game. Being an older gamer, I no longer seeks adrenaline rushes like I used to
and MGS4 allow me to move at my own pace.
Movies are not the only things that
can be served over WIFI, jpg files as well. The way that the PS3 presents your
personal photos on a large screen is quite the experience for family viewing.
Being able to turn on and off the PS3 from the wireless controller is also a
feature I appreciate. The PS3 bluray is a nice addition that I tried to see but
was not impressed that much. Perhaps the movie in question did not provide
enough of a bluray high definition experience? Overall I am very pleased with
the PS3 slim however a bit disappointed with Sony dropping PS2 backward
compatibility but not much. The unit is small and very quiet. I give the PS3 Slim:
Hardware