Soup of the Day

This is (some kind of) living

So after a long wait I have finally received my new toy, the much anticipated Sony PlayStation 3, or PS3 and it is almost everything it should be. Firstly the unit itself is surprisingly big, as big as an Xbox 360 and massive compared to my old slim-line PS2. But the “black-box” sits nicely next to the HDTV it is coupled too so I’ll let the size go for now.

All previous PlayStation’s were plug-in and play, or you got it out of the box, plugged it in and started playing. The PS3 is a slightly different matter. After un-packing the machine and plugging in the power, HDMI and optical cable (for audio), the system comes to life and then you need to tell it who you are; create an avatar; set-up networking (in my case connecting it to the AirPort 801.11g/b network); register on the PlayStationNetwork; set up an account for buying games online (including downloading free demos) and give Sony all my financial details (which I skipped) if I want to activate one-click buying; let the PS3 detect the HDTV video modes (of which it chose 1080i instinctively for my TV); and then and only then the Cross Media Bar (XMB) appears and the system is set up.

Time for a cup of tea I think, all that setting up caught me off-guard. Luckily I had gone to the Sony Store and the system informed me it needed to update itself. So while the huge file downloaded, kettles where boiled and teas where made. Update complete and store loaded, I download free demo’s of Resistance: Fall of Man, Gran Turismo HD, Lemmings and MotorStorm. All download and install in just enough speed for me not to loose too much interest and thanks to the earlier system update, downloads happen in the background while I go off surfing the web in the built in web browser.

Without going into too much detail, the games all run beautifully and look amazing on the HD screen, despite the fact that the majority only run at 720p maximum, it still feels so immersive. Gran Turismo HD is especially beautiful, but Resistence: Fall of Man is the surprise hit, amazing imagery and immersive gameplay. The demo prompts me to immediately go out and buy the full game.

The other main reason for buying the PS3, which to be truthful was the main reason, was the added functionality of Blu-ray video disk playback. For this I have Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. I have seen some HD content running in shops, as well as driving my TV from a laptop, but to see a feature film playing at 1080i is incredible and now I understand the hype. Our TV does a good job of upscaling standard TV to HD, but to have original HD content is a real wakeup call. Colours are richer and detail is astonishing. The sound on this disk is DTS encoded, but most Blu-ray movies have uncompressed multichannel audio with delivers and surpasses the punch you only find it good cinemas.

To summerise, the PS3 is an amazing piece of kit. Unlike previous incarnations, the PS3 feels like a very serious machine. One of the first menu options I saw was to install another operating system. Yellow Dog Linux is one such additional OS for the PS3, but also Fedora Core and Ubuntu have also been ported. This starts to justify the pricetag for the box, although it is worth remembering that the PS3 is currently the cheapest Blu-ray player available, plus it plays games amazingly well. The PS3 has taken a lot of abuse in recent months for being over-priced, over-complicated and overly late. But now it has arrived I can honestly say it has been worth the wait, even if the wait involved and additional 30 minutes of setting up.