Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Buy PS3 now or wait?

Dear all,

I have been pondering this question all weekend, and I thought I'd post here to get your comments/suggestions.

I recently upgraded my home theater and got a new HDTV (Sony 40XBR1), which displays up to 1080i.

I need a DVD player, and was considering the new OPPO 981.

I will want a PS3 eventually for gaming as well as for watching blu-ray movies. But should I get it now since I need a DVD/SACD (and eventually game/blu-ray) player anyway?

Here are reasons that I came up with for waiting:

1) There isn't any game that I have to have right now, and I don't have any blu-ray movies yet.

2) Early adopter problems (possible hardware issues yet to be discovered/worked out). Problems with early PS1, PS2, XBOX, etc came to mind.

3) At the moment, PS3 doesn't upconvert DVDs (not clear if it ever will, or even possible).

Reasons for buying PS3 now:
1) I'll get one eventually, why not now instead of forking out an extra $230 for OPPO?

2) I'd be the coolest dude in town (ok, actually living in NYC, there are obviously tons of people with PS3's already since none can be found at any NYC retail store, but no one I know actually has one).

3) If I don't like it, I can sell it pretty easily without losing too much money in NYC where there is very little supply.

Looking forward to hearing what you guys think.

Buy PS3 now or wait? single choice
	Buy now
	Wait
Votes accepted starting: 01/16/07 09:18 PM You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

Buy it now, don't wait. Of course I like spending someone elses money

Haha Rick, I knew I could count on you to help me with my upgrade-idus.

p.s., for full-disclosure, I voted for buy now

I vote for waiting. From the financial aspect, something to consider is that new PS3's are now selling pretty close to retail price on eBay, and have been doing so since the end of December. So the days of making lots of money off of selling them are over. I don't know what the prices are for used PS3's, but I imagine they're going to be less than retail. Some online vendors are starting to sell PS3's at retail price without tying them into a bundle. The deals may not last that long, but the fact that it's happening (which isn't true for the Wii) means that demand is slowing down and more in line with supply.

Also, the price of the console will drop eventually (as all console prices do), so I don't know how long you were planning to wait before getting one. Your money could be better spent from now until then, rather than being tied up in a console for which there aren't any games that you have to have, nor to play movies that you don't own yet.

A similar thing happened when the PS2 came out, as it was less expensive than many other stand-alone DVD players at the time. I've used it once to play DVD's, and it's an average player at best. If you're looking to get into Blu-Ray, a standalone player will be better (maybe not right now, but down the road).

As for being the coolest dude in town ... well, if that's what it takes for you or your friends to feel that way ... then the above arguments are probably moot.

I believe they're saying that upscaling on the PS3 could prove troublesome, since it doesn't have a dedicated hardware scaler. It would have to be done through software, and I don't know how feasible that is.

As for games, yeah, there will be a wait for decent ones. I have Resistance: Fall of Man, which seems to have the best reviews so far, and I find it to be very mediocre.

As for SACD playback, I think that has to go through HDMI? I assume you have a receiver that supports audio through that? I don't yet, so it's not doing me any good with my (admittedly limited) selection of SACDs. I really need to get a new receiver so I can get good sound out of my... one Blu-ray disc. Ha ha. I've bought over 25 or so HD DVDs, but I've only bought one Blu-ray.

I think I'll probably end up getting an Oppo for the DVD-A/SACD playback myself. I can no longer play DVD-Audio after switching my old DVD player to my second system.

A couple other impressions.... People say how quiet it is compared to the Xbox 360, but I find it to be louder than mine. They say the new Hitachi DVD drive on they're using for more recent Xbox 360s is the culprit, whereas the old Samsung wasn't such a screamer. My Xbox 360 is still too loud for my tastes, but the PS3 is even worse. It doesn't make noise when you first start it up, but once it's warm and the fans are going, it can definitely cut into the experience. The functionality overall is a bit lacking, too, next to the Xbox 360. Xbox Live Marketplace, while still not offering as much content as I'd like, has a lot more going on than Sony's so far. The web browser I find fairly pointless. I tried it for maybe 20 minutes before deciding there's no way I'd want to browse the web that way on a regular basis. As for media playback, it would be nice to be able to access stuff stored on the network somewhere. The Xbox 360 has spoiled me, so for me, the PS3 hasn't really justified itself. Blu-ray actually seems to be its most compelling feature, and I'd still rather buy HD DVDs.

C.V.

buy it now. if your like me and dont have that much time anyway the few good games (resistance is very good) and blu-ray movies are worth it. YMMV

Buy it now. I was at my local Best Buy yesterday and to my amazment, they had 4 60GB units in stock for sale. You'll get yourself an amazing game console, and think of this: a blu-ray player for "free" as a bonus!!

I read an article today that said that PS3 sales have slowed considerably since Christmas, and that sales were now falling behind the projections. Thus the reason that you can find them in stores right now. The original sales projections were saying that you would be hard pressed to find them in stores (without waiting in a "lottery line" to get one) until March. Hmmm....

That would be due to the price and not that many people can take full advantage of the great graphics, so they are waiting and buying Wii's instead.

"great graphics..." Hmmm. I was playing a PS3 the other day at a local GameStop on about a 32" HDTV. They had some off-road style racing game running. The graphics looked like what I've seen on my PC that is now 2 years old. Only my PC doesn't "bog down" like that game did when there were more than 3 other cars on the screen. It wasn't noticable at first, until you start pulling away from the pack, and as soon as you get down to about 3 cars in front of you (instead of the whole pack of opponents) it gets noticably faster, or in other words, starts running as it should.

Granted it probably has something to do with the program code more than the PS3 capacity, but so far I haven't been impressed, but that is a side note. Personally, I wouldn't want to invest anything into the Blu-Ray camp at this point (not that I am investing in HD-DVD either, yet). You could easily end up with a pricey door stop pretty easily, especially since Sony (and their Blu-Ray camp) have been counting on the PS3 to drive Blu-Ray sales, which it hasn't.
But again, I hi-jack the thread... Sorry.