Thinking about a Blu-Ray player for the holidays?
Here's an "electronics tip" to anyone who is thinking about buying (or receiving) a Blu-Ray player for Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate).
Get a PlayStation 3!
The PS3 is without-a-doubt the best Blu-Ray player you can buy. It is a very powerful game system, in case you have not heard of the PS3, and it has a built-in Blu-Ray player.
Calling it a "game system" is really very unfair to the PS3, because it is actually a fairly powerful computer, underneath its sleek exterior.
(To demonstrate how much more powerful the PS3 is over a stand-alone player, check out this article that compares the amount of time it takes to load and play an advanced movie feature.)
If you're not a gamer, you can own a PS3 and never feel bad about not buying a game, because it is well-worth the cost just as a Blu-Ray player.
The console would look good (and fit right in with) any other audio and video components.
The PS3 has every single advanced Blu-Ray feature available, unlike many stand-alone players out there. And it will always get any new features that come out because it can download updates directly from the Internet.
Not only can it get the updates, but every update is always made available for the PS3 before anything else.
For example, the feature that lets you watch a picture-in-picture commentary while he movie is playing was available on the PS3 for nearly a year before stand-alone players were able to do that.
That's because they had to build new hardware for the stand-alone players to handle the feature, but the PS3 is a powerful computer, so all it needed was a software update.
The price? The PS3 is more expensive than the "dirt-cheap" players this Christmas, but nothing close to the high-end players. Game systems are designed to make most of their money through the purchase of the games, not the systems, so it's a lot cheaper than it would be if it were not a game system. It is absolutely worth spending a little bit more to get a PS3 over a dirt-cheap player. And your kids will love you for it. So will the neighbor's kids.
Also, always buy a PS3 with a smaller hard disk capacity, if you have the choice. A wonderful thing about the PS3 is that you can upgrade the hard drive later on with a standard laptop hard drive, so you can get big capacity later for much cheaper than the small increase in disk you'd get now with the more expensive game system.
