I have taken the plunge and bought myself a Playstation 3. That's what happens when you buy a HD TV, you develop this craving to actually watch stuff in HD. So, £280 bought me the 40GB version of the PS3 -- which basically means you only get 2 USB ports, no card drive, and no backwards compatibility with PS2 games. None of that matters to me in the slightest, so it was a good buy and saved me £50.
Strangely, I'm not going to use it to play games. I just don't play games nowadays. I hit some kind of block when I was 24 and now can’t summon enthusiasm for anything without the word "Mario" in the title. I got the PS3 purely for playing blu-rays, as it's still the cheapest player on the block, now supports DTS sound, and is good quality.
But while the blu-ray thing is great, I'm actually more excited about the fact the PS3 can play AVI, MP3, WMA, JPEG and GIF files. Yes, by connecting my external HDD, I can now watch a tonne of TV shows and music ordinarily only viewable/listenable on my PC. And you have no idea how fantastic that is. A sizeable chunk of things I watch is seen on a monitor, so it's brilliant to be back in a more comfortable living room, on a soft sofa, watching a 37" TV. Bliss. The quality is also far, far better than my monitor.
The funny thing is, I had no idea the PS3 even did this. Did you? When I connected my external HDD to a friend's PS3 out of curiosity, it didn't recognize any files. But it turns out you have to press "triangle" if that happens, and choose "Display All" -- et voila! Files! Sony should advertise this, as there are a lot of people still tied to their PCs or laboriously connecting laptops to TVs, who might be persuaded to get a PS3 because of this feature alone. Surely. I would have bought one sooner, had I known.
I'm happy anyway. The hi-def experience has arrived for me.
