Why the PS3 is everything I was looking for (and more)

I’ve been waiting for the PS3 to launch ever since Sony annouced it was working on it’s next gen technology for the new console shortly after the PS2 launched. At that time I was so blown away by what Sony said it was working on (a CPU with between 4 to 16 cores? Incredible!) that I decided I wouldn’t even buy a PS2, instead I’d skip a generation until the PS3 came out.

I’ve also been looking for a long time for a home media server type device that would allow me to stream or store all our photos, MP3s, and home movies and display them on our TV. With the general trend of everthing becoming digitized and living on your PC, the part that has always frustrated me is the fact for me the PC lives in the office, not the familiy room, and I don’t want to move people into the office just to look at our latest holiday snaps.

I been looking at devices by Roku (the Soundbridge), Slingbox, the Series 2 Tivos with photo album support etc with an interest, but in the back of my mind still remembering that the PS3 was to do all this and more.

Now it’s here and I’ve managed to fight off the crowds to actually get one, I’m pleasantly surprised that the PS3 has all these features and the potential for so much more (with firmware upgrades from Sony being released on a regular basis). Of course it’s an awesome games console, and the coming year with games developers getting to grips with the hardware will show what the platform can really do (launch day titles are never an indication of the true capabilities of a new system). The features that I’m really pleased with though are the ones I have been looking for for the past few years and decided to wait it out until the PS3 arrived. The photo album support is awesome, being able to flick through pictures incredibly quickly and the MP3 playback support is usable (although doesn’t allow you to organize tracks yourself). The big surprise which I don’t think anyone saw coming back in the early days of speculation about the Cell processor and the new platform was the integration with the PSP – this is very cool – being able to browse my MP3s and photos remotely. This is currently limited to within WIFI range of the PS3, but apparently in March when the PS3 is launched in Europe there will be another major firmware upgrade that will allow the PS3 to be accessed via a PSP remotely across the internet. Just how cool is that?!</p.

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