With flawless Blu-ray playback and DVD upconverting capabilities, the PS3 may have finally hit the entertainment mark by being perhaps one of the best home theater components you can buy.  Oh… and it plays next-generation HD games to boot!

I’m also a huge fan of the Wii and X-Box 360, but the PS3 transcends those (in a home theater sense) by being able to replace an upconverting DVD player and providing Blu-ray playback. I don’t even use the gaming aspect of the PS3 at all, as the games I have for the Wii and X-Box 360 feed my gaming addiction.

The Best at Blu-ray
The PS3 is arguably one of the best Blu-ray players out there. With more than enough processing horsepower, the PS3 chomps through HD video with ease, and has the fastest movie startup times of any Blu-ray. Anyone who’s experienced 1-2 minute movie load times on standalone Blu-ray players knows how important fast response time is.

Also, using onscreen menus and chapter skipping on a PS3 is as fast, or near as fast, as a standard DVD. No standalone Blu-ray player, regardless of price, has the startup/play speed and menu responsiveness of the PS3, which is downright sad.

The Price is Right
Although only a scant $400, the PS3 bests or competes with Blu-ray players at any price point… even the $1,000+ models. The reason for this is that even though it’s $400, Sony sells the PS3 at a loss with the idea being they’ll makeup the loss with game sale profits. The estimated actual price of the PS3 hardware varies from $800-$1,200.

Movie Performance
The PS3 performs superbly on movie playback be it Blu-ray or DVD. Audio and video are delivered in pristine upconversion or HD quality.

For standard-definition DVD I saw absolutely no difference in upconversion quality compared to my benchmark OPPO upconverting DVD player. Like the OPPO, standard-definition DVD picture quality is smooth and clean with sound quality to match.

The Blu-ray format offers simply the best audio and video out there, and the PS3 delivers Blu-ray with ease. Video quality is pristine and internal decoding of all the latest HD surround formats like Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio make for some great audio enjoyment without issue.

Dave Mathews and Tim Reynolds Live at Radio City Music Hall on Blu-ray has extremely crisp HD video, and is a joyride of audio fidelity with Dolby True HD surround sound. It’s a must demo audiophile and videophile Blu-ray disc for any home theater enthusiast.

Uncompressed Surround
With a software update in May, the PS3 became one of the very few Blu-Ray players to decode Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio onboard, and delivers the audio in multi-channel PCM over HDMI. Thus, the PS3 brings uncompressed surround to many home theater enthusiasts who have HDMI equipped receivers.

Multi-channel PCM over HDMI is the only option for the PS3 for uncompressed surround formats.  The PS3 does not support bitstreaming the HD surround formats to let the receiver do the decoding, and it really doesn’t matter as you’ll get HD surround audio quality regardless. View June’s Spotlight for more on HD surround.

Not only does the PS3 decode these new HD surround formats, it does it with superb audio quality. The PS3 is not only the cheapest Blu-ray player to bring audiophile surround sound home, it’s also one of the best at doing it by offering sound quality I simply haven’t heard any better on any demo aside from high-end audiophile stereo recordings.

Setting up the PS3’s audio to work on a 5.1 reference system was a little difficult and is one area Sony should take notes from Nintendo’s Wii menu interface. Sony uses and obscure audio section in its menu from which you select among fifteen or so technically labeled audio formats which, while fitting for sound engineers, is not at all warranted in a consumer device.

Sony should simplify this setup and allow for advanced options for those daring enough. For normal consumers they simply won’t setup the channels correctly, and thus won’t be able to take advantage of uncompressed surround even if their system is capable.

It actually took me quite a bit to get the audio channels routed correctly. There’s no doubt in my mind that many consumers simply wouldn’t take the extra step, thinking that their system doesn’t have the capability.

Build Quality
The PS3 is surprisingly very sturdily built, and is pretty hefty too. It definitely belongs on a rack with its look and feel, elegant hardware buttons, and slot disc loader. It’s rounded top means you cannot place anything on top of it. The game controllers are very lightweight and can be charged by plugging them into USB ports located on the front of the PS3.

Compared to the Wii and X-Box 360, Sony did a great job at making the PS3 feel like a high-end home theater component with excellent overall build quality.

You’ll Need a Sony PS3 Remote
Unless you want to navigate movie menus and control movies with a game controller, which can be best described as awkward, you’ll want the PS3 remote control. The downside is the PS3 doesn’t have an IR port so it only works Sony’s Bluetooth PS3 remote for $24.99.

Yup, the PS3 won’t work with any universal remotes... putting those that are big into single remote nirvana back on the remote jockeying bandwagon. It’s really the only fault the PS3 has as an entertainment component, but it is a biggie.

The Sony PS3 remote control (available separately) is pretty good, but really needs backlighting. The remote’s buttons are distinct enough where you’ll eventually memorize the buttons, but backlighting like the X-Box 360’s HD-DVD remote would’ve helped a lot.

What could be better?
What could be better than the PS3 in video and audio performance? Really all other players, including $2000 Blu-ray players out there would be hard pressed to come close to matching the PS3’s performance, which makes its $400 price tag a steal for home theater enthusiasts.

Having an X-Box 360 and a Wii I didn’t buy the PS3 to play games, I bought to be my Blu-ray and upconverting DVD player and that decision has paid off… big time!

The PS3’s Faults
No product is perfect, including the PS3. The biggest fault is not having an IR sensor on it. (Perhaps Sony can make an iPhone/iPod Touch remote app!)

Also, with it’s curved top, you can’t place anything on top of the PS3, thus limiting it to be placed on a rack shelf by itself, or on top of another component.

One of the biggest setup gripes was getting uncompressed audio to work correctly. I actually had to go online to figure out that I had to go to an obscure audio setup menu to tell the PS3 to play everything in 5.1 channels. The PS3 assumes 7.1 channels, which is a huge mistake.

With the PS3’s movie performance quality, it’s hard to find fault the PS3’s performance quality for audio and video at all. In fact, in this rare circumstance… I won’t. The PS3 is an entertainment dream machine.