Xbox 360 & Separate HD Player or PS3??

Dodge777

Dodge777

Dodge777

Associate
Joined
22 Jun 2004
Posts
233
Location
Hampshire, UK
Hello peeps,

This xmas I'm kitting myself out with a nice 40" LCD tv. Yay. I'm a big movie and tv buff, so a big screen is mandatory really. The thing is, I want to connect the tv to my pc and play movies and tv shows that I've got stored on my pc. All good.

In addition to all this I want a console. I'm not a HUGE gamer by any means. I love having the lads round and playing some fifa, PES or other sports games, but I can't see myself playing much else except the odd first person shooter.

So my dilemma is this..
a) buy a PS3 40gb
b) buy an xbox 360 premium and a separate bluray drive for my pc which I can use to watch hi def movies on the tv

I'm leaning towards b) as I think there are more xbox games out there, and the price of that as well as a bluray dvd is only a tad more than the ps3. But, it'll allow me to burn dual layer dvds as well which is a big plus. I also understand that an xbox 360 is better for syncing with a pc and the media centre is better than the equivalent on the ps3.

Any thoughts on this would be great.
 
360, which would leave the option to also get the HD-DVD add on, leaving you with both choices available to you for HD movies.
 
blu-ray's the safer bet but check out what films from which studios you're interested in and act accordingly. I like what fox and bunea vista put out so i went with the ps3 for blu ray
 
Johnz0r said:
You a fan of Blu-rays too I take it?
Click to expand...
I am a big fan of Blu-Rays, it's a fantastic improvement both audibly and visually too. The fact the PS3 is such a good BR player is also excellent news, plus it doesn't have huge startup times etc..
Also, as an upscaling DVD player it gives itself benefits as a standard DVD player over the Xbox360.
 
wedgie said:
360 upscales as well afaik.
Click to expand...
It does? Visually there is a difference there between my Xbox360 DVD playback and PS3 playback (in favour of the PS3), but I've not since played DVD's on my Xbox360 via HDMI (as my new Xbox360 has HDMI), only Component and VGA (on my old console).
 
Dodge777 said:
Hello peeps,

This xmas I'm kitting myself out with a nice 40" LCD tv. Yay. I'm a big movie and tv buff, so a big screen is mandatory really. The thing is, I want to connect the tv to my pc and play movies and tv shows that I've got stored on my pc. All good.

In addition to all this I want a console. I'm not a HUGE gamer by any means. I love having the lads round and playing some fifa, PES or other sports games, but I can't see myself playing much else except the odd first person shooter.

So my dilemma is this..
a) buy a PS3 40gb
b) buy an xbox 360 premium and a separate bluray drive for my pc which I can use to watch hi def movies on the tv

I'm leaning towards b) as I think there are more xbox games out there, and the price of that as well as a bluray dvd is only a tad more than the ps3. But, it'll allow me to burn dual layer dvds as well which is a big plus. I also understand that an xbox 360 is better for syncing with a pc and the media centre is better than the equivalent on the ps3.

Any thoughts on this would be great.
Click to expand...

I would go blu-ray all the way if I could only pick one of the two competeing formats (and I have). but I think the best thing you could do (as a movie and TV buff) is look into what is available on both formats. And maybe see which studios your favourite shows are owned by in terms of Movie studios.

For instance
abc shows are owned by Disney (Think LOST).
nbc shows are owned by Universal (Think HEROES) :mad:

In terms of big USA Movie/TV studios this is realtively definitive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...cal_disc_formats#North_America:_major_studios

Both camps have loads of smaller studios but these are the big boys.

HD-DVD is fully region free (at present)
Blu-Ray is not (I would say off top of my head maybe 50% are).
This is a big deciding factor as buying imports is the best way in terms of prices compared to rip-off UK where the market is too small for prices to be low (at the moment).

Finally:

A list of all releases so far for Blu-ray:
http://bluray.liesinc.net/ and region coding

Best list I can find for USA releases is these sites which I use as reviews of quality etc (obviously the Blu-ray list has to be used in conjunction with the above region free list):
http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/releasedates_historical.html

I have mentioned before that George Lucas and Stephen Spielbeg have not yet commited to either format (I think they own the rights to their movies and not the production studios). I genuinely think the war will not be decided until they make a decision.

Hope this helps.



rp2000
 
From what you've said in the opening post you want a good media player which can play games.

That is 100% the PS3. Media Hub which plays Games.

360 is a Games Console which plays some media.
 
Could always get the 360 HD-DVD and plug it into your PC(its usb) and the crossfire 360 adapter(basically a wireless hub for the 360 pads that goes into your pc)

Got a 360 in our flat but Iv got a crossfire cable for playing with my pad on my pc, and my mates sometimes just sit in my room and play, also means i can take it with me when i go home wiht my laptop for when i plug that into the big TV and have people round :)
 
I'm not a HUGE gamer by any means. I love having the lads round and playing some fifa, PES or other sports games, but I can't see myself playing much else except the odd first person shooter
Click to expand...

Why would you want to play an fps on a console when you can play it on your PC? (connected to your hdtv as well)

if you're not a big gamer then ps3 does good - excellent for dvds/blurays and stuff. Go 360 if you change your mind and want to play plenty of games. Though bare in mind the fact that you could probably get most of them for your PC.
 
the ps3 is still the fastest bluray player - just check the disc load times on some of the players, just like separate hd-dvd players, it can be upwards of 30 seconds to start a movie. the ps3 does it in seconds. its the best scaler of the two, its the quietest and its the more reliable of the two.

however, go the 360+bluray drive option if you want to play console games.
 
For media centre the PS3 wins hands down IMO. Straming music can be a bit of a pig to set up, but once its set up its fast and nice and simple to use. Both the PS3 and 360 can stream music and movies (movies with the correct codecs) from another PC.

The 360 however, doesnt come with a wireless adapter/card, so be prepared to splash out £50 for one of those if you need wireless for streaming off a PC, whereas *** PS3 has wireless as standard.

Games wise, the 360 has more, but if its sports games yo mostly play, then FIFA, PES and the like seem to mostly be dual format releases, and with you just owning one of the consoles, you wont notice the drawbacks one console has over the other.

Blu ray is brilliant, and has its fair share of good films, the only one im disappointed to not see on blu ray is transformers, as its going HD DVD, but the majority of recent good titles are blu ray. Also, the PS3 will upscale DVDs, and trust me you do see a difference using the upscaling feature over a standard player when on a HD TV. The 360 will also upscale, but i believe its limited to just via the VGA connection (not sure about the new HDMI 360s though).

Anther thing is noise, im not kidding when i say my 360 is actually louder than my PC, its really does get annoying when you are trying to watch a film (unless you out the sound up) as you can hear it in the background, whereas the PS3 will quite happily sit alomost silent.

If your after a media centre then personally id say get the PS3, games wise its not as good, but for everything else its better IMO.
 
i dont agree with the media center comments at all. it doesnt win hands down. hell, without a pc its crap just like the 360 is and with a pc, they are both pretty much equal with the exception of the 360 integrating so much better... but tbh its immaterial, what it does natively, it does extremely well. ie, bluray and upscaled dvd.
 
IMO its a personal opinion on which is better, I prefer the speedyness of the XMB, and find the live menu very slow and irritant to navigate. Turn the 360 on, go to the media tab, select music, choose the source, wait for it to gather the track listings and then decide to stream, whereas the PS3 you belt to music on the XMB and your PC is waiting to be selected as the streaming server.

The live blades are well implemented and handle the complexity of live very well, but IMO it feels bloated and slow to use, and it seems to enjoy freezing a lot recently on my system.

Like i say though, its a personal thing, and both have their drawbacks and positives.
 
i agree, but we are comparing the capabilities of them both here, and its very true - without a pc to stream to either of them, they are pretty useless right now. no lossless playback except .wav, no divx/xvid, 5.1 doesnt work properly from stored movies on the ps3, ps3 doesnt like >2gb vob files (support is flakey)...the list goes on. there are a great deal of things that id like to see fixed, let alone implimented, on the ps3 before id consider it a real alternative to a pc:)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom