BD Live the next big thing in Blu-ray

It's really unfortunate that Sony didn't have their act together with stand alone units over the past few years. These features are meaningless to someone who doesn't have a player with internet connectivity. Of course the ps3 solves this and I own a ps3 but I want to use my ps3 for games. Not for movies. Trying to extend the life of my ps3 and I know watching a bunch of movies on it will shorten its lifespan. The more I read these stories the more I'm beginning to think that Sony doesn't care as much about games as they do movies.

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Trying to extend the life of my ps3 and I know watching a bunch of movies on it will shorten its lifespan.

Playing a bunch of movies on the Toshiba HD DVD player will shorten its lifespan too. Playing games on your PS3 will stress it more than movies, so I'd avoid games as well.

Just shelve all your AV equipment, and ensure you hermetically seal it in plastic wrap. Store it just under room temperature, and ensure humidity is between 24 and 31%. Doing so will ensure you derive many 100's of years of enjoyment from your equipment.

they clearly dont care about games that much. sellign abunch of ps3s a blu players, and loosing $ on each. just to win the format war.

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Playing a bunch of movies on the Toshiba HD DVD player will shorten its lifespan too. Playing games on your PS3 will stress it more than movies, so I'd avoid games as well.

Just shelve all your AV equipment, and ensure you hermetically seal it in plastic wrap. Store it just under room temperature, and ensure humidity is between 24 and 31%. Doing so will ensure you derive many 100's of years of enjoyment from your equipment.

Hmm. A little touchy eh? Anyone who works in the IT world will tell you that making a piece of hardware do something other than what it was primarily designed for will shorten its life span. The only exception to this rule is computers of course because you can swap out the hard drives and other inward components. The ps3 was designed primarily for games so using it for blu-ray movies will shorten its lifespan exponentially more than not. The same goes for the xbox 360 playing movies instead of games. Actually you could also apply this to the ps2 as a dvd player instead of a games machine. (Why do you think those Disc Read Errors were so prevalent back in the day?)

And to answer your taunting comment, of course using an hd dvd player to play hd dvd movies will shorten its lifespan, just like typing a response to this email will shorten the flexibility of the cartilage between the joints in your hands and reading this message on your computer screen will weaken the focusing ability of the rods and cones of your eyes. And walking outside tomorrow when you get up in the morning will shorten your lifespan as you breathe in more greenhouse gases leading to lung cancer or some other form of toxic poisoning of your body which our present administration refuses to deal with or even admit to being a worldwide issue. I guess you have to decide how you want to live. As for me, I'm not going to spend $500 of my money on a piece of hardware without doing my very best to take care of it and have it last as long as possible.

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And walking outside tomorrow when you get up in the morning will shorten your lifespan as you breathe in more greenhouse gases leading to lung cancer or some other form of toxic poisoning of your body which our present administration refuses to deal with or even admit to being a worldwide issue.

Hey, since you brought this up you may want to check out this podcast. Download the eps 'The Hydrogen Solution': Part One and Two. It's somebody talking about real plans to reduce carbon emissions rather than just panicking about it or denying it.

itpc://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/ideas.xml

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Anyone who works in the IT world will tell you that making a piece of hardware do something other than what it was primarily designed for will shorten its life span.

This does make me think about something many years back. Does anyone remember the text-only based computer game based on "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? Back in the early days of HDL, we jokingly told one of the new engineers that playing the game on his workstation during lunch was going to hurt his hardware. The poor guy was fresh from school, and actually seemed to believed it!

He doesn't read posts before responding. I think the rest of us got your point.

SKyhawk, since you are pretty good at researching when you post a counterpoint, it shouldnt be too hard to find plenty of articles that clearly say that people who used a PS2 as a DVD player had failures much more often and earlier than those who used them primarily as a game machine.

Its also true that using the 360 as a DVD player is not good because that isnt what its been designed for. Its why many people are actually glad MS didnt add an HD-DVD drive into the 360 since it may have faced the same thing. We won't know for a little while if the PS3 will do the same as it hasn't quite had a long enough life yet, but looking into the past shows this is a valid concern based on past experience and knowledge. It all depends on the inner architecture. Did Sony build it to run both with equal wear on the machine or will Sony repeat the past and make people buy a new one every 2-3 years after the last one won't read properly anymore from machine wear out due to overreaching the machine's intended use?

chemteam, thanks for bringing that topic up. I knew it couldn't be just me that was thinking about that. A lot of people found out the hard way that playing too many DVD movies on the PS2 would lead to premature laser death.

Playing movies requires constant use of the laser, which the PS2 was not designed to do (even though dvd playback was a major selling point for many). Games cache data as necessary, so the laser takes a break between loaded sections in the game. Seeing how affordable a PS3 is next to a dedicated Blu-ray player, I wonder how durable the BR components are in the PS3. I guess when people realize (if things turn out like they did for the PS2) that it's not feasible to use the PS3 too often as a movie player, then they will happily invest another $300 just so their PS3 won't break down.

JServo,

First of all, gaming is much more demanding on blu-ray drives because of the random access thing. The pickup has to move all over the darn thing (depending on the game) and with movies it just starts at at the beginning and reads everything in a serial fashion.

Secondly, the PS3 in particular uses less power (wattage) and runs cooler playing movies than it does games. Less processing power is required to play movies than games after all so this makes perfect sense.

Thirdly, the Blu-ray drive and pickup/laser system within the PS3 is the same type used in all Blu-ray players, and made to the same specifications.

It's probable that playing games rather than movies on your PS3 will shorten its life much more quickly. But don't worry. In most cases that "quickly" will be many, many years anyway. So use it as Sony intended - for surfing the Net, playing music with the visualizations, using it as a media server, doing folding@home, etc. and most of all? Have fun!