All Blu-ray players bow to the PlayStation 3?
Why bother with a stand alone player when you can get a PS3 for cheaper? The price is on factor but it also appears that the PS3 functions better as a stand alone player then others in the market. I think the major factor here is that it is the first player out the door to support HDMI 1.3 which will be able to decode the next HD audio formats. However, true videophiles will will likely wait for 1080p/24f support from Sony's and Pioneer's stand alone players. Both are due out shortly!
From the article:
Two new Blu-ray players that we haven't seen yet, the Sony BDSP1 and the
Pioneer Elite BDP-HD1, have a slight edge in that they claim to output 1080p/24.
This could be a slight knock against the PS3 since it can't currently do that,
although we've seen reports
that it might be able to in the future. Probably the biggest disadvantage of the
PS3 is that it currently does not upscale regular DVDs. Sony has promised an
update in the future, but there's no guarantee it will do as good of a job as
the DMP-BD10 and the BDP9000–both are more than competent upscaling DVD
players. That being said, with the power of the Cell processor and its current
excellent Blu-ray picture quality, we're betting the PS3 will be up to the
task.
It seems no one player can do it all yet. My guess is the Pioneer Elite will be the player to bring it all together.