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If you are a HI-DEF enthusiast, you may have been looking for components that can add to your true HI-DEF experience. As a casual gamer, I use my console for media playback. Especially the media stored on my PC and the HI-DEF DVD’s. My home theater receiver does not support Dolby True HD or DTS HD Master Audio. There were no affordable receivers that supported these formats until recently. Now that Onkyo, Denon, Sony and others have affordable receivers that support these formats, I am looking forward to listening to the audio in the HD movies in those formats.

Xbox 360 does not support these formats. At least, the Xbox 360 HD DVD player down converts them to Dolby Digital and pass them to the receiver. So, if you buy a new receiver that supports these new formats, a PS3 at $500 is the best bet. PS3 supported Dolby True HD from day one (through HDMI PCM only). Microsoft doesn’t care. Sometimes they are not good even in ripping off features. If not for some fantastic games from their partners, Xbox 360 would have bitten the dust by now. Come this holiday season and PS3 will have a games lineup that rivals Xbox 360 games in quality. Definitely nothing will match the Halo 3 fan base. But I bet 2008 will be when PS3 will regain it’s top spot.

I don’t have a PS3 yet. I only have original Xbox and Xbox 360. I am slowly losing my loyalty to Xbox 360. If I buy a PS3, I may never go back to consoles from Microsoft. Ultimately I spent more money on Xbox 360 to get far less features and 2 two pieces of hot (literally) hardware. Most of my xbox 360 disks are scratched beyond readable condition. Imagine playing very hard to reach a check point in Gears Of War on insane difficulty and before the check point is saved, you get a message “disk unreadable” and going back to dash board. It happened to me many times.

HDMI, what is it? My Xbox 360 Premium (?) Edition asks. Downloads? I am full, I have only 20 GB. Go get a 120 GB hard drive for $175. I am sorry, I call myself Premium or Pro Edition.

Microsoft has lost $1.9 billion on xbox 360. The sales are down. You go to any nearby store you can get the core model abundantly. Try to buy an Elite mode, you won’t find it. What does that mean?

Two of my friends are in the market for an Elite model for more than 2 months. They could not find any. Both are unwilling to but it online. I would have.

Both of them are not particularly xbox 360 fans. They just want to play games and watch HD movies. The only reason they are looking for xbox 360 instead of a PS3 is because everyone else in our group owns only xbox 360′s. All of us who bought xbox 360 are all early adopters. We made the move at the launch, paid premiums to get it off ebay. These guys were waiting for a better model and Elite model appealed to them. Plus, the rest of kept preaching to them, though we are not fan-boys in any sense. We all like the PS3 except for the fact that there not many good games there. And we are waiting for Halo3!

How long can we keep these guys interested in xbox 360 when at $500 PS3 is a better bargain all the way when compared to the xbox 360 Elite? E3’07 has already proved that PS3 has some very exciting titles on its way this holiday season. With 4 Blu-Ray titles with the $500 PS3 available right now, it is even cheaper than the xbox 360 premium edition. If I had $500 to spare at this moment, I would go ahead and buy a PS3.

Are you in the market for an Elite model? Were you able to get it from a store?

YouTube on Apple TV. When I attended 2007 CES back in January, I asked MS reps why I cannot even get xbox 360 stream stuff I own, like the video from my camcorders? They asked me to talk to the Windows Media Player team or Media center team.

Now Apple TV has youtube, what next?

I bet PS3 will allow more stuff pretty soon than xbox 360.

My friend had enough waiting and he is not willing to buy it online. He searched most of the shops around south bay and did not find any. Costco, Fry’s, Best Buy, …

He is right now thinking about PS3. He is not a fan boy of any particular platform. All he is looking for is sportsgames and HD movies. He is not a person who will buy more than one console. If he gets it, all my friends will have PS3 only some have 360. I will be the only one not to have a PS3.

I always knew Sony’s gamble with PS3 will payoff in the long run. I also knew HD DVD lost the battle when Microsoft decided not to build the drive in to Xbox 360. HD DVD camp did not recognize the power of game consoles in the current market. As I said in my previous posts, Sony knew and understood more about consumer electronics market. Too bad I am not a Sony fan. I have both xbox 360 and HD DVD player. I might end up with a toy nobody wants or supports in a while. One benefit to the blu-ray camp is that I can get a player just by buying PS3. I am pretty sure that the PS3 prices will come down in a year. Even without price drops, a PS3 is a better deal than xbox 360 with an HD DVD player. If you plan to get the next gen DVD player and a game console, PS3 is definitely a better option. The online options of PS3 are getting better by the day.

One aspect of PS3 most people ignore or don’t pay attention to these days is the cell processor. It may not be as much as Phil Harrison says, but definitely the current gen games are not taking advantage of the architecture. Most developers are slow to understand the realities or dual core programming let alone the 8 core, stream based programming (I guess that is what cell does) that cell employs. Once they get a hang of it, the power pc architecture in xbox 360 will not be able to match up. But that is a long shot.

For now I am staying with the xbox 360 and HD DVD camp.