AppleTV...Or...PS3-Slim?

[Mr Dobey]

PS3 Slim

IMO, after seeing full 1080p Blu-Ray on a nice TV watching any other lower format seems like child's play.

PS3 Slim.

 

[dynaflash]

well, here is a thought:

the ps3 can playback blu ray which is cool.

it can also playback a 1080p mp4 encode in hi profile, which is cool ...

but, it cannot playback a 64 bit mp4 which is required to play back anything larger than 4GB ... which when you are talking HD in 1080p in a feature length film at a decent quality level is not so cool...

like all things ... there are compromises.

 

[TheBritishBloke]

I don't plan to play HD MP4's.

This is going to be situated in a bedroom which has a 720p TV, not FullHD. (Living Room currently has 1080p, HD Player, Sky+HD etc.) I'm not looking to stream super-awesome quality. Sure with the PS3 I can play Blu-Rays, which I would, the quality really is sweet (not sure on 720p though), but Still don't know whether it's worth it.

 

[dickovski]

What would be easier for a first time Mac owner to setup/use?

Im gonna give my PS3 a try tonight since I already have it available, but I want to know if Ill gain anything from using one or the other or both.

Both are easy to setup unless you need to hack them. The PS3 requires you install a bit of software on your Mac to serve your files to the PS3.

There are lots of threads on here about which software is best but I use Playback which works well for me - http://yazsoft.com/products/playback/information/ it's not free but you can download a demo.

 

[dickovski]

Damn. If I was offered one for £190 /w 5 games, I'd snap it up without thinking. Did you get it from a friend? or Ebay? or?

Ebay. It's a 60GB Backwards Compatible one which I guess is a couple of years old hence the cheapness? I love it though, especially hooked up to a 500GB external (no hacking or mods required), who cares about it only being 60GB.

 

[Mr Dobey]

well, here is a thought:

the ps3 can playback blu ray which is cool.

it can also playback a 1080p mp4 encode in hi profile, which is cool ...

but, it cannot playback a 64 bit mp4 which is required to play back anything larger than 4GB ... which when you are talking HD in 1080p in a feature length film at a decent quality level is not so cool...

like all things ... there are compromises.

In my case quality is top priority, so I wouldn't want to downgrade to a smaller .mp4 file. When my external LG Blu-Ray drive arrives I will use MakeMKV and Plex to watch some nice uncompressed files. But I see that this would be a problem if you want to stream files or have multiple smaller backups.

But back to the main topic,

For quality: PS3 Slim
For ease of use and syncing with iTunes/Mac: Apple TV.

 

[Dapness]

I'm not sure if everyone's aware of this or not but you can totally copy (via PS3 Media Server) a large file over to the PS3. For instance, I've got all the Bourne Trilogy on mine, all 8 gig + file sizes, and they look great. I'm definately going to upgrade the internal HD once the 1TB drives are small enough to fit in a PS3 so I can drop all my M2TS Blu-ray rips on the local drive.

I just bought the PS3 to replace my Apple TV which now resides in our bedroom. For $270 (got mine from Dell for 15% off with free next day delivery, love slickdeals.net) you really can't beat it. I agree with everyone about how the TV has an much more intuitive UI but when I'm watching movies on my main rig it's quality that's important for me.

That being said I'm going to try this question in this forum since I can't seem to get a solid answer any where else. I've got a bunch of movies encoded with TV preset in handbrake that wont play on my PS3. Is there a way to easily make these playable on both?? I've actually reencoded a couple in handbrake using the "-level 41" trick which seems to work for both so far. I'm also afraid I'm losing quaitly by doing this. If there's an easier more efficient way i'm all ... eyes.

Also, going forward with new encodes should I use the PS3 preset in handbrake which appears to work with the TV or am I missing something here. Is the PS3 setting not as good as the Apple TV??