Multimedia
Here’s one area that my friend didn’t really consider last year, as he is mostly concerned with making games for the systems, and not watching movies on them. I bought my XBOX 360 around the middle of 2006, and my PS3 at launch, so I am talking about my personal experience here.
For movies, the PS3 wins hands down. Not only does it have integrated Blu-Ray capability, it is a far superior movie player to begin with. We also must consider that the PS3 can be had for as little as $399, while an XBOX 360 with HD-DVD player will cost at least $530 (Arcade Edition notwithstanding, since nobody in their right mind is going to buy an XBOX 360 without a hard drive).
Regardless of comparing playback image quality, sound quality, and interface, there is one thing that gives the XBOX 360 an automatic “zero” in every category - it is excruciatingly LOUD. There is ONE thing that I HATE when I try to watch a movie, and that’s background noise. I alway go out of the way to make sure my living room is utterly quiet when I sit down to watch a movie, and the sickening screech of the 360’s DVD drive and fans makes this completely impossible.
PS3, on the other hand, is completely quiet during movie playback. Whether you are watching a Blu-Ray, DVD, or other video format, the PS3 isn’t going to make a peep.
I also much prefer the PS3’s interface to the bright, flashy, sluggish interface of the XBOX 360. Turning on the PS3 to watch a high-definition movie feels like a classy, almost ‘high end’ experience. In contrast, fire up the XBOX 360 and you are treated to a whining fan, screeching DVD drive, and bright flashy colours on your screen. The console itself looks more like a ‘toy’ and the external USB drive required for HD-DVD only extends the ‘low end’ feel.
Then you have the other media formats. XBOX 360 was only ever meant to be an ‘Multimedia Extender’. In other words, it was expected that by this time, most people would have a PC dedicated to hosting multimedia using either Windows Media Center or Vista Home. The 360 would pull the files off this dedicated media PC over the network. Therefore, the 360’s multimedia capabilities are actually quite poor. It supports MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and MPEG-4 AVC (h.264), but only in the WMV, MOV, and TS container formats. It supports DLNA, so is able to discover files on DLNA software like Windows Vista.
Playstation 3 was intended to be an all-in-one media center, and the design shows. At first, it did not support DLNA, but we broke the story when DLNA-supporting firmware was released, allowing multimedia to be streamed from Vista to the Playstation 3. All the major codecs are supported by Playstation 3; MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Motion JPEG (commonly found with digital cameras) through AVI, MOV, MP4, and TS container formats. It will even play AVCHD files directly (M2TS files - the same format Blu-Ray uses).
MP4 support is seen as the future of video, and the PS3 has very good support of this. It supports MPEG-4 AAC audio, MPEG-4 Simple Profile video, as well as Main and High profile (also known as h.264). In a big story last week, it was announced that the PS3 would soon be supporting the DivX codec, through the AVI file container. This will be the first time a non-modified console supports this highly popular format. Here’s hoping for MKV h.264 support!
Audio playback is close, with the PS3 having the minor advantage of supporting SACD, although this is no longer supported with the 40GB version. It’s been sad to see Sony drop many of the advantages they held over the 360 in the past year. Playstation 3 will always be better as a standalone music player since it doesn’t sound like a jet engine, but the 360 has the great advantage of being able to access music from within any game.
I have viewed photos on both consoles, and find the PS3 to be a more pleasant experience. Again, the XMB is so much better than XBOX 360’s tabbed Dashboard, and it’s nice to view pictures without noisy fans blasting away in the background. The PS3 supports some printers directly, which may or may not be useful (I can’t imagine using it as a photo printer, but someone might. probably someone in Japan).