the PS3 certainly performs like a serious A/V component. Compared to other high-def disc players I've tested, it was wonderfully fast and responsive, taking less than 10 seconds to put an image onscreen once I selected a Blu-ray Disc lodged in its slot. Pressing the controller's Select button during playback gives you a detailed display of geek stats such as video codec and data rate, audio format, and channel count. And the machine offers very smooth fast-motion playback for scanning through discs, including a 1.5x scan mode with audio. The only thing that rubbed me wrong was the PS3's fan noise, which made it much louder than any other gear in my system, including a DVR and Sony front projector. It was even noisier than my Toshiba HD DVD player, and that thing is LOUD!

Most Blu-ray Discs that I watched with the PS3 looked stunningly good. Black Hawk Down, a movie I don't remember being impressed with on DVD, looked exceptionally crisp, with a solidity, depth, and dimensionality that easily rivaled that of the best HD DVDs out there. The film at times has a grainy look, but in this case the grain was stable, finely rendered, and well integrated with the picture. Surfaces such as a cracked wall in the market area where soldiers stage their battle showed a wide palette of subtle hues and textures. And darker films such as Mission: Impossible III had a deep, chiaroscuro-like effect, showing exceptional picture contrast.

Regular DVDs I watched on the PS3 also looked quite good, proving the player capable of clean 480p cross-conversion (since the PS3 lacks a built-in scaler to bump standard DVD pictures up to 1080i/p or 720p resolution, the best you can get is 480p). With its Automatic Cinema Conversion mode engaged, the player failed the 2:3-pulldown test on a Silicon Optix test disc, but I didn't see any jagged edges in any of the movies I watched.

My audio experiences with the PS3 were equally powerful. Watching Black Hawk Down with the disc's uncompressed 5.1-channel PCM track selected, the beating helicopter wings in a scene where the Black Hawks take off on a mission had a palpable effect, as if they were slicing around the room with my head at center-axle. And when "Voodoo Child" (Stevie Ray Vaughan's version, not Hendrix's) faded in, the music sounded full and clear despite being layered under a heap of cinema sound effects.