Pants in Motion

Let’s see… I think my PS3 arrived on Thursday. As of today (Sunday), I still haven’t played any games on it.

Well, technically I have played two demos on it, a very unsatisfying NFS Pro Street (which I definitely won’t be buying) and the Japanese demo of GT5 Prologue (which I definitely will). Both demos were extremely short, but GT5 at least has several cars I can take around the single track.

I have some games on the way, but who knows when they’re going to arrive. In the meantime, I’ve been running the Folding@Home client on the PS3, which makes me feel less helpless and also gives me a chance to hear how loud the PS3′s fan can go. It’s too loud for a media machine which is a bit of a shame, as otherwise it seems pretty decent and a good substitute for the Mac Mini that it appears I’ll still have to purchase.

Normally you’d have to run Sony’s Windows-only software to stream media from your PC, but my PC is in about a dozen pieces right now and that’s not likely to change for a while. I downloaded EyeConnect and installed it on my iMac and it works very well. Unfortunately the PS3 does not yet support DIVX files (the pirate’s codec of choice, yarrr), so I use VisualHub to convert my video files to AVC format which both the Mac and PS3 handle. The PS3 will also handle my AAC files from my iTunes folder, though I have better, quieter ways to stream music to the stereo.

One thing that has become very clear is that the PS3 (and, I assume, the Xbox 360) really requires a high-definition display to shine. My machine is Japanese so it outputs in NTSC format to a television. Most Australian demos (and likely the games too) will refuse to run on an NTSC system, but they’ll work fine once that same system is pushing data to an HD device, where PAL/NTSC issues go away.

So, where to from here? I’ll need a projector, some more games (which I’ll import from the USA as they cost half the price they do locally) and a larger bandwidth cap to keep myself amused on this thing. It’s been a year since Sony launched it and I still feel like an early adopter. I knew there was a reason that I bought the PS1 and PS2 just before the replacement machines were launched – lots of good, cheap games on tap!