FoxPro Ramblings

I have had a Playstation 3 since shortly after they were released, but have not been able to take advantage of the Hi-Definition because the component cable had been on back order. Well finally I received a component cable last night, and got to see the system working in full 1080p resolution.

All I have to say is WOW. The picture from the Blu-Ray movies are amazing. I watched a couple different movies last night and was shocked at the color contrast, and the sharpness of the picture. Even greater than from the Cable broadcasts that I watch in Hi-Def.

One of the amazing things about the PS3 that I have noticed so far though is how well thought out it seems to be. I'm sure many gamers would disagree with me, and I by far am no gamer. In fact I rarely play games. I purchased the PS3 as a cheap Blu-Ray player that supported Digital Audio, the rest was just gravy.

The PS3 comes with an Internet Browser, something I figured would be a piece of crap that was intended to work mostly with their web server/pages just so you could buy things. I've been playing with it a little the past few days in standard resolution and the text is a little fuzzy, and there isn't much real-estate for development, but it was able to handle every web page I threw at it from my servers, and even did well on google, gmail, and a number of other sites I hit.

I did notice a few java errors, and one thing it could not seem to process is the Windows Security login that pops up when a IIS does not have rights to a directory. But overall I would say it did a good job.

Now last night I got to play in Hi-Def 1080p, and the text was a little better but still not perfect, but that may be because of the projector I am using. It does a good job for my laptop too, but the text on the laptop is still a little fuzzy.

Overall I would say that the web browser that they used for the PS3 is acceptable, especially for a game system attached to your TV. My web development is kept strictly to Web Applications though, and I like to minimize the amount of java I use so keep that in mind when reading that statement.

Other aspects of the PS3 that are impressive is that you are able to install Linux on it, and have a fully functional computer right there on your TV, you can use a USB keyboard, and I assume mouse too. I wonder if a Blue tooth keyboard/mouse would pair up with it. My next keyboard is going to be blue tooth so we'll find out in a few months.

I bought the 60gig version so I got the wi-fi and Ethernet networking, and the memory card slots and I as for the wi-fi, it wasn't too bad to get setup, took me longer to type the WEP code than anything else. I use a 26byte wep code, and it took me probably 10 minutes to use the cellphone like keypad and game controller to type the code. I will say this though, with a little network game play and having to use that controller to type I've gotten better, probably take me 3-5 minutes to type the 26 chr code now. :)

As far as the game play and game graphics, all I can say is that I was impressed with the old EGA video graphics, so I'll leave that to the serious gamers to review. The PS3 gets a thumbs up from me though.