Despite the Blu-Ray logo being displayed prominently on the front of the box, it turns out 60 percent of PS3 owners don't know it has a Blu-Ray player. I find that really hard to believe. It's like not knowing your triple changer has a third mode. Are the people dishing out over $500 for these systems really that dumb? Amongst the 40 percent of people that were aware of the Blu-Ray capability, only half of them used it the last ten times they turned the thing on. That I can believe. I think that's due to the short list of movies out so far. I've only watched one Denzel Washington movie on Blu-Ray in all the months I've had my PS3. Once Transformers comes out I'll buy that and I'm waiting for Blu-Ray Ghost Rider to come down in price a bit, which I think it will eventually at Wal-Mart.A better question would be how many times people used their PS3's DVD upscaler to watch DVDs on thier HDTVs. But I'm getting the impression that most people wouldn't know how to use that functionality either. I suspect a lot of people continue to watch standard definition broadcasts on thier HDTVs because they don't have channels in thier area broadcasting in HD or they don't have the tuner. Ultimately I think this shows the vast majority of American consumers suffer from techno-illiteracy and a tendency to consume for the sake of consumption. Which is a shame because it's really cool to do things like stream music and movies from my PC to my home stereo via the PS3, which is something every PS3 owner can do but many are apparently not aware of.
All this time I was feeling dumb for only owning two games. Not being a hardcore gamer made me feel inferior to other PS3 owners but considering how much use I get out of it as an internet browser, a DVD player/upscaler and a streaming media player (plus with all the downloadable HD movie trailers and crap from the Playstation store) I don't feel so bad.
3 comments:
I think you've hit it on the head. My parents-in-law bought a nice new HDTV but don't have anything that can actually play HD content (like a player or the antenna to capture HD signals, etc.) and they just love it, I guess for it's cuteness and ability to sit in their living room without falling down or something. Drives me up the wall knowing what they paid for it.
I have an HDTV which can do up to 1080i. Any idea if the upscaling stuff is actually any good? I think standard DVD movies actually look pretty decent (I have no complaints at least). The best picture we get is the local PBS station, which comes at 1080i.
Before I bought the PS3 I was horrified at how badly the Original Trilogy Star Wars DVD rereleases looked on my HDTV. I was really upset, almost to the point of wanting to take the TV back or at least put it in a rear bedroom. Even the upscaling my dedicated DVD player does doesn't look as nice. When Sony came out with the firmware upgrade that installed the upscaler and I felt a lot better.
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