Pamparo in Toronto

After much research and, obviously, a whole lot of money spent … here’s our home entertainment setup that will hopefully last for some years … fingers-crossed!

Home Entertainment Setup

Here’s the list of our stuff (I posted something about some of these previously … hint, hint):

- Sharp Aquos 32″ LCD
- Onkyo HT-S6200
- Sony PS3 Slim
- Philips DVD (upconverting)
- HD Cable
- Nintendo Wii
- and yes, the latest addition … an Apple TV! There will be another post dedicated to this in a week …

I use my iMac to keep all my music, photos & movies centrally-backed up. And I sync my Apple TV (and sometimes PS3) with it via the wireless router.

Now, it’s time to work some overtime to pay for all these things

Playstation 3 Slim might be my BEST purchase this year. For only $299, the ads are saying that “it does everything”. That is probably a little exaggerated, however, it’s not that far from the truth. In a nutshell, these are the things that it has done for me … so far!

Game Console
Although I consider myself a casual gamer, I have gone thru many gaming consoles. From Atari 5200, Nintendo Family Computer, Dreamcast, Playstation 1 & 2 and Nintendo Wii, I must say that PS3 is definitely the next major upgrade to this line of consoles. There are also tons of playable demos that can be downloaded for try-and-buy via the Playstation Network. I’ve gone hours of playing demos without buying the full game. I’ve already bought 4 games online based on the demo (NBA 2k10 Draft Combine, Bomberman Ultra, Elefunk and Battle Tanks). It’s a good idea but they weren’t the first as Nintendo has done this and I think even Microsoft for their respective consoles.

Media Center
I tried configuring the PS3 as a media center. It works, BUT, the streaming videos keeps dropping every 4 secs. Apparently, a lot of people are having the same issues when using wireless connection with encryption enabled. With having to put personal information for Playstation Network, the last thing I would want to do is to disable encryption. Or you can go the other route of connecting with a cable (not possible in a lot of households). So that sucks! But all is not lost. Instead of streaming, I copied my son’s most watched DVDs locally to the PS3 and just watch it like that. I still use the Media Center piece if I want to copy something local but other than that, it’s useless. Hopefully this gets fixed on the next iteration.

Internet/Mail Access
I don’t really use this much except for accessing online contents and maybe occasional online gaming. I’m still concern with the speed that I’m getting online. However, I know that my friends would be able to read the message faster if I sent it via the PS3 rather than the normal email client of social sites. That’s just a testament that I have friends who likes to play PS3 … hehehe

Blue-Ray player
This is where you get your money’s worth. Just a BD-player alone will cost you about the same price. Clarity is very good although I am probably just having placebo effect as I only have a 32″ TV

I have watched many movies already and what I love the most beside the resolution/sound are the extras that they can pack in one disc. After we watched the movie Valkyrie (Tom Cruise), a great movie btw, I went ahead and tried some of the documentaries included. Wow! The documentaries are great and they are actually longer than the movie itself. What a treat!

Final Words
None yet. I know that I have not yet explored all the things that this machine can do. I also want to see how it will hold up after many hours of use. But I must say, I don’t use it as much as other people so I might not have a problem with it. Hoping …