PS3 vs 360 - Media

I've talked about the controllers, the sound, and the external items.

I won't talk about games, because I'm astonished at how bad the selection is for your average Sony Fanboy. Unless you like EA Sports a whole lot, you've got about 6 games to choose from for the PS3.

So next up is the media streaming functions.

First of all, they are both a monumental pain the ass to set up. Why? Why can't I just tell my PC where my media is? The PC makes a list of everything in that directory and serves it up to any client that asks for it? Why does it take an hour for a brand new PC to create a directory of 10,000 songs, about that many photos and 300-400 movies and TV shows? It doesn't seem like it's that hard.

Then there's the software problem. Guess what? You can't use the same software. Or at least I couldn't. The 360 said "No thanks" to TVersity and Zune wouldn't let me share my media with my PS3. BO - GUS. So I'm running both. Grr. Oh, and Zune requires you to open up ports on your router which unless you're a network technician is NOT an intuitive thing.

Let me not tease you and cut to the chase here: The PS3 wins on every single count, hands down, no contest. The only thing I think that doesn't work on the PS3 is music while playing slideshows but I think that's coming with the next firmware update.

PS3's music browser is just WAY faster than the 360. I don't know exactly what the hell the 360 is doing when you're trying to open your music collection, but it's slow and especially with a large music collection like mine, more often than not, it fails unless I know exactly what song I want to play. Big Playlists? Not happening. The PS3 is fast and never hiccups for more than 3 seconds. The visualizers for the 360 give me a headache and I almost always turn them off. They look like a kaleidoscope on mushrooms. PS3's visualizations are extremely relaxing and much better at conveying a sense of depth or 3-D. The only bad part is you don't seem to be able to choose which visualization on the PS3 unless I just haven't figured that part out yet.

Pictures are amazing on the PS3. First of all, the interface is every bit as slick for pictures as it is for music but the killer app here is Sony's special type of slideshow where they will start scrolling a matte background and then drop your pictures in groups on this matte background. The effect is so real, you'll think they filmed it. Then you can zoom in, zoom out, fast forward or pause the action with the thumbsitcks. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Also, the PS3 has a media card reader built right in, so when we take a bunch of pictures with my Sony Camera, I pop the Stick out and throw it in the PS3 and away we go.

Video - For local videos, Sony does far more than just show you a thumbnail. It will record a 15 second clip from the video as a sort of live preview. This does not work for streaming media (I tried) but the effect on locally stored media is awesome. Also, Sony has the built in Blu Ray player vs MS' slow responding (mine takes 90 seconds to read any disc, I swear) add-on HD DVD. The real gem for me though is the fast forward and rewind on the PS3. Flick the stick once to the left, you're in a live accelerated 1.5x mode with sound. Flick it a second time and you're in a 10x fast forward mode. Hit the "X" and yer back to play. Responds instantly with every command. My biggest pet peeve about the 360 is that when you fast forward through streaming videos, 2 bad things inevitably happen : 1) you hit the play button and the console takes 5 seconds to respond causing you to mash the play button over and over to get it to stop FF'ing or 2) the play button stops working entirely, the video player locks up and you're forced to reboot your 360. The one nice thing the 360 has MCE Extender functionality through which you can watch internet clips and live TV (I think) from yer MCE PC, but I confess I haven't played with that as much and again, the 360 seems to be just way too slow.

For games, the 360 has the lead and it certainly looks insurmountable. For media playback, the PS3 is way ahead of 360.