Apple TV vs PS3 - I'd have an AppleTV any day

Question

I'd been considering getting a 2nd AppleTV for a while, but was tempted to try out some other media players/extenders.
There are only a couple of things for me that stop AppleTV being a killer device.
First - the limited choice of video file formats. I hate transcoding things.
Second - the odd decision to have an unusable USB port. It could be so easy to add storage capacity.
Third - why no random music video play?
There are lots of other little things I'd like but those 3 are top of my wishlist.
Anyhow, waited for the UK PS3 price drop, bought a 60GB PS3 a few days later (new 40GB not backwards compatible with PS2 games, not that I have any, but I do have some PS1 games which are still entertaining though incredibly dated!).
Early impressions of the PS3 are not great.
I'm surprised it won this EISA award:
http://www.eisa-awards.eu/2007/node/738
Noise - surprisingly noisy fans, even when fairly idle vs completely silent AppleTV. Strange how some fan noise is intrusive, other fan noise isn't - my projector fan noise is quite loud but not annoying like the PS3.
Audio output - I can only select 1 output at a time unlike AppleTV's audio outs all on concurrently. With the PS3 I have optical out to my AV kit, but if I just want to listen to audio through the plasma via HDMI I have to access settings menu and change it! Arghhh!
Media playback - far from good. It seems to be incredibly fussy about encoding of files. I'd say 80-90% of files I have in supposedly supported formats are not recognized. Thinsg are just reported as corurpt data when they play back fine on a PC/Mac. This includes MP3s, MPEG2 files, h264/MPEG-4 files. The ability to hook up a FAT32 external drive via USB 2 is great, but absolutely useless if it won't play the media on it. Ok, it's early days yet, and I may be starting to learn what works and what doesn't, but I wasn't expecting to have to transcode things again just so they conform to the Sony's idiosyncrasies. Also even if you can get your VOBs to play you cannot output 5.1 surround from media stored on hard drive/memory cards.
Interface - pretty hopeless IMO vs simple pleasing AppleTV interface.
Games - well it's a games machine, not much more to say, stunning visuals but so far my PS1 games are more fun!
DVD/BluRay playback - excellent playback, but the fan noise!!!
Streaming - so far only tried Eye Connect from Elgato - absoluteley useless, can't view anything - either reports network errors or incompatible/corrupt data. Might try Media Tomb, but installation looks far from simple. Compare that with near perfect iTunes streaming.
Wireless - g vs AppleTv's n. Used in identical spot to AppleTV I get 20-40% signal strength vs 4-5 bars for AppleTV. PS3 seems to be a sod for wireless protocols too, so I've had to compromise everything else to get the connection up.
Usability factor - Mrs AC can easily use the AppleTV, not so sure she'll easily get the hang of navigation on the PS3, the interface really is naff.
Ho hum, should have bought another AppleTV saved £150 quid, donned the asbestos underpants, and dabbled with modding the AppleTV, perian etc.
So all in all, AppleTV ain't perfect, but it's small, cute, quiet and pretty much just works.....will have to wait and see what the next iteration of the product brings to the party.
AC

Answer 1

Hi Winston, I assume you've played with a PS3 then. The interface is very quick and responsive but just seems a cluttered mess to me.
There are quite a few nice things about the PS3, but from a media playback viewpoint it's currently not ticking the right boxes for me.
In essence I just want to copy stuff onto a USB drive plug and play. Should be easy but isn't.
I've been a bit on an early adopter over the years, but less so these days, and would have thought with all the PS3 firmware updates it would be more refined for media playback from hard drives - streaming may well be a different matter with Windows media servers, but my XP box is all disconnected at present as I'm decorating a room so haven't tried it.
BluRay disc playback is superb, and so are the games in HD, but visual eye candy alone doesn't make up for boring films or tedious games - perhaps I'm just getting old, but I watched Spiderman3 (blockbuster rent some BluRay thankfully) the other day, fantastic visuals but what a cheesy film.
The one interesting thing was that I had a file (.m2ts) from my Sony HD camcorder, and that played back very well, so I could quite easily store and playback my unedited home movie footage using the PS3 - HD encoding takes ages to do, so why not just playback the original? (File size being the obvious issue with FAT32).
Anyhow, I'm digressing, I think the PS3 has lots of potential, it's just that AppleTV does 'what it says on the tin' much better, and AppleTV obviously still has untapped potential to be even better than it is now.
AC