I’m used to providing tech support for friends, especially those new to the world of home theater and high-definition video. But never have my phone lines been as busy as in the days after Sony’s PlayStation 3 hit the stores. "What’s the difference between 720p and 1080i?" "Should I rip my CDs in AAC, MP3, or ATRAC?" "Why am I not getting sound from this SACD I bought?" "Why won’t this Blu-ray movie that came with the PS3 play on my DVD player?"

Yes, for the first time, we finally have a gaming console that also lives up to the promise of being a complete home entertainment device—but the result is a bit daunting. The moment I boot up the PlayStation 3, I’m met with Sony’s familiar Cross Media Bar (or XMB), the same side-scrolling interface that drives the PlayStation Portable and many of Sony’s newer high-end televisions and receivers. It’s a beautiful, elegant interface, intuitive in design and fluid in motion, but even I find myself a bit intimidated by the cornucopia of setup options. Would I like to output CD audio at 44.1 or 48 kilohertz? Would I like to turn on the cross-color filter? To be honest, I’ve spent less time setting up Media Center PCs. Once the initial setup is complete, though, the PS3 is far easier to use, and far harder to cripple, than any PC will ever be.

Will the PlayStation 3 render the PC obsolete in the home, though, as Sony exec Phil Harrison predicted earlier this year? Certainly not in the home office, but in the living room, it clearly poses a significant threat to the PC. Besides playing video games, it plays ordinary DVDs and Blu-ray high-definition DVDs, and also offers web browsing, voice chat and text messaging with other PS3 owners, and digital video and music playback in a plethora of formats. It also boasts free online gaming and friends lists inspired by, if somewhat less robust than, the $50-per-year online service of the Xbox 360. Additional online functionality comes in the form of the PlayStation Store, which offers free movie trailers, game trailers, and demos, as well as inexpensive downloadable games.

Because of the PS3’s online emphasis, you will definitely need a keyboard and mouse to get the most out of it, unless you are an absolute text-messaging speed freak. Telephone keypad-style point-and-click typing with the wireless controller gets old after five minutes, even with the PlayStation 3’s admittedly excellent predictive text capabilities. Despite the machine’s Bluetooth capabilities, though, for now only USB keyboards and mice are supported, which means extra wires in your home theater. Expect this to be addressed soon via a simple system upgrade, since most Bluetooth headsets communicate flawlessly with the console already.

In truth, much of the PlayStation 3’s potential is locked up in future system updates. Its onboard Internet browser supports JavaScript, an essential web component, but as of yet isn’t compatible with Flash Player. What this means is that if your favorite websites feature heavily animated backgrounds and drop-down menus, chances are good that the PS3’s browser won’t be capable of displaying them … for now. In my experience with the browser, it works flawlessly with popular sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Gmail, but not with AOL’s webmail, nor graphics-intensive sites such as the EverQuest 2 home page (a Sony product, ironically enough).

Thankfully, the PS3’s performance as a Blu-ray disc player is excellent out of the box. Truth be told, you might consider buying a PlayStation 3 solely for Blu-ray movies, with no regard for its gaming and online features. Picture quality is sumptuous, and navigation and load times are lighting-fast (which was not the case with early Blu-ray and HD DVD players). The PS3 is also the first Blu-ray player capable of outputting DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD high-definition audio signals digitally, so they can be fed into a surround-sound processor or receiver in maximum fidelity.

Navigating Blu-ray discs can be a bit unwieldy with the system’s wireless controller, though, especially for non-gamers. For example, fast-forwarding, rewinding, and chapter skipping are functions of the shoulder buttons. Sony does offer a proprietary Bluetooth remote control designed exclusively for Blu-ray playback on the PS3, but given the machine’s lack of an infrared receiver, or any other control inputs for that matter, universal remotes and touchscreen control systems simply are not an option, at least until Bluetooth-capable control systems enter the market.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that, with all of this online functionality, not to mention music and digital photo storage, even the 60-gigabyte hard drive of the deluxe model is bound to fill up quickly. If you plan to use the PS3 as an all-in-one multimedia storage device, you or your custom installer will probably want to replace the system’s internal hard drive with a larger model. Given that the machine relies on a standard laptop-style hard drive, and features a handy side access panel, the upgrade won’t take more than a few minutes.

For the truly adventurous, the PS3 also allows for the installation of the Linux operating system, if you find yourself too limited by the side-scrolling Cross Media Bar. Sony has worked closely with Terra Soft Solutions to develop a version of Linux—dubbed Yellow Dog—specifically tailored to the machine’s outrageously powerful processors. This adds advanced Internet capabilities, a wider variety of games, word processing, and much more to the PlayStation 3’s repertoire.For those of us who would rather leave advanced operating systems on the desktop, the PlayStation 3 is still one heck of a gaming machine. Graphics on most launch titles are on par with the Xbox 360, and if recent demos of future releases are any indication, the PS3 will far outperform the 360 within a year. The character models in one boxing game, EA Sports’ Fight Night Round 3, look disturbingly realistic.

The motion-sensing feature of the system’s Bluetooth controller—dubbed the SIXAXIS—also adds an interesting element to game play. In the latest Tiger Woods game, for example, putting spin on the ball is a matter of leaning the controller to the left or right, rather than pressing a button. The motion sensing certainly isn’t as complex as that of the Nintendo Wii—in other words, you won’t find yourself swinging the controller around like a tennis racket—but neither is it as kitschy, and you can disable it easily in most games if it annoys you. With the current slate of software available for the system, this feature is merely a nice touch, but expect upcoming games, especially PS3 exclusives like Lair and MotorStorm—a fantasy flight game and an off-road racing game, respectively—to make it an essential component of game play.

It should also be noted that the PS3 is a gorgeous piece of machinery in and of itself, with a sleek polished black finish that can only be appreciated in person.

Its touch- and heat-sensitive power and eject buttons, as well as the trayless, front-loading disc mechanism, also add a touch of class. In every way, the console looks like a piece of high-end home theater gear with a quadruple-digit price tag, not a video game console costing $600. Don’t take that to mean that it’s rack-friendly, though: It generates volcanic amounts of heat and therefore demands open-air ventilation.

The real question is whether you should buy a PS3 now, or wait until Sony has ironed out some of the kinks. And kinks there are aplenty. For now, the console does not upconvert standard-definition DVDs to high-def, nor will it output games at anything other than their native resolution. If a game is programmed at 720p, then 720p it is. PlayStation 1 and 2 games are also limited to their original 480i or 480p output. This is a shame, since the Xbox 360 can scale all of its games to 1080i or 1080p.

The system also suffers in some ways from being a bit ahead of its time. As the only HDMI 1.3-compliant consumer electronics device on the market at the time of this writing, and given that it lacks multichannel analog audio outputs, some of its advanced audio features are unusable until surround processors and receivers with HDMI 1.3 inputs hit the market. Furthermore, if your display or surround processor only meets early, video-only HDMI specifications, you’re going to run into some audio problems. The PS3 won’t allow you to use the optical audio output for sound and HDMI for the picture: It is an all-or-nothing affair. Unless you have a system that is at least HDMI 1.2 compliant from head to toe, you will probably be better served by running the system with component video and digital optical audio.

Some of these issues will undoubtedly be resolved in future patches; others may still be with us five years from now. Only time will tell. If Sony puts as much effort into improving the PlayStation 3 over the next year as it has put into the PlayStation Portable over the past 18 months, it could well be the dominant home entertainment device of the decade. Will Sony enable video scaling via a software update? They’re not telling. Will the company offer full high-definition movie downloads in the future? Who knows? Even if not, though, it’s still an amazing game machine, an excellent Blu-ray player, and an extremely capable multimedia server.

DESCRIPTION
Next-generation gaming console, Blu-ray disc player, and media server. Features a built-in web browser and online store for downloading trailers, demos, and mini-games

SUPPORTED FORMATS
Blu-ray Disc (including BD-R and BD-RE), DVD (including DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW), CD (including CD-R and CD-RW), SACD; music files in MP3, MP4, ATRAC, and WAV formats; videos in MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG4/H.264 formats; and images in JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, and PNG formats

CONNECTIONS
Front: Four USB ports for flash drive access, digital camera connectivity, charging wireless controls, and future use; Compact Flash slot, SD/Mini SD slot, and Memory Stick slot (60 GB model only)
Back: HDMI 1.3 output, LAN connector, Toslink digital audio output, proprietary AV Multi Out for composite, S-video, and component video connection

DIMENSIONS
3.8 x 12.8 x 10.8 inches (hwd)

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: $499 (20 GB), $599 (60 GB)
CONTACT: 800.345.SONY, playstation.com