What might be the deal of the century, ps3fanboy.com reports that you can get mentioned above for the low low price of under 500 bucks. Here are the directions that they offered:

• Add the 60GB PS3 to your amazon.com shopping cart.
• Choose three Blu-ray movies from this list and add them to the cart.
• Right before checkout, you’ll see the discount applied.
• Then, you’ll get a rebate form for five more Blu-ray movies. Even if you don’t want to be part of a next-gen movie format war, this is still one of the cheapest ways we’ve seen to get a PS3 — the free movies are a nice added bonus.

In case you didn’t know, 300, one of the better “guy” movies around, came out today on DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. I picked up the Blu-Ray version so I could take advantage of the Linear PCM audio.

I think I’ve soiled myself a couple times already. The video quality is great at 1080p, even through the film’s gritty look. The sound is pretty outstanding. I’ve jumped a couple of times at some of the sounds in the movie.

I can see myself watching this a lot….

It looks like Blockbuster is putting its faith in SONY and its Blu-Ray technology and stocking their shelves with Blu-Ray discs. In an article recently Blockbuster says they will be boosting their stock of Blu-Ray discs by Mid-July over HD DVD rival.

“Blockbuster said Blu-ray has proven to be more popular with its customers than HD DVD, the competing high-definition format. The company will continue to offer both Blu-ray and rival HD-DVD titles through its online rental service.

Of some 8,000 stores worldwide, about 250 of them carry both formats, and Blu-ray rentals are “significantly outpacing HD DVD rentals,” the company said in a statement.“

I wonder if this will help impact the race between the two formats, in this digital world there can only be one. Check out the whole story here.

It’s about damn time. Seriously.

With firmware update version 1.80 today, Sony enabled BluRay movie playback at 720p for the PS3. This has been a major issue for a long time now with the PS3. I was very vocal about this issue early on, and figured Sony would never fix it, but they finally did.

Looks like today’s update has please MANY MANY people. The PR pendulum may actually be swinging back towards Sony’s favor.

There have been reports that there was a Blu-ray attachment possibly on the way for the Xbox360, but according to Gamerscoreblog, there will is not anything in the works nor is anything planned for Blu-ray support. Here is an excerpt from the interview from Peter Moore.

“‘Just want to clear up a few things surrounding several erroneous stories regarding alleged comments from Peter Moore about Xbox 360 supporting Blu-ray. Simply put…These reports are completely incorrect.”

Seems like all 360 owners will have to seek their blu-ray elsewhere. Sort of disappointing really.

Sony is pushing firmware updates like they’re going out of style. I have to give them credit though… they fix known issues WAY faster than Microsoft. Even if they don’t publicly recognize them in the changelogs, they fix them fast. Today’s firmware update is a prime example. After the v1.50 update, many users reported Blu-Ray movies freezing up. This update apparantly fixes that issue. I didn’t have any problems after v1.50 with BD movies, so I can’t comment. The official changelog from Sony states this is the only change, listed under the Games heading:

New for 1.51: Support for PLAYSTATION3 format software titles has been expanded.

What the fuck does that even mean? Some PS3 games didn’t work? I’m taking it to mean they added the code from the recent SDK update to allow for horizontal video scaling. No one will know until any games come out that take advantage of this scaling, which unforunately won’t be for a while, unless some developers patch their current games to support it.

So after the debacle that was my surround sound wiring issues, my wonderful fiance decided she would treat me by buying me a Bose Acoustimass 10 system with wireless rear speakers. She’s a good egg. Yeah, people are going to say “It’s Bose. It’s overpriced crap.” I know, I know. Yes, it’s overpriced. Yes, you can get better speakers for the same cost. But no one else offers a viable wireless solution. These actually work, as I’ve heard them a few times as friends’ houses and such. They’re being delivered today. I can’t wait to hook them up and watch some movies and do some gaming in surround sound.

I currently have my 2.1 setup hooked up to my new Onkyo TX-SR604 receiver. I honestly forgot what deep bass sounded like. I put on the trailer for 300 from the Xbox Live Marketplace, and almost jumped off the couch when the bass hit 3-4 times right at the beginning. One of my cats shot into the bedroom and wouldn’t come out from under the bed for an hour. Ahhh the joys of surround sound. I’m looking forward to hearing some uncompressed 5.1 PCM tracks from the PS3’s BluRay over HDMI.

Slashdot today is reporting news from the Adult Entertainment Expo that Porn giant Digital Playground has switched it’s stance from BluRay to HD-DVD. Apparantly, Sony won’t product BluRay disks for any of these companies because they don’t want any porn on BluRay. This is the EXACT same thing that happened in the BetaMax vs. VHS format wars, where Sony refused to put any Porn on BetaMax. As much as some people don’t want to admit it, the porn industry pushes the new format acceptance. If they globally choose HD-DVD, the format wars could be over really quick.

Move over Xbox 360. Move over PS2. The PS3 is the fastest console to sell 1 million units. In the period from launch until last week, Sony sold 1 million PS3’s. In the same time frame, the Xbox 360 sold 600k units last year. I’m honestly shocked at that huge number. Maybe that’s why there’s lots of PS3’s available now, because Sony ramped the every living hell out of production and get them to market.

I’m happy that there’s a glimmer of good news here for Sony, in the midst of all the negative press they’ve been getting. If these sales keep up, and they sell more than Microsoft’s touted 10.4 million in the first year, expect BluRay to win the format war over HD-DVD.

From the press release:

SCEA went to great lengths to help meet demand for PS3, including airlifting systems into North America on a weekly basis to ensure a steady stream of units were available to consumers throughout the holiday season,” said Jack Tretton, president and CEO, SCEA. “The fact that we were able to reach the one-million mark faster than our top-selling platform, the PS2, further validates the strength of the PlayStation brand and our belief that consumers are ready to experience true high-definition gaming.” … “Reaching the one million mark for PS3 is the first of many major milestones for us as we head into a new year. Even more impressive, is that we were able to accomplish this feat while successfully managing two other gaming platforms-PS2 and PSP,” said Tretton. “With three PlayStation platforms now available to gamers, 2007 will be about software and delivering innovative, new experiences and award-winning franchises to consumers, both through retail and through our online PLAYSTATION Network.