Sony PS3 Games Console as AV player

I am staring across the room at my son's PS3. He took it with him when he moved to his own flat, but his sister brought it back to watch DVD and Bluray discs.

When optically connected to my Beresford 7510 and spinning a CD it betters my 15 year old Quad 77 CD player- it's all down to the DAC of course. (My Caiman is somewhere else, but the 7510 ain't bad.)

I must reconnect the PS3 to the router and explore what it will do. I think it is running a Linux operating system and has it's own browser which will access BBC iPlayer. I am guessing it will access other internet radio stations. It will access music libraries on the network, though I am not yet sure if there are format limitations.

This could be a very cost effective media centre when coupled to a nice telly and a good DAC - and you get Bluray thrown in. I actually don't care what hardware or software I use to get the bitstream to the DAC - so long as it does it competently.

I think there are way of controlling it via Windows Media Centre on the laptop which is never out of my reach.

The hard drive is a little more noisy than that in my laptop, but I could hide the box in the broom cupboard the other side of the wall from the telly - that's where the router is, and I already have a big cable hole in the wall.

Has anyone experience of a PS3 as a music player?

 

I use my PS3 for DVDs, BDs, gaming, iPlayer and as a TV PVR (I have a PlayTV module). For that lot, brilliant piece of kit. My audio outputs is via optical in a Meridian AV processor.

For music, I prefer to use a Squeezebox, but that's mainly because I'd need a screen to be running to chose tracks. Other issues are that the PS3 cannot deal with FLAC or Apple Lossless, unless they're hosted by a PC and streamed from the PC. The PS3 can play WAV files directly, so in theory you could burn music onto a HDD and playback WAV, but then you'd have no tagging data for the music, making it more difficult to use.
If Sony ever added FLAC support, they'd be onto a winner, but I don't see that happening quickly.