Positives of the PS3 as a blu ray player
1) Fast - both in initial loading of movies and menu/option selection
2) Popular player hence more likely to be updated when/if problem disks are found - what movie studio doesn't want their blu ray disk playable on 85%+ of blu ray machines out there.
3) Ethernet port and wireless networking for ease of updates.
4) Firmware updates able to add new abilities such as profile 1.1 support, downscaled blu ray movie scaling (from 1080p), 1080p/24hz support and dvd upscaling (all of which came in an earlier updates).
5) Standalone blu ray player plus free games console
Negatives
1) Styling - doesn't fit the look of other equipment. Shiny case shows up dust easily.
2) Bitstreaming of hi def soundtracks over hdmi ( - this is where the AV receiver/amp does the decoding rather than the player) - debate going on if this is fixable in firmware or a limitation of the hdmi chipset used.
3) DTS-HD Master Audio support currently lacking - no on board decoding for example. core soundtrack is what's currently playable.
4) Remote uses bluetooth so tricky to use other remotes with it i.e. learning remotes which use IR or RF.
5) No separate multi-channel surround sound outputs - useful for older AV receivers/amps especially those that can't handle LPCM over hdmi. Optical surround is an option of course providing you don't require PCM uncompressed or playback of the fully quality TrueHD soundtrack etc
6) Sometimes necessary to switch settings from bitstream to PCM and visa versa (uncompressed PCM soundtracks sent as bitstream are output as standard dolby digital for example) - An 'auto' setting would be nice.
So not perfect by any means; some of these issues ought to be fixable though. Hopefully profile 2.0 support should come at some point in the future (- no profile 2.0 movie releases right now anyway). At least DTS-HD Master Audio on-board decoding would be nice.
Robert