Playstation 3 for $300, DivX, Blu-Ray Oh, My!

Yesterday morning, I went to a major Canadian national electronic chain. Armed with the Dell.ca deal, my mission was to get a price match on Playstation 3(40GB), Ratchet & Clank and a 6' HDMI cable for $370.

It was early and it was not very crowded. I intended to take the Playstation 3 box, Ratchet and Clank and a 6' HDMI cable and walked to cashier where I would had probably meet the sales manager. But it did not happen the way I intended.

First, a salesperson saw me and asked what I wanted, I already had the Playstation 3 box in hand. I asked where was the Ratchet & Clank game. He pointed it to me and picked it up. Of course, the guy tried to sell me on the "great" bundles they had. I said: "Sorry, I just want to do a price matched for $370 with Dell.ca. Plus, it's free shipping. Are you doing it?". That took him by surprise and he went online to verify. I asked if I could take another game(Unreal 3) but said no as this was a bundle. Seeing the price, he wanted to go talk to the sales manager. I decided to go with him to plead my case just in case. We found someone in charge but not the the regular floor sales director.

We explained the deal and he decided to check it out up to the shipping claimed. I was right and he offered me the deal which I took. We walked to the HDMI cable rack but no 6' was available for the deal. I asked a HDMI to DVI(my TV don't have HDMI) and he accepted.

I was ready to pay until I noticed that I got a 4' cable instead. I asked the seller for a 6' but he said to go see the director. He did not wanted too because it was more expansive. The cable is valued at $59.99. I did not want to push my luck.

Why I wanted the deal with that chain?

Easy, it's local and I had $75 in gift certificates already. Plus, I saved 1% GST(sales tax) because they offered it a few days before it came into effect. That, I did not remember. If I could get another $30 then so be it. In a way, I only paid $342.45(around $300+tax) out of my own pocket.

The goal is to try to get the Playstation 3 deal if you can. I would had bargained(Blu-Ray remote and another game or movie) for less but did not have to do that. I was lucky to get it at that price. Ratchet & Clank is just an extra but the HDMI to DVI cable came in more handy. Of course, he tried to sale me the extended warranty($70/2 years or $90/3 years). The cable can be bought for much less online($10).

At home

When I first arrived at home, I had to removed the 10" of snow on the balcony. With all the snow we had in the last few weeks despite the rain, it's much harder to removed the snow and place it elsewhere. I had to be an acrobat but not like in the Cirque du Soleil. I also had to moved heavy furniture because of the 4' HDMI to DVI. Doing both things, I forced my back too much. So today, my back is really "killing" me. It's not the way I wanted to finished the year.

Unpacking Playstation 3

I started to unpacked my brand new Playstation 3. This is my first gaming console in my life. I always played on my computers before that. It took some time to get used to the game controller and the menu. But it's now updated with the latest firmware. I tried the Ratchet & Clank game first. The graphic is excellent as the opening scene. I only played for 10 minutes.

Blu-Ray

Now that I have my Playstation 3, I'm no longer neutral in the format war even if I picked Blu-Ray before as the winner. Watching the numbers, I still expect Blu-Ray to win unless Warner decide to go HD-DVD exclusive. Their holidays numbers will tell them if it's time for them to picked one side.

Anyway, I will be able to watch HD movies in Blu-Ray On that point, I watched Spider-man 3 that came with my Playstation 3. I did see it at the theater and made a mini-review of it. My opinion did not change since. Of course, the Spider-man 3 Blu-Ray is free but I expected at least a "Making of" on it.

DivX

When you update the Playstation 3 to version 2.1, you will get support for DivX. I had many movies that I recorded on my HTPC and that I converted from MPEG2 to DivX. I tried some of them and they worked. I also had some Xvid and they worked too. But they were played from a old external 40GB hard drive. The whining song is not very pleasant. I had to do that because it was formatted in FAT32. My formatted NTFS external hard drive would not worked. I did not go beyond that. The only thing missing is the support for the MIS specification. I will have great news on that last point soon.

Conclusion

Yes, I'm happy with the deal I got with the Playstation 3. Plus, I will be able to get 5 free Blu-Ray movies. If you still got money or received gift certificates, then it's still time to get into Blu-Ray with this deal. Canadians don't yet have access to $300 standalone Blu-Ray players like in the US.

One last thing:

Happy New Year!

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