Heck no, I want consoles to become media hubs as well! My posts stem more from frustration than anything else. I've looked into so many of these so called stand alone media boxes and they've all failed in one way or another.
Whats extremely frustrating though is that I think, for the first time ever, there is finally a machine that got it all right on the hardware side, namely the PS3. It's loaded with everything it needs, as a media player, to easily last ~10 years or even more. Built in wifi, gigabit ethernet, quiet operation, oodles of cpu power, bluetooth remote that works even under the covers (very important if you're watching videos with your sweetie), standard hdd, bluray, etc. For a media machine Sony totally nailed it, it's effectively hardware complete as a stand alone a/v box, more so than anything else out there.
So why the frustration? Because I keep seeing good old Sony limiting what it can do. They've already done this with the PSP. I've got one and I love it, but lets face it, that thing should be able to play every SD format out there. Of course it doesn't, and instead you have to jump through 10 rings of fire to get stuff playing on it. I see the same thing happening with the PS3. They have everything they need to become the ultimate media hub, but they won't. I fear there is still too much pigheadedness in the upper ranks to ever let this happen. Hence, I don't expect it to ever be anything more than a limited media player that only plays sony approved media. Which is a damn shame, but so it goes.
I hope I'm wrong though.
In any case, do you think non savvy parents will be able to setup a ps3 on their own and have it actually play their movies? What do they do when they try to play a >4gb movie file from their hdv video camera? ...
