If Sony's PlayStation 3 didn't already look like a great deal to people shopping for a Blu-ray player (it costs about $20 more than several other players but comes with an entire gaming system attached), its value proposition versus the competition just shot through the roof.
By the end of March, the PS3 will become the first Blu-ray player on the market with all the extra features of Blu-ray 2.0 technology (also known as BD-Live), according to Sony. Only a couple other Blu-ray 2.0 players will launch this year.
What's in the box? With the firmware update, PS3 owners will be able to
download extra movie-related stuff over the system's Internet
connection: Bonus scenes, shorts, trailers, subtitle, ring tones and
movie-themed games. The souped-up player will also be able to resume a
movie after the Blu-ray disc is removed and re-inserted later, and the
built-in Internet browser has been upgraded to allow streaming video
from Web sites over your TV.
Of course, buckets of download-able content won't be available until
later in the year, but Sony is starting out in April with a couple of
its own releases, including Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
and The 6th Day. —Rachel Rosmarin
