I’m well on the way to securing my status as Single Guy with Too Much Free Time now that I have my own place as well as both an Xbox 360 and a PS3+PlayTV.

Most of this evening has been spent rearranging my whole setup, with cables and boxes everywhere, and the rest of the time configuring media related software. The 360 was a bit of a stupid purchase actually since I knew there was a new one about to be launched but I went and paid full retail anyway, for a system that just a week later (after the new one was officially announced) I could have gotten for $150 less.

The later PS3 purchase was largely inspired by the relatively new PlayTV add-on, as well the promise of ABC iView integration, and to a small extent the option of watching Blu-ray movies.

Here follows my carefully considered and balanced opinions of the two systems’ strengths and weaknesses:

Xbox 360 (not the just announced shiny one):

• Noisy! Originally I had this on a shelf below the TV but the whine of the fan got on my nerves so now it is stashed behind a glass cabinet door. The new one is supposed to be quieter, and it would want to be.
• Stupid! Would you believe that it doesn’t come with built-in wireless networking? It didn’t even occur to me that this would be an issue since both the PS3 and the Wii have had wireless forever. The XBox 360 Wifi adapter can be purchase separately for something like 50% the cost of the original console.
• Ugly! That concave casing really doesn’t look right anywhere in a home media setup. It wouldn’t be so bad if at least the front panel was flat, but it is not. The new 360 has a more faceted design, but still if you keep it horizontally it looks like someone has kicked in a big dent at the front.
• Clumsy/Inconsistent/Schizophrenic – I’m really starting to appreciate Apple at this point, for their ability to make a remote with almost no buttons which still gets things done. The amount of time with xbox I expect a button to play something but instead it “selects” and opens another tab… argg! So I decided to run Windows Media Center on it for a more media-centric experience (since hey it’s supposed to be a games machine normally) but it’s hardly just a mattering of flicking it into a different mode. I can’t believe I have to wait almost 20 seconds for it to: Launch; Search for a Windows PC; Connect; Show splash screen; fade in to pretty but not particularly great WMC interface. Urgggh. And now that I’m in WMC mode, none of the buttons work like they do when playing media from the regular 360 dashboard. It took me ages to find the play/pause button on the controller, because for some incomprehensible reason it is the Right Thumbstick Button, ie you have to clumsily push down on the top of the analog thumbstick just to play or pause a video!

PS3 slim:

• Less Noisy! Significantly quieter than the 360, but by no means silent. Instead of whining it makes more of a thrumming sound, and I do not  feel compelled to stash it behind a door just yet.
• Equally crappy media playing experience… it’s like both Microsoft and Sony don’t want you to use their systems for this purpose! I finally got it finding my shared media via the DNLA sharing feature of Windows Media Player (but not WM Center, even though this is the logical place to put this goddamn setting). Of course, both Microsoft and Sony could have simply made their consoles find SMB shares (ie common-or-garden variety shared folders on the network) but Noooooooo they have to use dodgy “media sharing” protocols which require extra settings and hoops and give stupid random errors during playback. DNLA reminds me of XML-RPC on the web: it’s almost completely redundant, and usually poorly implemented.
• iView integration my arse! iView is supported by launching a browser window and going to the iView website exactly as you would using a desktop PC– the only integration is that they add a shortcut to the top menu. So now you are in a browser window watching a video, and NONE of the buttons on the controller do anything useful like pause the video; instead you have to wiggle the thumbstick to move a mouse cursor on your TV screen until it hovers over the pause button on the iView Flash player. So it’s all the non-immersiveness of the browser experience combined with the added handicap that you don’t actually have a goddamn mouse to at least make page navigation bearable. Oh and in fullscreen mode on a 4:3 TV the cursor position messes up so you actually have to click beside the onscreen button instead of on it. I blame the ABC and Sony equally for this crummy implementation.
• No rear USB ports! Now this may not seem like a big deal, unless of course you want to connect some weird peripheral to your PS3, like, say, the goddamn PlayTV add-on! (The 360 has a rear port, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to shell out for that ripoff Wifi adapter)
• PlayTV – Actually this seems pretty cool… Dual digital tuners mean you get decent PVR functionality from your PS3. From preliminary messing about it does mostly what I expect (it shows you program guides and such although I haven’t worked out how to tell it to always record the Daily Show yet). Pity about the USB cable now permanently protruding from the front of the unit though– it really messes with my feng shui. Also I watch hardly any free-to-air TV, because there is so little worth watching, so as cool as the device is it probably won’t really enhance my viewing experience that much.

Oh yeah both systems play games and stuff… yawn! These days I only seem to like indie or art games, not the big titles that consoles are sold on. I tried playing Fable II for a while, since I remember lots of buzz about it because it’s supposed to be this totally immersive narrative where every decision affects the future, but I got very very bored very very quickly when I realized that the moral universe was defined by a bunch of decisions to either help someone with a random and pointless task, or go crazy and whack them with a sword. My suspension of disbelief was seriously disrupted by the disembodied narrator voice of Zoë Wanamaker trying to casually instruct me on my hero status, potion skill levels, etc etc zzzzz……. Here’s the thing with all that D&D style charisma-points bollocks in role-playing games: it was necessary to allow people to keep track of things before we had computers to do it for us. Now that we do, I don’t want to know. Just make my character limp when they’re hurt and let me notice for myself that I am getting better at shooting things with arrows, and don’t bug me with stats!

I know I must sound like the most whiny & spoiled little first-world shit right now, but I just can’t believe how hard it is to get an entertainment setup which just works. There is so much great technology here, and yet no sense that anyone actually gives a toss about whether it’s well designed or pleasant to use– it feels like so much wasted potential.