Was very tempted to buy one today.

I was in HMV at lunchtime looking at the bundles.

£219.99 for the XBox 360 250GB version (black) with Halo Reach.

I needed to check online for prices though and my phone wasn't working.

I think it will be on my after christmas shopping list.

I found that Tesco did the 250 Gb version recently with 1000 clubcard points for £199 but no cables, though I found that they did those for under £3 each. So bought 3 sets for future gear to plug in to my HD TV.

Nice, a girl in work's looking one for her son

Overall, I'd recommend the PS3 quicker though...

I am not sure of the PS3 deal but that would have been next on my shopping list.

Just as a bit of interest, the PS3 does add more than the XBox. Outside of games, it’s also a very capable BluRay player. It also makes for a pretty good PVR is you have the PlayTV hardware - which is a Freeview tuner. They’ve just updated the software to include series linking. Currently, it does not support Freeview HD though (this would require the PlayTV hardware to be revised).

On the whole, a pretty handy piece of hardware. It gets used for more than just games in this house, which is a good thing.

I'd recommend it. I love owning both consoles as the exclusives on both appeal to me. I couldnt go without GT5 as much as I couldnt go without Halo for example. If anything I also slightly prefer the Xbox pad - unless I'm playing Fifa or Tiger Woods strangely enough!

For me anyway they compliment each other. (Although I havent bought it yet) I could play Black Ops with friends who all seem to have Xbox with reportedly better graphics or jump on the PS3 for some solo Fifa/Uncharted 2 or utilise Logitech wheel compatibility for some GT5.

I am not going to disagree. I have a HD TV with Freeview built in. Though the HD Freeview option would be a possible option. It is BluRay and the games that still sell it for me. Though I have not been looking at the games right now. No point in getting myself frustrated knowing I cannot buy one just yet.

Can the PS3 also play DVDs?

Also can it play music at all (CDs, MP3s - are they streamed?). If so does it play them with a visualiser thingy on the TV?

Yes.



Yes, it can both stream music from my PC and play MP3/AAC/WMA etc from its own hard drive. Yes, it also plays a visualiser (I quite like the one that shows different views of the Earth).

It plays a host of video files too, including DivX content (it can also stream videos from my PC).

Yup, complete with upscaler. It's makes for a far better DVD player than the 360 thanks to a quieter drive and fans.

As for visualisation there's a few different ones. I always use the rather fetching planet one but there's a couple of others too.

It can use Windows media player to stream, but I've seen it stream with Linux too.

Read on...

http://www.nowgamer.com/columns/casual- ... hd-console

I'm just going by my old 360 which sounded like a leaf blower. Although a leaf blower would have been more reliable.

Sainsburys were selling the PS3 with 20% off which brought it down to £200