Is the Blu Ray component of a PS3 as good as stand alone systems...

[arthurbach4]

I actually had a couple of questions regarding the PS3:

1.Living in Australia I was wondering if the PAL version of the PS3 can play Bluray movie titles from America.

2.Is the Bluray player as good as stand alone players you can buy and if it's not as good is it at least good enough?

3.Are the ongoing firmware updates comprehensive enough to keep the current line of PS3s up and going or is it worth waiting for some type of version 2 of the entire system?

Thanks for your time.

[LeMarchand]

1) You'd need to get the box chipped; you are region 2, US is region 1 for Blu Ray, plus make sure your TV can take NTSC signals (most non-ancient TVs can)

2) I've seen some reviewers that say it is better than some low-end players

3) Don't know, but I would suspect that any updates are more likely to be cosmetic (slimmer case etc) than major hardware revamps - they'll save that for the PS4.