I can understand getting a standalone Blu-Ray player over a PS3. A PS3 is much more bulky. The PS3 Slim is still like 7 plus pounds. Wouldn't look as nice in a home entertainment center. Considering that your $200 setup includes speakers, I'd take it that you'd probably end up spending up to $200 extra if you went the PS3 route. If you're not keen on the PS3/Xbox 360 multi-plats and PS3 exclusives that much, then yeah it's probably best to save your money and buy only what fits your needs. I've no clue about what your Blu-Ray player is capable of though. For me, XviD and mkv playback is the most important thing for a media player. I tried Netflix free for a month but then cancelled because netflix.ca doesn't quite have the library I want and I can pretty much just pirate the movies and tv shows I want to watch for free (lol). If I entertained guests more at home I'd probably see the $8/month for Netflix streaming as a worthwhile investment.
I set up Windows Media Center on my PS3 but I still have to iron some things out. For eg. My PS3 won't stream a lot of my pr0n videos properly (many of them are .flvs and .mp4s downloaded from streaming sites. But I also have XviDs). Honestly I basically just hook up my laptop to my display via HDMI. Nothing beats a PC for video playback. Though it's not exactly an ideal setup for an entertainment centre to hook up my laptop. Unless I can figure out how to get my laptop to stop going into sleep mode when I fold it and get some sort of media playback remote that is compatible with my laptop (as well as the video playback apps like VLC Player). A friend of mine recommended TVersity for PS3 so I might try that.
