Man they used to market it as the cheapest gaming console that could play DVDs. Most my friends even used it as a DVD player. I was the only one who had a dedicated DVD player. Not every region in the world had cheap DVD players and the ones that were cheap had shit picture quality compared to a good dvd player and the PS2.
With PS3 they went a step further and if you bought a Sony LCD TV you would get a a free BluRay Player / Game Console. During that promo of three months in AUS about 70,000 units got moved with TVs. They even use to market it a the worlds cheapest BluRay player.
I don't see how this is a problem though. It moved units it worked it got them sales.