Hey guys,

I'm a Canadian who lives in Taipei, Taiwan.  Taiwanese TV is generally poor (i.e. it sucks hairy ass balls) so I like to watch American/British TV shows that I download via bit torrent as DivX AVI files.

Currently I've been burning them to DVDRW and putting them into a cheap DVD player I got that has DivX, but I realize that with these fancy HD consoles, I could probably do the same thing wirelessly over my local LAN.

But the question is, which one is best for me, 360 or PS3?  I've tried to weigh the pros and cons from my unique perspective, and so far here is what I have:

PS3 vs. 360

Main Purpose:  To play video content that I have downloaded from bit torrent sites in .AVI format.  I want to either stream it or copy it from my OS X computer to the local hard drive of the console over the wireless LAN.

Secondary Purpose:  To play video games... the ones that interest me the most are Street Fighter II HD, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD, Pac-Man CE, Civilization Revolution, and Legends of WrestleMania

XBOX360

I like:

Cheaper price:  An hard-drive enabled 360 is $100 USD cheaper.  $100 USD may not seem like much, but actually in Taiwan $100 USD would go a long way.  I can stuff myself at the local restaurant for $3-4 USD!

Moddable:  In Taiwan I can't find English games anywhere, and even if I could buy them, the region encoding means some games might not work.  But with a mod chip, I can just download games I want off the internet and burn them to a dual-layer DVD.

Pac-Man CE:  This game is awesome!  While most of the online games I want to buy are available on both systems, this one is only available on 360.

I don't like: 

User interface:  My friend in Canada who is a 360 owner and says he loves the system, says that the user interface for playing movies and music is absolutely horrible.  As someone who generally prefers a clean user interface (for example I love my Wii, MacBook and iPod touch, and I hate the interface on my Nokia phone and my Windows computer).  Since the primary purpose is watching movies, this has me nervous.

Non-upgradeable hard drive:  If I want to copy a lot of movies on the hard drive, it could fill up pretty fast.

Unclear:

I'm not 100% sure if the 360 can even do what it is that I want it to do.  When I watched my friend play a movie on his system, he copied it to an external drive and then hooked it up to his 360.  Then he had to connect to XBOX live because I guess it needs to download the codec every single time you watch the video. 

I'm not sure if I can download content from the American store or set my console to English.  If the console is all in Japanese (or even worse, Chinese) and you can't change it, then a 360 would not be useful for me.


Playstation 3:

I like: 

"Yes we can!":  I'm pretty sure it will do exactly what I want it to do.  I've found a $20 piece of software that lets you serve up all the video/audio content on your Mac and either stream it to the PS3 or copy it to the PS3's local drive and play it from there.

No region coding:  Games purchased from America will work, and the console can be set to English.

Downloadable games:  I can set up an account to play American games on my system

User Interface:  XMB, same interface as my PSP

Upgradeable HD:  I've been planning to replace the 160GB HD in my MacBook, so I can throw a 500GB in my MacBook and then pop the 160 gigger into my PS3.  Great for watching videos!

I don't like:

No mod chip:  I can't mod the console, which means that if I want to play a disc-based game in English, I need to have it shipped over from Canada or USA, which would take weeks.

Price:  More expensive than 360


I have roughly an equal number of friends who own 360s or PS3s in Canada, so with either system I'll have friends online that I can chat or play online with.  I already have a Wii, PSP and DS so it's not like I'm hurting for game availability ^_^ At this point I'm leaning towards the PS3 but if you guys have any comments or suggestions, please let me know!

PS3, If you mod the Xbox 360 you'll probably get the console banned anyway and you can import games. Also it has far better playback of DivX movies. Also the standard controller is better for fighting games and it comes with wireless.

This topic is going to just end up being a fanboy war with no true good answers =/

What? Your in Taiwan? Isn't like the watts different over there? when you plug that thing in it's going to explode.

PS3. B/c i see u need moves and etc, so take the ps3, b/c more hard drive

Piracy is wrong

You are a drain on society

Flash games on the PC is what you deserve

Some countries can't really afford much

PS3.

unless you want games for cheap.

then go 360.

also the ps3 it's region free for games, no need to mod it.

and modding 360 =  can get you banned and you loose warranty.

Some useful programs to you might be:

PS3 Media Server : http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/downloads/list

Media Tomb : http://mediatomb.cc/

Both work with OSX and both are free.  I've only seen PS3 Media Server in action but it was pretty great.

Games you can pick for yourself, but if you really want to play video files with it then you should look into the software that will let you do it (before you settle on buying something anyway).

No need to mod it, the Disk based games are region free, so if you live in taiwan you can still play any BD disk you own.

Edit: but i forgot to mention that BD Movies are region locked.