vid,
i think you are wrong there. PS3 HDMI has always been v1.3 from the beginning since 2006. HDCP is just a copy protection that I doubt needed much firmware revision, or any at all.
Unless you are talking about Profile then PS3 is firmware upgradeable thanks to its Ethernet connection. Originally, PS3 profile was 1.0 back in 2006. PS3 was really fast to update to Profile 1.1 as soon as it becomes available in late 2007. Then in April 2008, when Profile 2 was just recently announced, PS3 update it to Profile 2 for firmware upgrade. You can say part of this firmware upgrade is possible thanks to built in Hard Disk Drive. Man, I was surprised to see how fast Sony update their firmwares. Its amazing to see such dedication and the time Sony spends implementing these firmwares.
About any other stand-a-lone Blu Ray Players. I think most of them back in 2006 has the older HDMI v1.2 or v1.1 versions, unlike PS3 which has the v1.3 versions. Which mean, you won\'t get the higher 10.2 Gbps speed, but instead the lower 5 Gbps speed. And you won\'t get the deep color, and x.v. color, or the 120 Hz supports, nor the newer lossless audio codecs like Dolby True HD and DTS HDMA. But that\'s not really that important though.
Also, most of the Blu Ray Players in 2006 can\'t upgrade to later Profile like 1.1 and 2. Unlike PS3 because it doesn\'t have an internal memory storage like a HDD, memory card drive, or RAM. I think Profile 1.1 requires at least 64 MBytes while Profile 2 requires at least 256 Mbytes of memory storage. Some don\'t even have an ethernet connection, meaning if you want to upgrade the firmware, you have to do it by disc that you either downloaded from the internet and burnt to disc or got one from the manufacturer.
Even some 2007 and a few 2008 Blu Ray Players still doesn\'t have an ethernet connection, so if you want to upgrade the firmware. You need to do it by disc.
Last but not least, the PS3 still to this day has the fastest load up time and disc boot up because it acts like a high end computer that uses 3.2 GHz CPU power, and a powerful GPU too for video processing.
While Blu Ray Players aren\'t like computer, so it takes longer to boot up. Of course, the load time has been reduce drastically, but still slow compares to PS3.
