When Blu-ray movies first hit the scene in the late 2000s, I remember being awestruck by how much better they looked than DVDs. I thought the jump from VHS to DVD was game-changing, but Blu-ray was on an entirely different level, with its crisp 1080p resolution. It truly felt like I had movie-theater-quality on my living room TV for the first time.

But as amazing as Blu-ray looked, it had a major problem when it first came out in 2006: it cost a fortune to get into. Samsung’s first-ever Blu-ray player in the US was the BD-P1000, which it launched in June 2006 for an eye-watering $1,000. With DVD still so prevalent and significantly cheaper at the time, Blu-ray’s high cost was hard to justify.

Then, at the end of 2006, everything changed when Sony launched the PlayStation 3 (PS3). Not only could it play the latest games, but it also featured a built-in Blu-ray player. For many people, the PS3 was the only way they ever experienced Blu-ray movies, as it instantly became the most affordable Blu-ray player at launch.

With the recent resurgence of physical media, I got inspired to try my PS3’s Blu-ray player again, and it was hard not to be impressed by how well it looks and performs, even after all these years.

The PS3 hasn’t lost its charm

Its Blu-ray player still holds up

I started collecting and watching 4K UHD movies on my PS5 a few years ago, so when I pulled my PS3 out of storage to see how its Blu-ray player fared, I wasn’t expecting anything mind-blowing, given how old it was. But when I first turned it on and saw the home screen, it was hard not to feel instantly nostalgic. The PS3’s iconic XrossMediaBar (XMB) home screen is still, in my view, the best home screen a console has ever had.

The next step was deciding which Blu-ray movie to watch. Seeing all the talk about Robert Pattinson potentially being in the running to play James Bond made me want to watch The Batman again, so I decided that was the movie to test and plopped it into the PS3’s Blu-ray drive.

While it took a minute to load, once it did, I was impressed by how smoothly the PS3 still handled Blu-ray menus and jumping to different chapters in the movie. But most importantly, seeing a Blu-ray movie playing on my 4K TV via a PS3, I was honestly shocked by how good it looked. I feel like ever since I started watching 4K UHD movies and streaming in 4K, my brain has been conditioned to think Blu-ray is now subpar, but seeing how well The Batman looked on Blu-ray made me realize it still holds up extraordinarily well in 2026.

The PS3’s biggest flaws as a Blu-ray player nowadays are its lack of support for 4K UHD movies and HDR, but it’s hard to hold that against it, since 4K UHD didn’t even exist in 2006, and TVs didn’t have HDR yet.

Arguably, if you don’t have a PS5 or a 4K Blu-ray player but do have an old PS3, you still own one of the best Blu-ray players ever. If you’re looking to get back into collecting physical media, Blu-ray is a great place to start: you can find tons of movies for dirt cheap nowadays, now that 4K UHD is so prevalent. And surprisingly, Sony is still supporting the PS3, 20 years later.

Sony is still preserving the PS3’s Blu-ray player

Earlier this year, a PS3 update renewed its Blu-ray encryption key

The PS3 turned 20 years old this year, and even though it’s long since been succeeded by the PS4 and PS5, Sony is still releasing software updates for it, mainly to keep its Blu-ray player working.

In order for the PS3’s Blu-ray player to keep playing Blu-ray discs, its Blu-ray encryption key, which allows it to decrypt and play them, needs to be renewed every 12 to 18 months. Typically around March each year, Sony releases a software update for the PS3 that renews its Blu-ray encryption key so it can keep playing the latest Blu-ray discs. The last update Sony released for the PS3 was in March of this year, software update 4.93, which did exactly that.

When I booted up my PS3, I saw an update was available, and it took only about a minute to install. So if you decide to try out your PS3 again, it’s definitely worth connecting it to Wi-Fi so you can update its Blu-ray encryption key and keep its Blu-ray player working as intended.

All in all, the PS3 will always hold a special place in my heart as one of my favorite console generations. Even 20 years later, its Blu-ray player still holds up and remains a great way to watch your Blu-ray collection. If you have an old PS3 lying around, I highly recommend taking a trip down memory lane, booting it up, and putting that Blu-ray player to work again.