gaol, I have my old Sony BDP before but my brother take it for free Well it depends on your preference. PS3 cannot take out raw data (bitstream) I mean if you have an AV Receiver with the HD thing decoder you can actually see it on the AV Amp display.
Dedicated AV Amp have superb HD Audio decoding compared to PS3 since they are made for it. PS3 Primarily built for Gaming. IMHO
Actually, I already made a decision for the PS3 slim, since I could get it for a good arrangement.
Also, the PS3 slim already bitstreams HD-Audio unlike the phat PS3--just haven't been able to confirm it with my old pre-HDaudio receiver.
Anything below 10k in my opinion is a "good buy" already... not necessarily an entry level player.
There's also a very good deal for the Panasonic BD60 at Amazon: $129! For a while the Panasonic BD80 was also going cheap for around $180 but it sold out fast at Amazon and now it's up to the $300+ mark in Amazon's affiliate sellers.