Connoisseurship is a related malady. Whether it is in cigars, wine, PCs or home theater equipment, we often like to think we are willing to pay top dollar for top end goods because it reflects our more educated, discriminating understanding of the merchandise. We're nobody's fool. We won't be taken in by bargains or anything but the best. We proudly pay through the nose for our stuff. We're smart than thou. We're stuff snobs, by God. Well, to some degree aficionados may demonstrate a greater understanding of their stuff, but more often than not they are at least as susceptible to hype as the “mass consumers” they think they're above. Feeling special about oneself is an ever-moving target in a society of mass production where yesterday's high-end specialty item is tomorrow's commodity. Chasing exclusivity, maintaining one's self-image as cutting edge and apart from the low-taste masses, gets pretty costly after a while. It also makes you wonder who is the real mindless goon in the great chain of modern consumption – the unwashed mass consumer who pays a reasonable fee to buy something that is good enough for his needs – or the high-end gearaholic, who almost always buys more power, more brand prestige, more upgrades than he'll ever really need or use.

This was a long-winded wind-up to my gleeful announcement that the DVD player in the PS2 is just fine and may well be good enough for most people who don't have aspirations of building a home theater around it. This week I threw most of the DVDs I could find at this thing, comparing each one to my $600 Toshiba 5109 DVD player (see, I pretend to appreciate only “good stuff” too), and in most cases there was no discernible difference in graphics quality between the two on my 12 year old Mitsubishi 27” TV (via SVHS cables) and little if any audible difference running it through a low-end Kenwood home theater package. Now, obviously, I am not running this thing on anything like a quality home theater that can push the DVD player and reveal its playback limitations. Which is fine, because if you have a larger screen TV, especially one that is HDTV-ready, then you wouldn't even consider a PS2 as a primary DVD player. (Not to mention that you probably haven't even read this far since I offended you in my opening rant.) And most DVD-less PS2 owners will likely want to get themselves a more full-featured, dedicated player eventually. What is great about the PS2 is that it introduces one of Hollywood's only valuable contributions to American culture in the last five years, the DVD, to a much wider audience.