The key features of PS3 apart from blu ray gaming which I found useful are,
DVD and blu ray player
Photo gallery - Especially the software recognises the faces and tries to zoom in there.So its the only way to watch the pictures from a 12MP camera. Further to PS-3, I have stopped taking printouts of my photos, since the feeling is better when watched via PS-3 and cost of taking the printouts overtakes the cost of keeping multiple backups in different drives.
Pen drive connectivity - It works fine with my 2 GB pendrive but does not recognize my 1 TB external hard drive.
There was once an issue with the breaking down of the diskdrive. Please note that Sony doesn’t do service for PS-3 any where in the world. In my case they did the replacement free of cost although it was slightly over an year of purchase. The reason was the existance of a warranty card with more validity. So its important that you keep both the invoice and the warranty card safe. If there is a breakdown and you get a replacement, the warranty is also extented along with it.