I wouldn't go that far calling it a POS.
You're right, overall the unit isn't, but the remote sure is ... non-IR so therefore I cannot program the remote into the universal remote. Saturday evening we watched 'Iron Man' and 'Cadillac Records' with the PS3 and with both movies I wanted to pause the movie a time or two but accidentally hit the 'Stop' button and had to restart the movies from scratch, a problem I've had with most movies and the remote since owning the PS3. The remote may be alright for you young bucks to operate in dim lighting but for my blind AARP ass it definitely needs (other than IR) better placement and more easily distinguishable function buttons, also with me being old school I do not like the looks of the PS3 as a stand alone BR player, it looks odd as hell in the component rack with the shiny black surface being a dust and fingerprint magnet and you can probably tell by now I do not play games with it.
Last evening the wife and I watched 'Transformers' and 'The Italian Job' on our Toshiba HD-DVD and we both thought the picture was actually better than the PS3 and as far as operating the remote, ez-freaking-pz with it being programmed into the universal remote ... like every other component we have, other than the PS3.
