Just bought a PS3 last week. Waiting for Resistance to come from Amazon so no PS3 game disks yet but i bought god of war PS2 game.

Problem is that the game only plays if I turn the system on with the disk inside or if I insert the disk. There doesnt appear to be a place in the menu to play the game. Also I dont want to start into the game if I leave it in the console. The 360 has an option that you can start in the dashboard/menu instead of the game when you boot it if theres a game disk inside.

Is this only because its a PS2 game, or does it work that way for PS3 games as well?

Is it because of the backwards compatilbily feature not working well? When the GoW game boots it also turns the controller off and I have to turn it back on. It says - please connect analog controller.and turns off my controller.

Since I cant stream media to the PS3, how can I get it on there? If I burn a DVD with MP3s, can I copy them to the PS3 hard drive? I dont have much interest in using an external USB hard drive as I try to limit the amount of things I have plugged in and I already have a 4 drive RAID5 NAS setup right next to the PS3 - but no way to get media on to it from there :( I wouldnt mind copying 10GB of songs or so onto the internal PS3 harddrive if thats possible.

Start the PS3 without the gameand then find the games menu, thens croll up and down.

There is an option to enable or disable disc auto start under system settings in the xmb.
I always get my controller disconnected as well when playing ps2 games. It was just never a problem to tap the ps button again. As for your media question I don't have an answer sorry.

Problem is that the game only plays if I turn the system on with the disk inside or if I insert the disk. There doesnt appear to be a place in the menu to play the game.
In the XMB, under the Game section (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/game/game.html), you will see a list of games available to play. Demos show up there. Downloaded games show up there. Disc based games also show up there, and appear as a disc shaped icon. Golden disc for PS2 games (will say "Playstation 2 Format Disc" and blue disc for PS3 games. You scroll through the difference XMB sections (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/basicoperations/xmb.html) (e.g. Game, Video, Music, etc) horizontally via the Left/Right buttons on the D-Pad. You scroll through the different choices within each section vertically, via the Up/Down buttons on the D-Pad.

Also I dont want to start into the game if I leave it in the console. The 360 has an option that you can start in the dashboard/menu instead of the game when you boot it if theres a game disk inside.
In the Settings Menu (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/index.html) of the XMB, under the System Settings (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/index_system.html) part, there is a Disc Auto-Start (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/discboot.html) option. From there, you can disable or enable the auto-start option for games and movies.

Is it because of the backwards compatilbily feature not working well? When the GoW game boots it also turns the controller off and I have to turn it back on. It says - please connect analog controller.and turns off my controller.
This is normal (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/game/start.html).
Notice
When you start or quit PlayStation®2 format software, controller number assignments are cleared. Follow the steps below to assign controller numbers.

When starting a game: Press the PS button on the controller when the game is displayed on the screen.
When quitting a game: Press the PS button on the controller when the home menu is displayed.

If I burn a DVD with MP3s, can I copy them to the PS3 hard drive?
Yes, that will work. (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/music/copy.html)

OK sorry I did see the "Format PS 2 Disk" on the games menu but I assumed that meant - literally format a PS 2 disk like when I first played the game and it asked me to Format a partition for a PS2 "section". Hopefully this can be less confusing in future FW updates and say "PS2 Game" or the actual game name would be nice but probably not easily since the console has to boot into PS2 emuation mode to read the disk probably.

I played my first PS2 game on the PS3 last night. It was Katamari Damacy, it was a little weird that I had to go back and create a memory slot for it, but I was up and running in just a few minutes.

I expected the game to show up as a disc icon, so that part didn't suprise me, I didn't even really notice what the name of it was.

The media portion is a bit lacking, I hope that will be worked on in future firmware updates.

OK sorry I did see the "Format PS 2 Disk" on the games menu but I assumed that meant - literally format a PS 2 disk like when I first played the game and it asked me to Format a partition for a PS2 "section". Hopefully this can be less confusing in future FW updates and say "PS2 Game" or the actual game name would be nice but probably not easily since the console has to boot into PS2 emuation mode to read the disk probably.

:D

I could understand where you're coming from if it said "Format PS2 Disk" and not "Playstation 2 Format Disc." :p

I'm just poking fun at yah. But I do agree, the name of the game would be nice. I doubt it needs to boot into emulation mode in order to read the software title, however. So, I'm hopefully they'll eventually address this in a future firmware update.