That's correct, the PS3 bluray is not region free. It is locked on the region where you bought it from.
I actually have a little PC that I built as a media unit and for console emulation (N64, Wii, SNES, Arcade, etc) and Bluray playback. The advantage of a PC bluray is that you can change the region to whatever you wish but the catch is that you can only do it 4 times before it gets locked permanently.
I am thinking to make it US for blurays so that I can buy movies from Amazon etc but overall, JB Hifi seems to have competent enough pricing to make Blueray importing rather redundant.