PlayTV User

Well, today is the day we have all been waiting for.

After months of speculation, the little black box is finally being delivered by grudging postmen around the country, and your PS3 will finally be able to record off the telly.

It will be interesting to see how Sony supports this gadget, will it get the same lavish firmware upgrades as the PS3 enjoys, or will it be the black sheep of the PS3 peripheral world, a curio intended for Europe/PAL TV networks, that will get neither the advertising promotion or technical updates its fans will clamour for.

Whatever happens, PlayTV User will remain your dedicated resource to all things PlayTV. If you have any specific queries about the PlayTV, or things you would like to see added to this site (a user forum perhaps?) then let me know..

Until then, enjoy your little black boxes, and feel free to give some feedback in the comments on your first impressions of your new toy!

Sony have updated the PS3 PSN store with a free demo of how PlayTV works, so if you want a quick illustration of how it all hangs together, get downloading

Also, today a new (positive) PlayTV review from Pocket Lint.

It looks like Sony might have made a very late move that is sure to shift some serious amounts of PlayTV units.

Reason? Judging from the latest review of the PlayTV from CVG it appears that you are free to copy recorded material from the PlayTV after all!

From the review :

“Or, brilliantly, you can export videos to your PS3’s XMB menu as MPEG-2 video (despite rumours suggesting the feature had been removed). From there you can use it like a normal file – watch it on your PS3, put it on PC, transfer it to your PSP… whatever you like. ”

Huzzah!

Time to “uncancel” those PlayTV pre-orders? Remember that Amazon still has it £10 cheaper than elsewhere

Rarely has there been a peripheral shrouded in so many mysteries as the PlayTV tuner for the PS3.

One is reminded of the old ‘there are more questions and answers’ song that was the undoubted highlight of the ‘A Question of Sport’ mystery guest round.

Common queries include :

• Does it upscale?
• Can you record two programmes at the same time?
• Can you copy stored TV programmes onto another device?

Rumours and counter rumours abound, football’s Transfer Deadline Day surely has nothing on this.

In addition to our PlayTV FAQ, the Guardian have managed to secure an in-depth interview with some kind of evasive Sony robot official who I’m backing for our next Prime Minister which might provide the answers you are looking for.

Read it here and brace yourself for our forthcoming robotic overlord (oh, and the impending release of the PlayTV).

Never forget, “SCEE is evaluating future plans.”.

Hmm…the usefulness of the PlayTV has become more interesting again, as this post on the rather excellent AV Forums site states that it is actually still possible watch exported programmes from your PS3 on the PC, despite the late changes made to the PlayTV that attempted to prevent this.

The only caveat appears to be that the only player capable of viewing them seems to be the ever versatile VLC software.

Thanks to “Patbateman69′ for the information. Can anybody else confirm that they have managed to get this working?

Eurogamer has come up trumps with the first full review of the PlayTV PVR for the PS3.

To summarise this in-depth review :

Good Bits

1. slick’n'responsive EPG
2. ability to create a list of favourite channels
3. no problems recording and playing games simultaneously!
4. PS3 can wake itself up to record

Bad Bits

1. confirmation that DRM is in force on the video files
   as expected, no support for Freeview (CAM) cards, so no Setanta Sports
2. ugly hardware (do we really care?)
3. prone to crashing
4. no upscaling
5. can only record one thing at a time

Overall, a pretty positive review despite the confirmation of the DRM restrictions on copied PlayTV programmes, and given Sony’s agressive updating of the PS3 firmware, hopefully we can hope for most of the negative points to be in future PlayTV firmware updates, together with additional features.

Other things worth highlighting :

1. 1 hour of programming requires approximately 1GB of storage space.
2. it comes with an overlay for the existing PS3 Bluray remote

Remember that the best price for the PlayTV is currently coming from Amazon – who are offering it for a full ten pound cheaper than other retailers. Nice.

Stuff.tv has got its dirty mitts on one of the first PlayTV boxes in the UK and has posted a preliminary review – thanks, guys.

Together with some new pics (including a nice piccie comparing the size of a PS3 controller with the PlayTV box) Stuff appear a little underwhelmed thus far, but have promised a fuller review soon.

Ah well.

After initially proclaiming that the PS3 PlayTV tuner would allow users to copy their recorded material from their PS3 hard drives onto any other device (e.g. memory stick, another hard drive,etc.) without worrying about copy protection, it now seems, according to Eurogamer, that this feature has been dropped.

What’s that clicking sound? Perhaps its the the sound of thousands of PlayTV preorders being cancelled?

Fortunately you will still be able to stream live TV to your PSP using the Remote Play functionality so I’m sure the 0.002% of people who actually planned to do this, instead of sitting in front of their 42″ LCD TV will be happy.

Eurogamer reports that the new release date for the PlayTV PS3 freeview tuner is now the 19th of September, a bit later than the last ‘official’ release date of the 10th of September.

As reported in the previous post, Amazon still has a date of 31st of October, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Eurogamer also reports that the retail price will be EUR99 – or 78 quid for us Brits.

Despite proclamations and confirmations from Sony that the Play TV would be released on September 10th 2008, online retailers don’t seem as confident.

Do they know something we don’t know?

For instance, Amazon have earmarked the release date as a rather spooky October 31st, whilst Play.com are more reticent and do not display a release date for the PlayTV at all.

Hmm…not good.

Rest assured that PlayTV User will monitor the situation so be sure to subscribe for updates.