PS3 PlayTV

I bought one off game.com for about $150, I think they're perhaps cheaper now. I find it very useful, but haven't had anything to record since a VCR. Being able to just leave it to record programs overnight is great, and then catch up on the weekend.

I dropped in a 500gb HDD for about $110 too, I thought it was pretty much essential if movies are going to take 5gb each. Backup was easy but timeconsuming.

 

wow i never knew this existed a dvr/DTV for ps3. i just google it, read more about it, and found its not compatible in NA because it uses DVT/B and not NTSC/ATSC.

 

At our house we’ve been using PlayTV since the UK launch and it has revolutionised our use of subscription free TV. Although as a quick side note, you will want to buy the BD remote, as it is essential for ps3 any way, and mandatory for PlayTV.

We replaced our £50 a month Sky TV subscription; which we mainly had for watching live sport; but as it wasn’t value for money @ £600 per year.

The Up-scaling ability of PlayTV using the Cell processor puts its’ SD picture quality, somewhere between Sky SD and Sky HD, and worlds apart from internal upscalers on any of the different Plasma/LCD TVs I’ve looked at in the UK.

PlayTV works seamlessly in the background when doing other things, like playing VF5b, watching Blu-Rays, DVDs, Listening to music, checking VFDC on the internal Ps3 Web browser, using IPlayer, VidZone or renting movie content from Playstation store. The Ps3 can also switch itself on and off from standby to record programs like Match of the Day while down the pub. Background recording still works whether playing VF5 offline or a game like Uncharted 2 in co-op mode online. I haven’t tested remote playtv with PSP or Sony Ericsson Aino, Satio, Xperia X10/X2 yet, but am certainly looking to get either a new mobile or PSPGo to try it.

PlayTV can’t record two shows at once to watch later. But you can background record one show and use the live buffer pause feature to record two things simultaneously, which is a reasonable option, although not perfect.

A link to the Official launch website, but some information in the FAQ is now out of date.

Turning on PS3 & playTV at first seems excessively long 30-45secs, but after 2 weeks you'll likely get use to it.

================== Optional info ======================
Expectedly, background recording won’t work if you are using the PS2 emulator (available in launch PS3s so VF4Evo is slightly hampered) and you can’t run PS3 Linux and background record at the same time; basically the emulator and Linux commandeer the whole system. And even after getting back to the XMB with “ps3-boot-game-os” linux command, fully power down the PS3 to standby to reset the systems Bluetooth pairing, otherwise the Blu-ray/PlayTV remote will not work.

You can transfer recorded shows to the XMB for watching and thumb nailing (very cool) or transferring to external storage for use with VideoLan (vlc player) on your PC.
Playback in the XMB is very useful if there were TV reception issues while recording, as the XMB playback has better error processing than the PlayTV application for some reason. Although since putting an extra aerial booster in the lounge at the TV, to supplement boosting in the loft at source, this infrequent problem has disappeared.

Digressing slightly more, in the UK only SD picture tuning using DVB-T is currently available, but the latest software update for PlayTV does list HD tuning over DVB-T for other parts of the world.
The UK and France have opted for a newer DVB-T2 system for HD Freeview (dissimilar to Germany), so it isn’t yet clear whether the PlayTV tuner will need replaced for the UK rollout of HD Freeview. I very much doubt it will, as DVB-T and DVB-T2 are designed to coexist, and I suspect that the PlayTV USB module does little more than receive the data streams to allow decoding on the Cell SPUs.
Unlike current UK HD TVs and their DVB-T tuners, adding DVB-T2 processing to Ps3 should hopefully just require a software rewrite and not new hardware for signal processing.

 

Just for the record, I believe this feature has been removed for the Australian version, more the pity.
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=ps3_playtv

 

darn.. not available for US. I want one of these if they come out. I do use playOn for the ps3. that's really good.

 

Do you need to trun on PS3 all the time for recording?
Or stand by mode??

 

The system lives in standby, but comes out of standby when it is actually recording. Just like any old school VHS or current Digital PVR.

Taking a typical scenario of going away for a few days:
You add the items you wish to record to playTv’s planner then shut the system down to standby.

While you are away, the system will wake up from standby a minute before planned recordings starts. But without actually leaving the XMB or launching PlayTV. Instead it starts an XMB background recording process and display a messaging saying the system is recording and is due to automatically go to standby when finished; that is unless you press the PS button and fireup VF5.
When the show finishes recording, the background process ends, and the system returns to standby.

Alternatively, if you need to pop out in a hurry, you hit record (select) so you don’t miss the end of your show. You then press the PS button and select turn system off (standby mode). The ps3 then exits to the XMB and displays the message previously mentioned, but continues to background record until your show finishes, at which point it goes to standby.

Don’t worry, Japan is likely to get this add-on once ps3 regains significant market share from Wii this Christmas. The Wii hardware has probably run its’ course now and Nintendo will probably announce true next-gen console plans at E3, especially now Sony has absorbed the cost of bringing 200 GFLOPS performance to mass market for them.

The similarity between US and Japanese TV standards will no doubt result in a North America release in the next 6months, probably to coincide with the Christmas mainstream shift from DVD to Blu-ray.

With PS3 being the best software supported player on the market, Sony will probably be waiting for sales to hit 20million in North America before adding more reasons for late adopters to buy.