PS3 PlayTV Review

[Spider]

OK Folks, I recently bought the PlayTV Digital TV addon for the PS3 and thought I'd do a brief write up for any of you that might be interested.

The Addon:
PlayTV turns your PS3 into a freeview PVR. It will pause, record, rewind and let you watch TV, and record another channel at the same time. To do this, it uses the hard disk on your PS3. A recent 1.21 update also allows for upscaling of standard definition broadcasts to higher definition. At the moment it won't do series link recording, but we've been assured this is coming in a future update. There are however, no plans to update it to receive the free to air HD freeview, as stupid old blighty decided to use a different standard to air HD Freeview in the UK. (bastards).

You can get all the related infor from the Sony website (and pics) here.

What's in the Box?:
You get the PlayTV box, which is no larger than a PS3 pad and shaped like a trapezoid. It has two connections, one for the input in from your outdoor ariel, and the mini usb socket that goes to a USB port on the PS3. USB also powers it so no need for seperate power cables. You also get the software disc, user manual, and a handy overlay reference sticker that sticks on your blu-ray remote control. It looks quite nice and actually enhances the aesthetics of the remote control and doesn't look like a tacky sticker that you've put over the top. It also doesn't inhibit the original Blu-ray remote labels either.


Installation:
This was easy. You hook up the PlayTV box, and then put the disc in the PS3 and start it. It plays a demonstration video that you watch, whilst in the background it installs the software. Then, once installed, it runs through the simplest of setup steps, scans for channels and thats it - done. It also alerted me to the fact that there was an update available, which I selected and it installed keeping all of my previous settings.


Interface:
OK, this took some getting used to. The interface is dissimilar from the PS3 XMedia bar - PlayTV has its own interface, which is accessible from the 'TV' Xmedia Bar menu. PlayTV's menu is a horizontal scrolling affair, with icons and a look and feel of the default PS3 theme.


Useability:
Again, simple. You have all the usual affair, Electronic Programme Guide, favourites, page up, page down etc etc. Anyone that has used sky or freeview will be right at home. The interface is slick, and quick. No stuttering or slowdown. Very responsive. Scrolling through the EPG and information is a lot faster than the freeview integrated on my HD TV.


Functionality:
Using either the PS3 pad or Blu-Ray remote to pause, rewind etc is a cinch. There didn't seem to be any pauses or stutters when pausing and then playing Live TV. Same goes for rewinding or fast forwarding. The system seems a lot more responsive that the likes of sky or virgin media V+ (on both of them I have experienced a brief pause when wanting to pause live tv or resume playback) - pausing, replaying and rewinding/forwarding was instant. My only gripe is that the rewind and forward speed steppings are insane. It goes from 2x, to 4x, to 10x then 30x and then jumps to 100x -I think I hit 300x at one point - ridiculously too fast.

My other gripe is that switching between TV and Radio is a bit pants - but I'm still getting used to the interface.


Image Quality:
Here is where the PlayTV addon comes into its own. The inbuilt freeview on my HD TV was sometimes blocky due to the Mpeg4 compression. PlayTV gets around this by actively upscaling your broadcast on the fly, resulting in much sharper and higher definition images. The difference was noticeable on some channels more than others, and definitely noticeable on broadcasts that were dark or shadowy in nature.


Audio Quality:
Nothing to see here people - standard stereo through your TV, or if you have optical out on your PS3 to a Dolby Surround Sounds Decoder then you get surround. Simples.


Recording:
At the moment, there is no series linking option, which is a big downside, but we've been assured that this is coming in a future update.

Scheduling worked fine (as long as the programme isn't late starting or early finishing). Again, we've been told that this will be fixed in the future to start recording in synch with the start of the programme.

The PS3 will continue to record scheduled programmes during a game. I didn't notice any serious slowdown in games, except for the odd stutter or two in Modern Warfare 2 when the cached recordings were sent to disk.

The PS3 also switched itself on from standby to record a scheduled programme that occurred after I turned it off, which worked well.

Until we get series linking and recording synchronisation though, these will be downsides that some people might not want to live without - depends what their current freeview PVR does.

Library:
Everything you record is held in the recordings library and is accessed from the main PlayTV interface - its neat and tidy - easy to understand. Its simple to bring back recordings and watch them, or delete them if you no longer need them - does what it says on the tin.


Summary:

If you haven't got Sky+, Virgin V+ or a Freeview box that records and pauses TV, then for £50 notes you cannot go wrong with this addon. It's slick, easy to use and packed full of features.

On the downside, the lack of Series Link recording and the ability to automatically synch to a TV broadcast time and relying on a simple scheduler to do the work is a big minus. Hopefully an update will address this sooner rather than later.

Also, for those of you with a 20Gb or 40Gb PS3, then the lower number of USB Ports (only 2 compared to 4 on the 60Gb Model) might cause issue if you use a wireless keyboard and then want to charge your pad etc. Also, the lack of hard disk space might mean upgrading your console with a bigger drive.

Overall I'd give it a 7 out of 10 for now, which I might bump up to 8.5 when they fix series linking and synching to broadcasts.
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If you watch Jaws backwards, it's about a huge shark that throws up so many people they need to open a beach.

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[dreddwales]

Nice one
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DREDD(wales)
DREDD1970 (PS3)

[Smudge]

Excuse my ignorance cause to be quite honest i havent got a clue about digital tv etc.

My understanding is if i get this, and plug it into a normal arial it'll work. But does that mean ill only get BBC, 2, ITV and S4C??
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My village is better than B0b's (apparently!)! 7 - 10! Baldy's pulling away but i dont care cause i had a hole in one!!

[Spider]

You'll get around 40 freeview channels and another 90 odd digital radio channels.

For example you'd get:

BBC1
BBC2
BBC3
BBC4

ITV1
ITV2
ITV3
ITV4

DAVE
VIRGIN1

SKY THREE

E4
FILM4
MORE4

And some others. Well worth it if you don;t have Sky or Cable. [/list]
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If you watch Jaws backwards, it's about a huge shark that throws up so many people they need to open a beach.

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[Smudge]

Cheers Spid, Im thinking of getting it so i can watch it through my pc upstairs while the mrs watches sky downstairs. At the moment though i havent got a normal arial. Do i just buy a bog standard arial to go with it?
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My village is better than B0b's (apparently!)! 7 - 10! Baldy's pulling away but i dont care cause i had a hole in one!!

[Spider]

Well, I'm getting 80% signal from a standard outdoor ariel on the roof. And looking at it, its a bog standard 1970's job that's been on the roof for years.

You can buy new fangled digital ariels, but your standard one *should* work fine.

An indoor arial won;t cut it though I'm afraid, unless its one of the more expensive electric powered boosted types.
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If you watch Jaws backwards, it's about a huge shark that throws up so many people they need to open a beach.

Website

[Smudge]

CHeers dude, im guessing im gonna have to wait until my area goes digital though.
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My village is better than B0b's (apparently!)! 7 - 10! Baldy's pulling away but i dont care cause i had a hole in one!!

[Spider]

They should already be broadcasting a dual set of both digital and analogue broadcasts (at least that's what they do here in Winchester).

Then at some point they switch off the analogue broadcast when you 'go digital', and then ramp up the power on the digital signal.

You should be able to get it already.
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If you watch Jaws backwards, it's about a huge shark that throws up so many people they need to open a beach.

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[Magnum26]

Technically guys you need a digital ariel for the freeview to work not an old analogue one.
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Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window.

[Spider]

Well, I can say categorically that you do not - like I said - I hooked the existing arial on the roof from 1970 odd (asked the homeowner when I moved in and she said that its been up there since she was here) and it picks up 80% signal.

Depends how good the arial is.
_________________
If you watch Jaws backwards, it's about a huge shark that throws up so many people they need to open a beach.

Website

[[MonkeY]]

They still haven't made the jump to digital around here yet and our nearest transmitter is switching over in March sometime. The signal is too weak for digital at the mo as I hear the transmitter is only broadcasting in analogue till then.

Nice review though Spider.
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