Sony PlayTV

If you don’t have TiVo or MySky but you do have a PlayStation 3, you may want to take a look at PlayTV. It’s an add-on for your PS3 with no ongoing subscription costs, just a downpayment of $200. Expensive in the short-term, yes, but cheaper than other options long-term.

PlayTV does the basic functions we’ve come to expect out of a PVR – it can play live TV, rewind it, pause it and record it. It’s Full HD capable and has a couple of extra features that most don’t have – such as a chat function that allows you to chat with your friends on the PlayStation Network while watching a show together.

Otherwise, things are not as rosy as they first appear. The 13-day programming guide we’ve come to expect isn’t complete, for one. Mediaworks, the company that runs TV3, C4 and FOUR, has refused to allow Sony to use its full guide. Media outlets have speculated it’s because PlayStation 3 made an exclusive deal with TVNZ to include TVNZ OnDemand on consoles, which seems both possible and petty.

The holes in the guide are an annoyance, but at first I wasn’t sure it was that big of a deal. Before I attempted it, I thought all it really meant was that in order to series link your favourite show any more than three days ahead of time, you had to know what day and time it was broadcast. Then I realised you also have to know how long the show is, which isn’t as easy to Google. In order to record an episode of Better Off Ted I had to go to C4’s website and watch an episode on demand, just to figure out how long it was, before I could program the PVR.

Another thing that bothers me about PlayTV is the fact that the manufacturer proudly announces you can record live TV and play games or watch a movie on your PS3 at the same time. However, when I attempted to play Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, the gameplay lagged. Sony acknowledges this could happen, so why bother promoting the feature?

Hard drive space is going to be a worry with any PVR, but with PlayTV the problems are compounded. Not only are you using your PS3 to store your games, you’re also now using it to store all the HD video you’re recording. According to Sony, half an hour of standard definition TV recording takes 1GB of space; 2GB for Full HD. It would be nice if PlayTV provided some other way to store that extra video, because the console we’ve got at PC World is an original PS3 with only a 40GB hard drive – we’ve had it for years. Sony’s solution? “You can always buy a new hard drive.” Or maybe the PS3 wasn’t originally designed to be the home entertainment system it’s now becoming.

One cool feature of PlayTV is that you can watch live TV on the go on your PSP, Sony Vaio notebook, or Sony Ericsson AINO phone. However, you can’t set PlayTV to record from any other portable device, should you leave the house and forget to set the device. Weak. When I tested it on PC World’s communal PSP through the PS3’s remote play system I could watch live TV with no lag, but the image quality was substandard. You also have to make sure you start running remote play before leaving the house – manually, on both the PS3 and the other device – which kind of misses the point. What are the chances you’re going to forget to record something but remember to set up remote play?

PlayTV does basically do what it promises, but with better options already on the market, I can’t see why you’d buy one if you didn’t already own a PS3. Even then, I wouldn’t be surprised if consumers decided it wasn’t good enough and switched to TiVo.