Tech News - Turning your PS3 into a Personal Video Record

PlayTV AU Impressions

Annoyed that you missed Iron Chef last night? Disgruntled because you had to duck out to the bathroom during the *insert sporting code here* grand finals and you missed the most memorable moment of the game? Getting crabby because you're about to go on holidays for a week and you'll be out of touch with your friends in Summer Bay the entire time?

Well, turn that frown upside down. PlayTV is here to ensure you don't miss a second of oh-so-important television time. It comes along on the heels of set top boxes like Tivo, services like Foxtel iQ and hardware like PC TV tuner cards. It's not in any way new, in other words, but in this case it's affordable, convenient and – for the most part – pretty user friendly.

We've been testing PlayTV for a few days now, and it works very much as advertised. Plug the little black box containing the twin TV tuners into your PS3, plug an aerial into the black box, install the software to your PS3 and you're good to go. The tuners had no problems finding all the Australian free to air channels – including the weird community/parliament/teaching aides ones. Oh, and the one that seems to do nothing but play re-runs of The Jetsons, The Flintstones and Bewitched. Wow, it's like having cable. For free! 

We didn't really have any issues with reception either, which was gratifying given how awful the analogue reception is at our test location. One of the advantages of a digital signal is that you basically either get it, or you don't. I.e. you'll either see a clean, crisp, smooth signal, or it'll be frozen and only occasionally spit out another frame. So no fuzzy reception, no ghosting – it's either on or off.

Choose the Live TV option and you're watching tele as per normal. Only, because of the ability to buffer to the PS3's hard drive and the twin tuners, you have a number of cool features, such as pausing and rewinding live TV, and recording one channel while watching another. The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) integration also means it's a simple matter to browse through the TV guide and select a number of programs you want to record. Once you've set your schedule, the system gets pulled out of sleep mode to record each program, or can do it in the background while you're playing a game or watching a Blu-ray. We've tested recording a film while playing a game (Brutal Legend, if you must know), and experienced no issues whatsoever. full article here...