Here’s the thing: I’m a bit forgetful. Always have been. So imagine my surprise when, some six months after completely forgetting I’d done so, an order of PlayTV arrives on my doorstep. Fearing the onset of senility I went back and checked my account and indeed I had gone for a preorder. Here then are my thoughts after nearly a week’s household use.

Much has already been said about the disparity between features that were promised early on and those that arrived in the final box so I won’t go in to that here. I’m going to focus on the average usage that you could expect someone to get out of it.

Out of the box it’s a fairly inoffensive piece of black plastic. A little light perhaps: I like to feel a bit of substance in my technology. The instructions are very much “does what it says on the tin”, insert the disc and install the PlayTV software then connect the device as directed to your PS3 and aerial input.

Once done you get a nice PlayTV icon which nestles cosily on the XMB between Video and Game. Upon selecting PlayTV the program will then load. It takes about 15 – 20 seconds from logo to navigation menu. I set the device to run the initial channel scan which lasted about 2 minutes and found all the usual Freeview TV and radio channels.

On to use then, and first impressions were good. The user interface is slick and very responsive as you would expect from Sony. It’s clearly been designed with the XMB in mind as everything flows and swooshes quite soothingly. Choosing a channel and navigating around (using a DS3) is fairly simple although not as obvious as using a more traditional remote control. Picture quality I felt was slightly improved over the Freeview built in to my TV that I previously used. The upscaling power of the PS3 has been put to good use and the notoriously poor signal quality that Freeview gives looked sharper even to the untrained eye.

The programme search tool works well too, just type in keywords for the type of TV you’re after and the system will list its best results. I tried out the recording functionality on a few titles. Pressing X on a programme gives you the options such as watch now (depending on the time), record etc. Selecting record lets you choose more specifics around when it starts and stops, whether to repeat recordings and so on. Many of the features will be very familiar if you use Tivo, Sky + or any of the other major satellite and cable providers. A programme scheduled to record is coloured red which makes it nice to pick them out from the sea of listings. To watch recordings I went to Library and picked my item of choice out. As an extension you can also send programmes to the XMB. I like this feature because you don’t have to load up the PlayTV software in order to watch something. Once I did this it appears in a folder the system creates called PlayTV (funnily enough) under Video. Once here you can re-folder it, add a 15 second clip capture like usual.

Unfortunately it’s not all sweetness and light. Firstly, the EPG seems to take a long time to populate and on some occasions refused to find programme listings at all. This was somewhat annoying when trying to find a programme to record. I mentioned above the improved picture quality. Contrasting that is a worryingly large number of image freezes whilst watching content. It’s almost as though the system is buffering content like you would online. I know the Freeview signal is pretty poor generally: we used to get image break up on the old set up but not nearly as much as this. The problem seems to be sporadic as best but unwatchable at its worst.

I’ve found the firmware to be a little sensitive as well. The first time I moved a programme from PlayTV to the XMB the file refused to play. It insisted the file was corrupted. Not a good start I thought so I tried another programme and that worked fine. This morning in fact I moved another programme over and whilst exiting back to the XMB it forced a console reboot on me. Most uncalled for.

Lastly, the user journey just seems too long. This is especially apparent when trying to convince my other half to engage with the new system. In order to watch TV from scratch I have to: turn on the TV (duh), turn on the PS3, turn on my AV receiver (I use the optical connection for surround sound), log in to my account, load PlayTV, and select a channel. This whole process takes about 1 minute 10 seconds, whereas the original TV set up takes about 10 seconds flat. True, just over a minute is not a long period of time in the grand scheme of things but it’s the number of different steps involved to get to the end result which is a bit of a turn off.

So then, my closing comments. I like PlayTV. It’s a good add on for the PS3’s multimedia range of services. The UI is slick and intuitive and it combines some of the neat features of a PVR with additional extras on top. Price-wise 60GBP is not unreasonable although you can get cheaper systems on the UK market. It does have its problems though. The occasional instability, image freeze and EPG drop outs whilst not deal breakers, all combine together to undermine its longterm appeal. Anyone who has cable or satellite will of course have no need for the device, and those who just want to switch on the TV and watch content may be put off by the longer than average switch on process.

Nice idea: just hasn’t quite come together in the delivery.

Filed under: Peripherals, Stream Media