ps3

We Want PlayTV – Freeview For Your PS3

photo credit: yngrich

There’s a lot of buzz about Freeview at the moment. They’re almost through their DVB-T rollout. DVB-T means Digital Video Broadcast and differs from Sky and the current Freeview implementation in that it doesn’t require a satellite to recieve broadcasts, it uses the bog-standard UHF arial almost ubiquitously installed across New Zealand. Difference is, the broadcast is digital and will enable broadcasters to, finally, broadcast shows in full 1080p HD.

I know a few people that have gotten their grubby little mitts on Freeview set top boxes (Interested? Head down to Eastern Hi-Fi with a few hundred bucks and see what happens!) that realise this new standard and the feedback that I’ve heard from them is absolutely stellar.

All well and good, but for the love of God I don’t want another set-top box. What I want is a PlayTV. It’s a dual-tuner, well integrated little box for your Playstation 3 thats incredibly easy to use and integrates with the rest of my devices (UPnp NAS, PSP, HDTV). For those who are interested – here’s a little video showing off some of what it can do.

I don’t want Sky anymore. I don’t want their re-hashed movie channels, their proprietary access methods and all the buggy firmware to go with them, I don’t want to pay them for MySky for their half-baked PVR and I don’t want to pay them again to upgrade to HD.

If Sony gets their act together and releases this product here as soon as possible, they can quite easily position the PS3 as the gadget to have for all AV setups. They’ve also recently announced that they’ll be hosting a “Video On Demand” service – basically streaming High Definition movie downloads from the Playstation Store over your broadband connection. So between gaming, Bluray, HDTV PVR and video on demand it will become an impressive centerpiece for any living room.