Back in 2008, PlayTV was released in Europe. In 2009, it was released in Australia. It’s now 2010, what’s going on with it?
Mark Green, senior producer at Sony Cambridge Studio, has confirmed to website Spong that Sony is working on a second model of PlayTV. Sony is, says Green, “still working on PlayTV, PlayTV 2. And then we have other guys working on other concepts…”
PlayTV is a television set-top box and recorder for the PlayStation 3. It has yet to be released in North America.
Check out this handy video explanation of the PlayTV.
LittleBigPlanet PSP [Spong via VideoGamer via Gizmodo]
Andrew Burdusel
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 10:17 PMI’ve got the first playTV. And as much as I like recording stuff, it’s almost rendered useless by my 40 gig PS3. Let’s hope they can work on some better compression technology. Either that or I can actually buy a better PS3.
Chicks aren’t impressed by 40 gigs like they used to be.
Peter Richards
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 11:16 PMYou know that you can drop a 500GB drive in there for like ninety bucks, right?
Andrew Burdusel
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 11:46 PM$90, really? Where would i buy this 500 gig harddrive for $90
Joshua Lay
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:01 AMA place called MSY… Your capital city should have at least 1
SaintSkeeta
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 10:42 AMMSY have awesome prices for that stuff. I did exactly that. 500GB and I record heaps of stuff with PlayTV.
EzyLee
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 8:34 AMHey Andrew, I am about to perform this upgrade to my 60gb PS3. You need to buy a 2.5″ laptop SATA hard drive first. These come in different GB sizes but don’t go over the 500GB mark as people have run in to problems with these. I would recommend buying as better quality here as you can afford, because at the end of the day. You don’t want to lose any game data!!
It really is an easy operation that anyone can perform, just google “PS3 hardrive upgrade” and you will come across many how to’s and videos which will guide you through the process.
Now in regards to this article. I find myself in the market for PlayTV now that I am using my 60gb PS3 as a digital tuner for our second TV. I have heard many good things about it as being a reliable digital tuner. Does anyone have any experience otherwise?
Ad
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:00 PMActually (in the Slim at least, don’t know about the older models) the Sony manual details how to upgrade the HDD.
Paul Macca
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 9:23 AMYeah I put a 500GB drive in mine.
Can’t believe there is still no series link on Play TV. Really annoys me.
Michael Barnes
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 10:27 PMGood because the first was an overpriced piece of sh**!
Goraxium
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:10 AMPlayTV was definitely over-priced. And requiring the PS3 to be on was a little stupid… In any case, I’ve been using mine to record TV shows using Media Portal on my laptop (ever since my PS3 got the YLoD). It’s just a pity I didn’t find out about Media Portal before I paid so much for PlayTV…
TheRev
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 12:20 PMYes, unfortunately they havent discovered the technology for things to power themselves without being turned on yet. Lets blame Sony for that.
Brendan
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 1:23 AMI got mine for free so I was definately happy with that! It was underutilised for about4 months as my reception was so terrible when running through the PlayTV.
Now however its working fine and I’ve been recording the hell out of The Pacific. Its just too bad they haven’t updated the thing since i got it.
Garrick Bortignon
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 7:13 AMYour PS3 only turns on when it is recording. When its done it turns back off.
Garrick Bortignon
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 7:13 AMWas supposed to reply to Goraxium…damn internets
Matthew Buckner
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 10:51 AMPlay TV works fine for what it is. I don’t see how people can complain about the price. It’s cheap compared to other recorders. If you want more options, buy a bloody Tivo.
Hopefully they will just release an update for original Play TV owners and not force us to buy a newer model. I’m guessing most of the update will be software related. Sure the hardware might get an improvement, but a software update is really all it needs.
Suhandi Hioe
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 11:03 AMDoes any of your PlayTV enables channel changing by typing the numbers instead of flicking through the channels one by one? Mine can only accept 1 and 10 through the PS3 remote to change the channel.
VD
Monday, June 28, 2010 at 3:03 PMI have this issue as well. From what I’ve read this is the case for all Australian PlayTVs operated with the BD Remote even with the latest firmware (1.30). Very slack if you ask me, and I’m somewhat disappointed by the lack of polish on the product. Channels don’t even change using the on-screen remote apart from 1 and 10, all digits turn up red on screen and the channel fails to change. I’m not sure if this problem can be overcome using a Logitech Harmony, but I don’t want to have to wait til the end of the year for the next update just for this to be rectified.
Denaz
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 11:43 AMI don’t actually watch TV the ‘normal’ way anymore, its all through PlayTV. Just so much easier to browse through stations.
Although, thanks to the people above who suggested the HD upgrade, I had no idea!! I’ve been stuck being able to record one game of baseball before its maxed out. Constantly having to delete game saves and game data just to record.
Nathan Holmes
Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at 8:54 PMPlayTV 2 should be able to record gameplay.
bill
Friday, June 11, 2010 at 7:15 PMhaving problems tuning play tv. I can only pick up the main channels, any channel broadcast on vhf ie sbs and tvs cannot be detected am at wits end!!! Set top box using same ariel works perfectly. Any ideas ?
Sean
Sunday, November 7, 2010 at 5:50 PMI had this problem when I got my PlayTV. This was disappointing as I got it for World Cup which was on SBS. In setup I had switched pressed the right arrow to switch through the countries and didn’t find AUS so I chose the “Other”. It got most of the channels but no SBS. Fortunately, I decided to try again and pressed left arrow and found Australia there (Hint to Cambridge: Start at the beginning of list or loop back when you get to the end) Once I did this, I found all of the channels.
Warwick
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 9:06 PMI have just got a playTV unit and i can only record 4.2 gig of TV. Even though i have got 37 gig left on my 40 gig hard drive. Any ideas why that would happen?