Technically its only an HDTV recorder in countries that broadcast HD over DVB-T. But the UK broadcasts over DVB-T2, so can only pick up and record SD channels.
Basically Sony's latest update (paid) 2.02 for the device includes some social networking stuff and series link recording which it has lacked until now. But people have had tens or even hundreds of hours of TV saved, and then the system freezes and doesn't allow you to access your recordings. This problem only surfaced when the latest PlayTV update. only way to fix is reinstalling to version 1.00 losing all the recordings or deleting its system folder, again deleting all recordings
They can't even downgrade to a decent working firmware like my 1.21 system. And people have lost all their recordings, reinstalled 2.02 and then lost a whole new set.
To sum up; 1. Sony made users pay for a feature that should have been there day one. 2. That same paid update makes the system lock up, forcing reinstall & losing all recordings 3. Their only option is to stay at 1.00 after reinstall, which lacks features like upscaling 4. The problems started to arise a few days after the update went live, mid to late November, 2 months later and no signs of a patch.
Customer service master-class, congrats Sony for such staggering levels of incompetence.
Strange that it took Japan this long to get an equivalent system. My UK PlayTV box records the freeview TV MPEG2 stream as .m2ts files, the file sizes vary greatly depending on the channel. You have to keep an eye on it, as anything bigger than 4GB can't be copied onto USB drives. I upgraded my PS3s HDD to 320GB and the old 80GB HDD now resides in an 2.5" enclosure, still in use as a backup drive.
You can play the files in VLC, or convert to MP4 with Handbrake. Very useful as using the ffmpeg codec encodes very quickly for my ipod classic.
When this device is released there's bound to be an increase of torrent MP4 TV shows and movies available. Some of the DVB-T broadcasts in the UK are heavily compressed, to make room for loads of QVC type channels. In particular Five Life and Five US can be a little dodgy (loads of compression artefacts).
When I get my 80GB PS3 I will probably buy this, might wait for a bit of a price drop though. My stand alone PVR records at 2GB per hour, I'm guessing the PlayTV may have different quality settings to make the most of the PS3s HDD, perhaps a PSP mode at 480x272.
Relive recent memories with this Dreamcast Collection trailer
Feb 23rd 2011 12:51AM (Joystiq)Sony Europe aware of PlayTV crashing issue, working on fix
Feb 17th 2011 5:18PM (Joystiq)Basically Sony's latest update (paid) 2.02 for the device includes some social networking stuff and series link recording which it has lacked until now. But people have had tens or even hundreds of hours of TV saved, and then the system freezes and doesn't allow you to access your recordings. This problem only surfaced when the latest PlayTV update. only way to fix is reinstalling to version 1.00 losing all the recordings or deleting its system folder, again deleting all recordings
They can't even downgrade to a decent working firmware like my 1.21 system. And people have lost all their recordings, reinstalled 2.02 and then lost a whole new set.
To sum up;
1. Sony made users pay for a feature that should have been there day one.
2. That same paid update makes the system lock up, forcing reinstall & losing all recordings
3. Their only option is to stay at 1.00 after reinstall, which lacks features like upscaling
4. The problems started to arise a few days after the update went live, mid to late November, 2 months later and no signs of a patch.
Customer service master-class, congrats Sony for such staggering levels of incompetence.
Japan gets Torne PS3 DTV DVR adapter in May, all is right with the world
Jan 23rd 2010 9:29PM (Engadget)My UK PlayTV box records the freeview TV MPEG2 stream as .m2ts files, the file sizes vary greatly depending on the channel. You have to keep an eye on it, as anything bigger than 4GB can't be copied onto USB drives. I upgraded my PS3s HDD to 320GB and the old 80GB HDD now resides in an 2.5" enclosure, still in use as a backup drive.
You can play the files in VLC, or convert to MP4 with Handbrake. Very useful as using the ffmpeg codec encodes very quickly for my ipod classic.
Europe's PS3 PlayTV records TV with no DRM
Sep 4th 2008 9:04PM (Joystiq)When I get my 80GB PS3 I will probably buy this, might wait for a bit of a price drop though. My stand alone PVR records at 2GB per hour, I'm guessing the PlayTV may have different quality settings to make the most of the PS3s HDD, perhaps a PSP mode at 480x272.