Some sharp eyes have spotted an interesting blip in a recent PlayStation 3 video, "What you Need." If you take look at the picture above (click for a higher-resolution shot), you can clearly see a section of the PS Store for television channels, including NBC, HBO, The CW, Cartoon Network (listed twice), MTV, Discovery Channel and others.

Television content from these channels are also currently available via Xbox Live Marketplace. Is this just a mockup from an overzealous ad firm, or a hint at an impending announcement? With E3 just around the corner, we'll likely know soon enough. Video embedded after the break.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Not willing to wait for the BBC to get its act together and release a PS3-compatible version of it's iPlayer streaming video web site, an enterprising hacker has pieced together his own version and put it out for the world to share. PS3iplayer.com works by making the PS3's web browser pretend it's the Wii's Opera browser, tricking the BBC web-site to serve up the official version designed for Nintendo's system. Compatibility is reportedly a little spotty, but the site does seem to show how easy it would be to port the web site over to the PS3's built-in web browser, despite vague complaints of Sony's controlling imposition.

For his part, the BBC's head of digital media technology, Anthony Rose, writes in a blog post that the hack is impressive but not necessarily "the best possible iPlayer proposition for that console." Rose assured readers that his team is looking into creating an official version of the player for the PS3 "in due course." Like when someone on the digital media team gets a free lunch hour, perhaps?

A day after the BBC announced a version of its iPlayer streaming video service for the Wii, an obvious follow-up question arises: "Why isn't a similar service available for the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well?" A partial answer from BBC Future and Technology Group Coordinator Erik Huggers, who said in a BBC's dot.life blog that Sony and Microsoft weren't willing to open up their infrastructures to the iPlayer. "If you want to get on the PlayStation or Xbox, they want control of the look, the feel and the experience; they want it done within their shop, and their shop only," Huggers said.

The BBC blogger uses this as a leaping-off point to declare that the Wii's deal with the BBC "makes something of a mockery" of the multimedia capabilities of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Never mind that the Wii can't even play DVDs (much less Blu-ray discs) or that the system offers no way to download video for permanent, offline viewing. According to the BBC's blogger, Nintendo is "bridging the gap between the web and the TV" in a way that its competitors aren't.

Regardless, the implication that Sony and Microsoft are unwilling to accommodate online video outside the walled garden of their narrow, profit-generating shop services is a little upsetting. The beauty of having a machine connected to the internet should be the ability to access the wide array of free content on that internet, not just the opportunity to buy things from the console maker and its partners.

Now that the Wii has brought TV web browsing to millions of homes, web services are tripping all over themselves to make sure they're fully compatible with the Wii's Opera browser. The latest organization to trip is the BBC, which announced today that its iPlayer catch-up service will allow UK Wii owners to stream programs through the system directly onto their TVs.

The program, which goes into beta today, is simply a Wii-optimized version of the BBC's existing iPlayer catch-up service, which last month served 17.2 million episodes of programs such as Torchwood, Doctor Who and Top Gear, among dozens of others. The service will only be available to UK citizens and does require the 500 Wii Point purchase of the Internet channel, but a BBC info. page says the organization is hoping "to be able to get iPlayer on Wii without this purchase being needed."

[Thanks to everybody who sent this in]

This week on Ask Joystiq, we look at downloading foreign content to a foreign system, streaming content to an Xbox 360, and identifying one --or possibly two? -- obscure Argentinian NES games.

If you have any burning questions, unsolved gaming mysteries, or just a desire for musings from our knowledgeable cadre of writers, drop us a line at ask AAT joystiq DAWT com (and yes, we write it that way for a reason).

Q: I might be going to Japan towards the end of the summer and might pick up some games or a system. If I get a system, how would that work when I bring it back to the states and log on-line for a Wii, PS3 or 360?? Would a Japanese Wii let me log in to only US servers or would I be able to download Japanese games from the marketplace. Same question applied to the other systems...
-- iwantmymtv

A: For the Wii, the region of the console corresponds to the region of the Wii Shop Channel -- Japanese systems will access the Japanese store, no matter where you plug them into the intertubes. You have to buy Wii Points that correspond to the system's region too, which means using a Japanese credit card or getting some Japanese Wii Points cards imported. [source]

Any PS3 will play downloads from any region, but each PSN account is locked to a specific region when you create it. Luckily, it's relatively easy to set up "dummy accounts" for each region you want to buy content, as long as you have a credit card from that country. Be warned, though: there is a significant language barrier for navigating the Japanese store.

Xbox Live users can also create dummy accounts to get around regional restrictions, but there are reports that Microsoft has been blocking downloads from accounts where this practice is detected. As always, let the international buyer beware.
-Kyle Orland

Nullriver is now offering its MediaLink application which creates a "seamless solution" for file sharing between the Mac and PS3. A 30-minute free trial is available now, with the full application costing $20.

A quick addendum: DRM'd iTunes music will not play, and Nullriver actually has a good FAQ to check out before going down the media link rabbit hole. We'd love to give an initial report on how well it works, but after getting the Mac and PS3 to recognize each other the concept of "media sharing" failed spectacularly. We'll keep trying, let us know how you fare.

[Via Engadget]

After spending entirely too much time trying to find a suitable solution to stream all of our bits and bytes into our newly upgraded PlayStation 3s, we finally came to a grim realization: there is no perfect solution. That doesn't mean there's a paucity of options, however. As it turns out, there's no shortage of UPnP clients that satisfy, in some capacity, the DLNA standard the PlayStation 3 requires.

The following list, compiled in part by the PS3mods blog, is a rather extensive collection of software spanning multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. We added Elgato's EyeConnect software for Mac OS X which got us closer than anything else on that platform. On the Windows side, we continue to hear good things about Nero MediaHome. Any software missing? Any 'stiqers find that perfect solution?

[Thanks, Eliot]