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Sony to unveil digital TV recorder for PS3 at Leipzig?
Interesting. The BBC are reporting from the Leipzig Games Conference that Sony have held a press conference, and announced a digital TV add-in for the PS3.
According to the article, the PlayTV will plug in to the PS3, and allow you to view and record digital TV programmes, turning the PS3 into a DVR (digital video recorder) - a bit like a Sky+ box.
Saved programmes can then be copied wirelessly or via USB to your PSP or viewed direct on the PS3.
Give them their due, Sony have always maintained that the PS3 would become a sort of digital entertainment hub for the home. Microsoft really dropped the ball on this one - who's really going to have a Media Centre PC kicking aroundn to stream content to the 360? Stuff that, I'll have XBMC on a hacked Xbox for under £100, thanks very much.
The question becomes one of price for Sony. When I can get a decent console for under £200, and a dual-channel DVR for around £100 (so I can watch TV and record a different channel, at the same time) then the PS3 alone still works out more expensive. Throw on the cost of the PlayTV, which I predict will be around the £100 mark, and you have a hugely expensive solution to try and make the PS3 more palatable.
Without some steep price drops and some more compelling content, I still can't see how this move will appeal to new consumers. Clearly existing PS3 owners will be all over this, if only to try and pretend they didn't just blow £500 on a console with a handful of mediocre games.
Sony plan to launch the PlayTV device in Europe during the first half of 2008.
Check out the BBC story in full at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6958233.stm for some announcements about a GPS add-on and a video download service for the PSP.
Cheers,
TOM
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"hacked Xbox for under £100"
Infact a lot less than that, with the average second hand price of an xbox 1 console now going for around £30 a person could if they so desire preform a softmod which requires no mod chip and install xbmc. This can all be done for free if you have a little bit of skill (Making an xbox to usb adaptor) or you can pick up an action replay kit which go for pennies on Ebay.
And Xbmc the software is really quite fantastic, having used both xbmc (on 4 consoles in my house) as well as windows mce I still say I prefer the xbmc, it's just so easy to use once you've got it setup and I highly recommend it to every one. If you can have one computer on in your house at all times you can use it to stream any media you may have such as ripped cd's or creative commons media you've got from the internet and then do not have to worry about getting bigger harddrives for the xbox. Plus with each release more and more features are being introduced in the main build and combine that with the scripting ability of which there are plenty of users providing and the very effective skinning library you can really have a very customisable media centre.
However it is not without it's flaws, 2 of which are the inabilty to play back HD content and the inability to record tv.
But then there are other soloutions to this other than going out to buy a sony product.
Such as the afformentioned Windows MCE and or the open source software mythtv which has gained a lot of ground.
Myth tv being a intresting matter not only allows the the recording of content (Hd if you capture card soupourts it (Then I think windows MCE can do to)) but this content can then be shared from a master server to all your front ends which can be very low powered boxes (there is even a version for the xbox1) seamlessly, this sharing extends to the sharing of the tv capture card in the master server meaning you'll only have to buy 1 tv capture card per stream you desire to be able to display, e.g. you need 1 per diffrent chanell you'll be whatching or recording. Which is something windows mce can't and can if you have a large number of tv's in the house be quite a large saving. And btw myth tv is completely free software.
So yes, there is a lot of choice so sony you've got your work cut out to beat some of the all ready excellent alternatives out there.
And just as a small note all the information in this post has been pulled of the top of my head and I can not ensure the accuracy of any of it, was aimed more as a small teaser. If any of it's intrested just do some googling there are huge amounts of resources out there if you are intrested in getting it setup and if you do please come back to the forums and tell us about your setup and your story behind it.
Ash
Cool
thats pritty cool 2008 should prove intresting for new stuff :)