|
.jpg) Our sister magazine Geare has just published its review of the PlayTV for Sony's PlayStation 3, which gives our favourite games console & Blu-ray player the ability to view and record HD television.
You can read the full review here, but the main conclusion is that it would be a whole lot better had Sony in Australia not decided to hobble its PVR's abilities by complying with Freeview specifications. Freeview rules insist that the maximum fast-forward speed be quartered from 120x to 30x, and defeats the ability to skip forward in small jumps (i.e. no ad skipping allowed).
Most inconveniently it removes the command 'Move to Home Menu', which allows other international users of PlayTV to shift their recordings to the PS3's main XMB menu, from which they can be copied to a USB stick and out to your network for archiving.
Happily, there is a workaround for Australian PlayTVs. It's a bit of a palaver, so you may only want to do it occasionally. And of course there's no guarantee this workaround will survive the next firmware update.
> Under Settings, change your region from Australia to Other.
> Note that this will cancel any future timer recordings, and forces a retune of PlayTV. Let it be so.
> Return to your list of recordings, select the one you wish to export and you'll now see an option to 'Move to Home Menu'. Select this.
> Repeat for any other recordings you wish to archive.
> These recordings will now be found under the main 'Video' menu of your PS3. Highlight one and select the Triangle icon. Select Copy and choose a destination - this can include a USB stick. (You can do this after the next step if you wish, or just leave them on the PS3 hard drive. Playing from this location gives full PS3 video playback abilities, including 120x FF and the marvellous illustrated skips invoked with the Square key.)
> Return to PlayTV and reverse the process by selecting Australia instead of Other. Again there will be a retune of channels and you will be returned to the normal Freeview-hobbled functionality.
|