PlayTV info

[Red Herring]

In the UK the DVB-T service branded as Freeview broadcasts in MPEG-2 so I guess they are keeping it in it's native format. I hope they provide some option to re-encode into H.264/MP4 as MPEG-2 would start to eat into the HD space.

Also in Ireland for instance there is a trial run ongoing of HD DVB-T, the SD service is in MPEG-2 but the HD service is H.264 hopefully the PlayTV supports H.264 broadcasts as well otherwise HD broadcasts in other countries might not be viewable.

 

[Zassk]

This seems like it would be a killer feature in the U.S. and potentially swing the tide in that market. What would be the barrier to introducing it there?

 

[JPT]

In Norway they use H.264 for DVB-T even for SD, not sure if there are any HD transmissions yet.

 

[Arwin]

Big Preview:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93867

 

[Carl B]

Alas, it'd be nice to have such an option in the US.

 

[slider]

Nice preview and very positve. It helps that I'm in the UK (haha, revenge for our poor relation PSN updates!).

Couple of concerns: integration with an existing Sky subscription and what I'd really, really like is recording to an external HDD by default.

Hmm. This link sort of alludes to that latter point...

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93416

 

[Shifty Geezer]

At the moment the device is IMO irrelevant until they mention price. The only suggested price so far as ~£100, which has been mildly resisted but the moment you're asking that much, your customers would generally be better off getting a true PVR for the job. Only if they keep the price low like a USB adaptor for PC would the system be competitive. Without a price, looking up all the features is pointless. Unless you're big into Remote Play a separate box does the same thing with much more capacity and no impact on the rest of the console, so given a choice between £100 PlayTV and £100 PVR, the latter is by far the better option.

 

[pcchen]

It would be nice to see that in Taiwan, too. Taiwan uses DVB-T and now broadcasts SD programs in MPEG-2. An experimental H.264 HD service is underway. Since almost all TV in Taiwan only supports MPEG-2 (at least the older ones) we'll need a set-top box to view HD shows, and PlayTV looks like a nice candidate.

 

[Nesh]

At the moment the device is IMO irrelevant until they mention price. The only suggested price so far as ~£100, which has been mildly resisted but the moment you're asking that much, your customers would generally be better off getting a true PVR for the job. Only if they keep the price low like a USB adaptor for PC would the system be competitive. Without a price, looking up all the features is pointless. Unless you're big into Remote Play a separate box does the same thing with much more capacity and no impact on the rest of the console, so given a choice between £100 PlayTV and £100 PVR, the latter is by far the better option.

Shouldnt it be cheaper though since a large portion of the components exist in the console, unlike PVRs?

I hope it will be cheaper though because as you said it wouldnt make sense if its just as expensive as a standalone PVR

 

[slider]

At the moment the device is IMO irrelevant until they mention price. The only suggested price so far as ~£100, which has been mildly resisted but the moment you're asking that much, your customers would generally be better off getting a true PVR for the job. Only if they keep the price low like a USB adaptor for PC would the system be competitive. Without a price, looking up all the features is pointless. Unless you're big into Remote Play a separate box does the same thing with much more capacity and no impact on the rest of the console, so given a choice between £100 PlayTV and £100 PVR, the latter is by far the better option.

Yeah, point absolutely taken. In the link that Arwin posted it does mention Sony distancing themselves from that rumoured (placeholder?) price of £100...

"We have not confirmed the price and release date of PlayTV to anyone, and that includes retailers," a Sony spokesperson told Eurogamer.

For me the appeal would be I don't have a solution in place already and this complements what I do have. Unfortunately I don't have the room for some of the bigger systems already out there (although TBH I haven't looked into it that closely).

And I wonder what the capability would be of the systems already out that are selling at the lowest price-point. (Yes I realise I'm talking like a complete dunder-head - making judgements without all the facts!)

But as I said I agree with you Shifty. For a mass-market product, which it essentially is, the price has to be right. I just hope they don't go for the PS3 approach of feature rich with a high price point.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shouldnt it be cheaper though since a large portion of the components exist in the console, unlike PVRs?

I hope it will be cheaper though because as you said it wouldnt make sense if its just as expensive as a standalone PVR

Yes, it should be! Like a USB tuner where the hardware is in the PC, the bulk of the hardware is already in the PS3 and all it needs is a tuner providing a video signal. The only price so far though was a £99 listing on Play (notoriously inaccurate!) and a total unwillingness of Sony to discuss prices. They've given no idea of a price-point. If it's cheap/affordable and feature rich, they ought to be making a song and dance about it and drumming up more multifunction interest in their platform, so it's odd that their sitting on this tech in a coy fashion.

 

[Gradthrawn]

Yes, it should be! Like a USB tuner where the hardware is in the PC, the bulk of the hardware is already in the PS3 and all it needs is a tuner providing a video signal.

You can't ignore the software portion of cost. Yes, the hardware may already be there, but the software isn't.

If it's cheap/affordable and feature rich, they ought to be making a song and dance about it and drumming up more multifunction interest in their platform, so it's odd that their sitting on this tech in a coy fashion.

I wouldn't be too surprised if their interest in the project isn't more experimental, to see how things go, the market reacts, and consumers use it. Heck, that may have been the only way the project was cleared and funded by the higher ups.

 

[jonabbey]

What's the point of a DVR that can't record anything while you're playing games?

I just don't see it.

 

[taucias]

The PSP remote play TV stuff is pretty nice. The more you buy, the more it all fits together. I can see the tactic and I quite like it ultimately.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What's the point of a DVR that can't record anything while you're playing games? I just don't see it.

We don't know whether it can or can't yet. If it only uses the OS-SPE, perhaps you can.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Would in game XMB and PlayTV recording be possible at the same time, if recording used the OS SPE?

 

[bobthebub]

We don't know whether it can or can't yet. If it only uses the OS-SPE, perhaps you can.

From the Eurogamer preview that Arwin linked

So we're praying as hard as Sony must be that those testers in Liverpool - mucking around in Resistance while their PS3's record hour after endless hour of Fern and Phil - don't find any faults with gameplay during recording. If this last piece falls into place - and if the price is right - PlayTV is looking very tempting indeed

I had assumed that it would not be possible to play while recording until I read this and they are right it will be the key factor that decides whether or not the device is viable for many people.

I am pretty tempted even although I already have a PVR - the ability to copy recorded programs off it will be very handy and might let me retire my Windows MCE

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Would in game XMB and PlayTV recording be possible at the same time, if recording used the OS SPE?

In game XMB shouldn't demand much. In game recording would demand extremely little. You just have to take the Mpeg2 stream from the tuner hardware and chuck it on disk with no processing required. The impact on games will come from interference with the HDD. It should be a small effect though, as these aren't high-bandwidth video files. You'd just have an HDD interrupt every once in a while to write cached data. They could actually code a 'smart engine' that avoided writing to the cache unless the HDD was free, reducing interrupts on data loads from HDD.

 

[DVFtaxman]

Anyone got any idea how much space HD mpeg2 recordings take up? I'm assuming that this doesn't come with a replacement HDD, so you'd be forced to factor in the cost of that on top.........that seperate PVR looks more and more appealing! I bought a great TVonics 160gb twin tuner PVR a few weeks back for £79 (btw, probably not too well known, but TVonics are Sony's old UK design & tech team).

 

[Mmmkay]

It's not something that's relevant to PlayTV. Even amongst the UK HD trials, there were no MPEG2 streams, everything was H.264. There simply isn't the bandwidth for it. I'm not aware of any other countries doing over-the-air HD content in MPEG2 but I'm willing to be corrected on that one. PlayTV will just record the native programme streams as they're sent over the air, which will be MPEG2* for SD and H.264 for the eventual HD content. Just as a ballpark (and they're one of the better quality streams out there) BBC1 broadcasts at ~5Mbps and their BBC HD proposal spoke of 12-15Mbps for DTT.


*Some European countries broadcast SD content in H.264, usually because they adopted DVB later in the game than countries like the UK where it would have been prohibitively expensive to set up a H.264 capable infrastructure at the time it launched.