Sony’s semi-official ThreeSpeech blog has posted a video teaser of the forthcoming PlayTV add-on for the PlayStation3. The PlayTV is a DVB-T dual-tuner USB module that gives the PS3 TV tuning and recording functionality. As previously announced the PlayTV will be released first in European countries, with other DVB-T territories to follow. To be clear, DVB-T is not used in North America, we use ATSC. So the PlayTV, as announced, will not work here. However, there have been rumors of an ATSC version.
The video provides a few brief glimpses of the PlayTV UI. Looks like pretty standard fare, though I am intrigued by the thumbnail navigation of recordings. That’s something I haven’t seen before. Personally I don’t think it is as useful as titles – I’m far more likely to remember the title of something than I am a 15-second clip of the show – but it is interesting. The built-in place-shifting over the Internet to a PSP is also a nice feature.
One thing though, it seemed to be a glaring omission, but the video doesn’t mention scheduled recordings at all. They show an EPG, tuning live TV, and mention recording what you’re watching now – but not a word on setting up scheduled recordings. There’s also the question of the PS3 recording if it is doing something else – like gaming or playing a BD/DVD. I’d suspect the answer there is no, since PlayTV is utilizing the PS3′s CPU.
Picked up from PVR Wire @ TV Squad who noticed it at TG Daily.
