In the previous issue of PlayStation 3 forever we spoke about how the PlayStation 3 was extremely ambitious when it came to home entertainment. The system very much wanted to be your single home for gaming, movies, music and with this new device TV too.
PlayTV was a digital tuner which turned your PlayStation 3 into a PVR (Personal Video Recorder). The device connects to the console through the USB port and then connects up to a normal TV aerial with the appropriate lead and then you can schedule programs to be recorded onto your PlayStation 3’s hard drive although if you had an early 40 or 60gb machine with lots of games, you would probably find yourself running out of space even quicker as recordings were large.
The box also came with a disc which installed the relevant software and gave you a guide as to how to use it. Also included in the box was a sticker overlay you could put onto your PlayStation 3 Blu Ray remote control, as this control also functioned for navigating the TV guide and other normal TV functions.
To add even more functionality, if you had a PSP you could set programs to record from your PSP and even download and transfer recordings to your PSP to watch outside of the home at your convenience.
The device was extremely simple but clever and worked very well. It could even bring your console out of standby to record a show and put it back into standby when it was done.
Now I am sure many of you are thinking “How have I never heard of such a thing?” Well this device only came out in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
This device was fantastic for me back when it came out. I was certainly the first of my family and friends who had the capacity to record TV and it opened up so much more TV for me. However looking back I do worry it contributed to the downfall of my first PlayStation 3. It was already heavily being used for games and movies and now it was turning itself on and off recording TV shows all day. This cannot have been good for its hard drive. The device still works today but I cannot see why you would really need it any more. It is definitely a relic of its era.
