PlayTV - IGN Review

So, you’ve got your shiny PS3 and 60-foot mega-telly. That probably means you’ve also got some form of Freeview in your lounge/bedroom/multimedia toilet too. Let’s be honest, with a set-up like that it’s hard to imagine anyone who won’t have access to the lavish blob of pixilation we loving call standard-def digital television. Obviously then, it’s the ‘R’ aspect of Sony’s PlayTV PVR we’re all likely to be interested in. Still though, in the name of completism, here’s IGN’s final verdict on PlayTV, from practicality to implementation and everything in between.

Starting at the beginning, as is the norm, the actual PlayTV device isn’t going to win any awards for beauty. It’s a largely unlovable curved blob of cheap-feeling plastic, with a hole for your aerial cable and an LED which glows red when in use. Thankfully though, at roughly the size of large man’s fist, it’s fairly easy to tuck away, out of sight meaning it won’t tarnish the splendour of your home cinema set-up. Well, that’s not entirely true. You see, it’s powered entirely via mini-USB, plugged directly into the front of your PS3. What that means is you’re forced to have an unsightly wire trailing away to the underside of your TV cabinet which doesn’t especially impress with its untidiness.

Also handy is the ability to play games and record programmes simultaneously – a feature that worked perfectly, despite all manner of on-screen warnings, in our admittedly limited tests. However, we reckon most people are likely to be more excited by PlayTV’s Remote Play functionality. Simply, you can watch television, access your recordings and tamper with your schedules from the comfort of your PSP, provided your PS3 back at base is available. Obviously, you’ll need to hop on a wi-fi access point to get it going but - technology permitting - it works surprisingly well assuming your signal strength is up to it. Quite when and where you’d want to use the feature is a fair question but one we’re sure you can supply your own answers to.

Assuming you’ve the Blu-ray remote, PlayTV is surprisingly household friendly.

Perhaps our only real concern with PlayTV is its occasional tendency to crash when attempting to deal with low signal strengths. Although we only experienced the problem a handful of times, things got pretty nasty with several occurrences demanding a hard reset of the PS3. It’s irritating when you’re trying to watch television but obviously far more cataclysmic if it happens during a recording, particularly if you’re attempting to play a game at the same time. Hopefully, we’ll see some kind of fix when the inevitable download update arrives.