YouTube Coming To the PS3 and Wii

Clara writes "The YouTube blog has announced that YouTube is on its way to the PlayStation 3 and Wii. From the article: 'Have you ever wanted to just sit on your couch and watch YouTube on your TV? Well, now that's possible via YouTube for Television, initially available through the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii game consoles at www.youtube.com/tv. Currently in beta, the TV Website offers a dynamic, lean-back, 10-foot television viewing experience.' No YouTube for Xbox, however (Google must simply not have gotten around to Microsoft yet)."

Am I missing something?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can already watch youtube on those systems...

PS3

[corychristison]

You can already use YouTube on PS3 via the web browser. It works fine.

So are they just slapping in a new theme?

Re:Who cares about You Tube

[artor3]

PlayOn [themediamall.com] let's you watch Hulu, along with Netflix, CBS, CNN, Youtube, and ESPN on your PS3, Xbox 360 or some set-top boxes. It doesn't support the Wii yet, though they are working on that. And it only costs a one-time charge of $30. I've saved a fortune by dropping cable and just using PlayOn+Hulu and Netflix.

Re:PS3

[retyurecvb]

Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Internet Channel/1.0; en)
or
Mozilla/ 5.0 (PLAYSTATION 3; 1.00)
Pretty sure neither supports HQ or HD videos yet, the only difference I've noticed is that the former is white and more Wii-ish in design, and the latter is black and more PS3-ish in design. Still pretty cool, though.

Re:Am I missing something?

[retyurecvb]

On the Wii it stutters a tad and runs at a poor framerate, which is unfortunate. Would be better if they released a Youtube channel that works without Flash and the Opera browser running, but I don't see that happening any time soon unless the homebrew community cooks something up. I recall there being a port of mplayer to the Wii that supports Youtube streaming which ran perfectly, but it was far from user-friendly. IIRC, you had to copy/paste the URLs into a text file via your PC, so no simple TV-style video surfing.

Neat, but not much to write home about

[WWWWolf]

For those who don't want to read the article, just head to http://www.youtube.com/tv [youtube.com] on the appropriate console browser.

This is a slight disappointment. It's nice to have a new TV-friendly interface, but it's a little bit stretch to say "Youtube is coming to consoles". You still need the web browser, and the Internet Channel on Wii isn't free. I was expecting a separate free app that was optimised for Wii (or PS3); that would have been more efficient and probably more portable, as paradoxical as it may seem...

Re:Internet Channel isn't free?

[Nivoset]

its 500 points now, i would have had free one, but my wii was stolen

Re:Internet Channel isn't free?

[adamofgreyskull]

As someone else has pointed out and what you're fumbling at: When the "beta" was released a couple of weeks after the release of Wii (in the UK at least), it was free. Subsequent updates to the Internet Channel have all been free for me for the past 2 years or so. Now I believe it costs 500 points to new users. Wikipedia confirms:

The Internet Channel is a version of the Opera 9 web browser for use on the Wii by Opera Software and Nintendo.[1] On December 22, 2006, a free beta version (promoted as a "trial version") of the browser was released.[2] The final version of the browser became available on April 11, 2007 and was free to download until the last day of June; the browser now costs 500 Wii Points.
Internet Channel @ Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]