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PS3 to Act as Digital Video Recorder? 42

Posted by Zonk from the could-be dept.
PS3 Evolution writes "Ars Technica has some new info regarding the PS3 and PSP Connectivity, and explores claims that the console will be a Digital Video Recorder." From the article: "An 'accessory' for the PSP is going to be a device that can connect to the PS3 for interactive gaming, video sharing, and probably music synchronization. Think about it: you're Sony, and you have the PSP. The device is in the same price league as the iPod (although storage is more expensive), and the screen is better. You're also a content owner with fingers in movies, music, and television. Sony's efforts to-date with UMD offerings are only the opening salvos for the company. How do you go after iPod-like success? Like the iPod that is tethered to a computer, the PSP will be tethered to a PS3." Take with the usual recommended amount of salt.
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PS3 to Act as Digital Video Recorder? More

PS3 to Act as Digital Video Recorder?

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  • The big question is whether or not this will be able to understand the scheduling signals that my local provider (Comcast, Cox, etc.) sends to their proprietary boxes. Am I going to have to pay a monthly fee for this instead a la Tivo?

    Hmmmm, do I pick being able to swing Link's sword in my living room [1up.com] or not having to parse through my roommate's Fox & WB fodder to get to my Aqua Teen .... so many choices and they're only rumors so far! Curse you Slashdot, why must you taunt me so?

    *head explod

  • they won (Score:3, Funny)

    by pvt_medic ( 715692 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @12:26PM (#14651222)
    thats it... PS3 just won the console war going to have to get like one of these for each room (after I make a couple million to be able to afford that...)

  • LocationFree (Score:3, Informative)

    by BarryNorton ( 778694 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @12:29PM (#14651247)
    Old news - the technology's called LocationFree [sony.com], the LocationFree player was already included [playstation.com] in PSP firmware 2.5, as was already reported here [slashdot.org], with the PS3 as PVR story repeated too many times to even bother pointing you there.

  • Yes. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ibullard ( 312377 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @12:32PM (#14651268)
    It'll also play PS1 & PS2 games, act as an electronic secretary, automatically sort your socks, render the special effects in LOTR in real time and double your TV resolution. Meanwhile, if you plug in your PSP into the PS3 it'll make it play all of Nintendo's portable games as well as all of the Xbox games available. A software update late next year will allow the PS3 to play Xbox 360 at twice the speed.

    Seriously, doesn't anyone remember the hype that surrounded the PS2? How much of that was true? Sony couldn't live up to it's OWN hype, nevermind what the press and fanboys came up with.
    • Damn, so you're saying it won't sort my socks? I really needed one of those sock-sorting thingiemabobs...
  • Don't be fucking idiots and charge an arm and a leg for storage on a MULTIMEDIA/gaming device. Hello, Sony??
  • Now, after seeing that the PS3 might be able to be a PVR, I would have to say this would change my mind of whether or not to purchase a gaming console. In the past, they could play DVDs, but I have a home theater system... But this would make me definately want to purchase a PS3. Not only would it play DVDs (with my HT System, but it would record TV for me... and Time Warner wants 415 a month for that... so it pays for itself over time.

    The only question is... Will Sony make their PVR software able to u

  • Hope it has CableCard support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @12:36PM (#14651302)
    If the PS3 has a DVR, that's no doubt a great thing to many people. If you see TV over regular coax cable or have over-the-air HDTV reception, this will be great. However, there's a ton of people who have subscribers (DirectTV, Comcast, Time-Warner, Dish) where AFAIK the only way to see expanded and/or HD content is through that content provider's digital set-top box.

    The two workarounds would be to have inputs and outputs to record the content (analog) or to have a Cable Card slot. But Cable Cards usually have monthly fees attached to them about equal in price to the fees for the content provider's DVR.

    What strikes me as interesting is that Sony wants people to believe that you can happily move around movies, music, TV shows to and from your PS3 and your PSP. Yet this same company is the one that doesn't let you rip CDs that you've already bought. What Sony is not saying is that you can move your purchased content around. (See Sony's answer to iTMS [connect.com]). I can't see this being an easy, open way to move around your media. Not with Sony.

    Also, if consumers really wanted DVRs with their game machines, the PSX [wikipedia.org] would've been a huge hit that Sony would've brought to territories outside of Japan.
    • For HDTV, I wouldn't count on it. From what I've seen (.ts HDTV files on newsgroups), feeds from HDTV are _very_very_ large. Up to and over 20 GB for a full movie with high quality (I forget it it was 1080i or not for that size). Even if the PS3 has a reasonibly large hardrive (>=80GB), and even if it has a very large hardrive (>=200GB), that would still have a very large limit on how many things can be recorded. Although I'm not very familiar w/ HDTV recording technology, so I'm not sure.
      • This is offtopic but...

        a very large limit

        How do you measure limitness? That's similar to "Twice as small" and "Three times as light." How do you measure smallness or lightness? You can measure size and thus can say "Half as big," and you can measure weight and can say "A third the weight," but how does one go about measuring the other way around?

      • I have one full-length movie (about 2 hours) in HD (1920x1080). It is a bit over 11 GB. Just a stat based on my observation.
    • IIRC you could buy the PSX here. For over US$900. I think I'll pass. You can buy a PSOne, a PS2, a PS3 (when they come out) and a Tivo and still have money left over...
      • The PSX had a DVD+/-R burner for burning copies of recorded shows. Though there are a number of devices which perform such a function, the only one I know of offhand is the Humax DVD Recorder with TiVo [google.com]. At $400-$500 plus $300 for a lifetime of TiVo service plus $150 for the separate PlayStation 2 you'd buy, the Humax recorder is comparable to the cost of a PSX (¥79800-¥99800 at launch, about US$670-$840 with the current exchange rate).
    • Cable cards are often have a much lower price for the hardware rental, vs a cable box. Also the card would NOT be needed for some HD channels. The neatest HD channel in my area PBS HD is not encrypted and only requires basic cable and of course a tuner that can "see" the signal. The cards and/or cable box is only needed for pay HD channels, which are also nice, HBO HD anyone?
  • Hypocrisy or just plain ignorance?

    Left hand insists on bundling root kits, backing the *IAAs and curtailing purchasers rights wherever possible in the pursuit of profit.

    Right hand wants you to freely copy from everyone else - assuming any kind of truth to these rumours. Bear in mind we've seen thus kind of U-turn before with MP3 players.

    Either Sony are just too branched out to figure out a consistent stance on digital media and copyright or they're so old and cumbersome that they're beginning to suffer from
  • *sniff sniff* Vaporware to me. It just seems like one of those things that are said, but are never really followed through (Remember the Super-Nintendo CD system that became the PS? Anyone?).

    Sure it'd be "neat" and "handy" but at what cost? Will I be forced to pay a premium for this ability (Like the core and "ultra-mega-super-ultra-cool-badass" edition of the XBox 360) or will it be standard and come at no extra cost, if it's even made at all?

    • Re:Smells like (Score:3, Informative)

      by BarryNorton ( 778694 )
      *sniff sniff* Vaporware to me
      I'm using PSP audio streaming right now and could be using video streaming if I weren't waiting to see what the new version of the hardware, integrated with the PS3, looks like (i.e. the software client's already rolled out)...

  • Cool, but will probably eff it up! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @01:53PM (#14652120)
    To date, there is no DVR/PVR available, unless it's TIVO or some box that you must buy directly from the cable company, that is worth buying.

    Without built-in ability to access digital cable schedules and HDTV content, 3rd party DVR's are novelty items that find only limited functionality in the home. I bought a DVD-HDD DVR a few months ago and returned it, mostly because the ONLY way I could record content was to plug the video out of my Digital Cable box into the video in on the DVR, and then make sure I hit record when the television show started. There is no way to automatically schedule TV recording on 3rd party DVR boxes. The Cable companies won't allow Open cable standards to flourish, banking on proprietary cable technology to gain the extra $5-$10 a month renting boxes out generates.

    Unless Sony builds a Cable Card slot into the PS3 (and US and Canadian cable companies actually start supporting Cable Cards), the DVR capabilities of the PS3 will be a novelty item, like the DVD player support in the PS2. A few people will find it handy, but most people will find it too cumbersome to use or have an existing solution that meets their needs. Without the ability to schedule Digital Cable recordings, or access HDTV content without the blessings of the Cable companies, the PS3's DVR capabilities will be greatly diminished.

    Also, I am sure Sony will build in so much DRM protection schemes and other ways to prevent the PS3 from being an adequate DVR solution will make it suck as a DVR.

    Sony is one of the few companies that are putting Cable Card slots into their TVs, so perhaps they will build them into the PS3. But this represents more technology to implement and license meaning that the cost of the PS3 will increase because of this feature.

    That combined with the necessity of a hard drive means that the PS3 won't be cheap.

    The PS3 doesn't, and shouldn't, be an all-in-one device. Playing back video, music, and photo slideshows is alright, these features can be added without any additional cost, but I would prefer if Sony focused on gaming and leave the superfluous features out of the PS3. Keep the price low and let people buy more robust and better implemented solutions elsewhere.
    • >DVR capabilities of the PS3 will be a novelty item, like the DVD player support in the PS2

      dvd player support is NOT a novelty item - it's how i watch dvds, never had another dvd player (besides my computers).

      i read an article in past few weeks that gave percent - 60 or 70 percent - of ps2 owners use the ps2 as their primary dvd player.

      can't find the article, now... it wasn't this [interactual.com]

      anyway - point is DVD support is NOT 'novelty' - but in fact useful, and at the time of launch contributed to the reaso

    • There is no way to automatically schedule TV recording on 3rd party DVR boxes.

      Well, damn! I need to get to a doctor then, because I've been having over five years of hallucinations that my Tivo (and before that my ReplayTV) has been automatically recording TV from Dish Network all this time.

      The only thing I can't get my Tivo to record from cable/satellite is HD content. Apart from that, my "3rd party DVR" box does just fine.

  • The PS3 is sounding dangerously vaporous, and adding new vapor features doesn't help. Seriously, the conventional wisdom on this was that we'd see a Spring launch in Japan, and Fall in North America. Well, Spring is getting pretty close, and the only news in the PS3 camp is that blogging on how it's too hard to develop for and not really "next gen" gets you fired [kotaku.com].

    Whatever the PS3 ends up being, I no longer expect to see it in 2006.

  • Tonight I go to the edge and back (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @02:12PM (#14652349) Journal
    Because tonight I am setting up VLC to send my America's Army video at 320x240 over my lan to my pocket pc, which will transport back wireless controls, allowing me to export my entire AA experience to a portable device. Now I can hide in the cupboard and play AA, while imagining people are looking for me.

    What has this got to do with the story? Well, I have a PDA that runs a GBA emu, and a PC that runs lots of EMU's, and if I can export them to my PDA with .1 seconds lag, I think that would be teh fun.

    And I have a PVR in my PC. so ner. seriously, anyone ever done this?
  • I wish someone, well no, I wish I did this. I wish someone would keep track of all the Hyped-up stuff that they say about their consoles before launch. I remember how the PS2 was going to include face recognizition in all games, the broadband connector would allow it to become a media hub, blah blah blah.

    So here we are hearing it will have record capabilities. It'll revolutionize the way people use their video game consoles for the next decade. What is it? Oh. its some 3rd party pledging to port MythT
  • Let us just briefly analysis this one, shall we:
    - No confirmed hard-disk - Hard-disk is essential for the PVR functions- ok, maybe it will be sold seperately, but as it stands, we almost certainly won't get out of the box PVR.
    - Region Issues- From a technical point of view there are HUNDREDS of TV standards out there, more so if you include analogue and digital based broadcasters all over the world. Sony plans to sell the console in lots of countries- thus you have to create a compatible recording device fo
  • I teach English at a Junior High School in Japan, and when I told my students I was going to purchase a PS3 when it came out they looked at me and asked me wtf was I talking about (mind you, this was last October). I still run into a kid every now and then who doesn't know about the PS3 (can you believe that?!). So I take that reaction as a sign that Sony might just not live up to whatever BS their marketing department spouts out. And I was so looking forward to playing the new Winning Eleven 10...
  • Considering that the PS3 doesn't have any video inputs, I'd call this 100% Grade A Sony Branded bullshit.

    It is also a mini-fridge, and a toaster oven!

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