Last night Sony’s VidZone service went live, offering PS3 owners an on demand music video channel for free. And it’s pretty sweet.
Although Sony told us in advance that the service was going live last night, it still wasn’t available when I checked at 11pm, so they must have left it to te very last minute to push it live. It’s a 23MB free download from the Playstation Store, although that small footprint belies the time it takes to setup.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the app, you need to agree to the EULA and choose whether to receive email updates on the service. Then it sets itself up, installing various components and doing God knows what else for about five minutes before you can start watching your favourite music videos.
From the homepage, navigation is a little confusing. There’s a whole heap of predetermined playlists, like the Top 10, best rock, sexiest and “star cameo” playlists. If you don’t actually want to listen to any of those, you need to press the circle button to enter the menu. There you’re given the option of searching for songs, artists or genres and creating or listening to playlists.
The search feature is probably the first area that VidZone struggles. Typing in the name of your desired artist is slo-ow. rather than using the PS3′s usual on screen keyboard, you have to manually scroll through each letter, and it’s not responsive at all. If you’re trying to type in a name with a lot of letters around the middle of the alphabet, like Bon Jovi for example, you’ll need a couple of minutes.
On the upside, the sheer number of songs and artists is impressive. It’s not just restricted to the latest music either – there are tracks from the likes of James Brown as well. And John Mayer is there too.
The videos themselves look and sound good, except for one little problem – they’re all restricted to 4:3 ratio, meaning your big ass 16:9 TV has two black bars down the sides. Even clips that are 16:9 in nature, like The Pretender by the Foo Fighters is restricted to 4:3, which means you have black bars all around the clip. Hopefully this is something Sony fixes post-haste, because not being able to view clips full screen is a huge disappointment.
As we saw from the screenshots yesterday, the ads are unobtrusive and varied, although at the moment a lot of the ads look to be directly imported from the UK, considering the pound signs everywhere. I’m sure that’s just a launch phase thing though – as the service kicks off we’ll probably see a lot more localised ads.
On the whole, VidZone is pretty impressive. It’s not something you’ll use all the time, but if you’re having a party or just want to sit around watching sexy videoclips, it’s a great solution. And if it is a precursor to a full VOD service from Sony like we hope, then you can colour me excited.
bogues
June 12, 2009 at 11:35 AM
The quality needs improving it looks rather ordinary. Surely Vidzone/PS3 can detect your line speed and adjust the bitrate acordingly?
The search function is also clumsy – using a keyboard would be better.
Report PermalinkBunman
June 15, 2009 at 10:07 PM
Concidering its free, I cant complain at all. Sure, the initial load time is a pain and the search bit is awkward but its all still brand new. Im sure they will be working on these things in future updates.
Im just glad I dont have a download limit. I can see how that can be a bit of a nightmare for some people.
Report Permalinkattila
June 12, 2009 at 11:51 AM
In the land of internet quotas (i.e. Australia) the big question is how big each of these videos is. Anybody know yet?
Good on Sony for launching something like this – hopefully they follow through and fix up the problems it has, rather than let it just sit there unloved.
Report PermalinkRoman
June 12, 2009 at 12:20 PM
I too am wondering how large the downloads are. With only 25GB per month (at a crazy expensive rate thanks to telstra and limited broadband options at my house), i’m wondering how many of this ‘on demand’ content is even going to be worth it for me…
Report PermalinkFree Bandwith???
June 12, 2009 at 1:28 PM
With more VOD content coming to PS3, when are they going to start negotiating free content delivery with ISP’s?
All these new features are great, but whats the point if 98% of people dont have the bandwith to use it.
Report PermalinkAkwai
June 12, 2009 at 2:35 PM
They need to make a deal with the ISPs to allow free downloads via PSN (similiar to iinet and Xbox live) otherwise this VOD is a waste of time for Australians.
Report PermalinkIndefiniteImplosion
June 12, 2009 at 5:44 PM
I agree with the point that this should be negotiated to be unmetered.
Report PermalinkI also am heaps annoyed by the fact it doesn’t fill the whole 16:9 on the tv when the vide is 16:9
Apart from that I found it fine. (Though admittedly didn’t try search)
Rhys Kingston
June 12, 2009 at 7:59 PM
When searching you only need to type a few letters of the artist and then press the X button. Then you can scroll through the list below – it’s much faster than typing the full name. Obviously this still isn’t perfect and a keyboard search (even the on screen keyboard) would make more sense.
Agree with the comments about picture quality and also the fullscreen issue. Other than this it looks like an awesome service!
Report Permalinkdavid martin
June 12, 2009 at 8:17 PM
used this today for about an hour and 1.2 gig later i will not be using this again anytime soon
Report PermalinkDave
June 12, 2009 at 11:21 PM
Yeah i was just thinking it was like on demand rage or video hits and then i read the heading. Its pretty sweet actually im a big fan! The UI isnt great but its way better than loading crap onto youtube or whatever. Thanks Sony.
Report PermalinkJay
June 13, 2009 at 2:10 AM
i just burnt up 7gb with about 4 hours of watchin clips…. a bit rich. BUT, they look better than all other online music stations, and there is ZERO load time for vids. overall, very impressed, but 7gb in 4 hours…. eeee. dunno.
Report PermalinkZoidii
June 13, 2009 at 10:17 AM
Why is Eric Prydz “call on me” have a caution marker ? I’m 30, not 5. I want to see T&A.
Is this censorship or what?? Very Very annoying. Back to the torrrents I guess….
Report PermalinkJB
June 13, 2009 at 12:34 PM
I’m fairly impressed with the service, but I think the App needs a bit of work.
My biggest problem with it is the fact that it will only accept input from controller 1. This means that you can’t use the BD Remote without first changing its default controller 7 to 1. Very annoying!
Report Permalinkdr_zoidberg1 (PSN)
June 13, 2009 at 9:12 PM
I think that seeing as it is free, i cannot argue.
But i agree that it needs some tweaking and the startup time is really annoying!
Good work Sony + VidZone =)
Report PermalinkMACRI
June 15, 2009 at 7:55 AM
I used it on the weekend. I’m with Optus cable, ate up most of my quota. I can’t tell you exactly how much, but I used it for about 40 min….
Report PermalinkUntil they strike up a deal with ISP’s I wont be using it again!…