A war is brewing. The war for your television viewing habits.
It started with TiVo. Channel 7 wants to take over your lounge room with a decent PVR, full of cool functions like SeasonPass and IP Video. Then Foxtel decided to crank it up a notch with the iQ2 – adding HD to their already impressive digital box. The other day, Sony decided to join the fray by announcing the PlayTV add-on for the PS3, turning your console into a PVR.
So many warriors. Such a large battle looming. And on the side, slightly out of sight but no less a threat to the other champions, is IceTV.
Before the battle begins, they’ve launched their first wave of attacks – adding functionality to their EPG service to give and device running their software even more features. The biggest of which is IceTV Recommendations.
There’s been a few rumblings recently about the PlayTV’s European launch, but at a briefing today in Sydney, Sony announced that Australia will be getting the PlayTV in the fourth quarter this year, for less than $200, although official pricing and release dates are still to be confirmed.
They also stated that we’ll be seeing it roughly a month after the Europe market gets it. So if the latest Amazon listing of October 31 in the UK is correct, that means the hottest gaming peripheral for Christmas this year could actually be a PVR attachment for the PS3.
For the first time in a long time, we want to grab Sony and kiss them square on the lips. Because PlayTV, the PlayStation 3′s DVR/PVR (that’s not coming to the States yet), will record television to MPEG2 files that can be easily copied off the system to any storage medium you’d like. That’s right, no DRM.
Even though the PlayTV PVR for the PS3 was announced for Europe in the middle of ’07, they still haven’t managed to release it yet (target date was early 2008). The BBC managed to get a hands-on video look at the device over at Sony’s UK offices and it actually looks pretty great.
newVideoPlayer("PlayTV_gawker.flv", 475, 376); While filming this walkthrough of Sony’s new DVR on the PS3 (with content streamed to the PSP), I mouthed to another writer, “This is hot shit!”
And I meant it. Especially regarding the part that looks like Apple’s Front Row. [Kotaku]
