Sony’s strategy for this gen is pretty obvious. Not content with just having a great games console, they want the Playstation 3 to be your tv’s ultimate companion. The adoption of multiple popular video formats, a plethora of AV options to keep audiphiles happy, a passable web browser and a quite intuitive music player, have all combined to push the PS3 into the realm of media pc’s. The end of the format war and Blu-Ray’s adoption as the hi-def format means the PS3 is one of the cheapest and quite possibly best blu ray devices available at the moment. Even more so with the recent announcement of BD Live support coming in the PS3’s next firmware update, as alot of older blu-ray players (circa £500) are now obsolete.

For the UK market one of the more exciting future add-ons is Play TV: Sony’s PVR hardware which will combine with a firmware upgrade of some kind, to give you the ability to pause, rewind and record freeview television in Hi-Def. The UK television market isnt as saturated as the US, also more of our television signals are sent through the air as opposed to cable connections, which means the market is open to advances in technology and UI.

You can currently buy freeview PVR’s, for about £169, which will get you an 80gb hard disk and for a bit more cash some even offer HD upscaling, however their performance is questionable seeing as the average freeview signal is broadcast at 2mbs which simply isnt enough for a decent picture and this wont be improving until the digital switchover in 2012 when more of the spectrum becomes available. Sky+ comes with an 160gb hard disk, 80gb of which is reserved fo the Anytime tv service. The fact that the PS3 has the potential to be upgraded as much as the tech will allow you and a plehtora of USB ports for external drives, means you have almost limitless potential for saving old shows.

The general problem with these PVR’s is that the UI and underlying software are almost always horrible to use. This is due to the fact that the hardware makers choose their software for functionality (although they mostly lack that aswell). Sony’s strength is their UI and the software architecture. Another potential caveat is that most newer tv’s come with a freeview tuner of some kind and internal upscaling to match the screens resolution. But these are far from perfect.

The major competition PlayTV will have will come from Sky+ and Virgin Media’s offerings and if your purely interested in the programming then it’s worth paying the subscription for the variety of programs and channels you get. However if you simply wish to replace your ageing VCR with something digital then Play TV would be the answer.

Due to copy protection you cannot pull recorded digital content from your Sky+ (and most freeview PVRs) onto your computer for consumption elsewhere. Seeing as most people own an iPod or a PSP or some other kind of portable media player, this is a serious barrier. You can buy TV tuners for your P, with varying degrees of success, but then it becomes difficult to watch that programming on your television unless you have a HTPC hooked up to it. Sony’s belief in interoprability between the PS3 and PSP and the ability to view all of your recorded shows over the internet using remote play is a huge boon for their offering. Play TV will also offer the ability to copy shows to a memory card/stick and allow you to copy them to your pc in a non-proprietry format.

If Sony can market it right, and provide an easy to use system, then Play TV could be a fantastic addition to your home theatre. However it could also become just another gimmicky peripheral. It also remains to be seen how the recording of shows will effect gaming as we dont know if the two can be accomplished at the same time.

Any idea of a definite release date has disapeared from online retailers, who previously had March 29th listed.

Play TV Advert, Play TV on Play.com.