UPDATE 6AM Wednesday: Last night, Sony came through with all the answers to NBR's questions about its Play TV, a $199 add-on, due November 25, that turns a PlayStation3 into a digital TV recorder The two-day gap reflects the fact that Sony CE ma
UPDATE 6AM Wednesday: Last night, Sony came through with all the answers to NBR's questions about its Play TV, a $199 add-on, due November 25, that turns a PlayStation3 into a digital TV recorder The two-day gap reflects the fact that Sony CE managing director David Hine has been in London rather than foot-dragging. Still, some of it's pretty ugly:
1) Does Play TV support Freeview HD? PASS Yes it does. Play TV doesn't support Freeview's standard definition satellite service, which has wider reach, but nor does any other Freeview HD player (see Tuesday update).
2) Does it support Prime TV's electronic programming guide (EPG)? FAIL Play TV only show's what Sony calls "now and what's next" (the next show on) for Prime. MORE FAIL: Worse, Play TV will only display "now and what's next" listings for MediaWorks' TV3 and C4 - that is, the current show, plus the name of the show that immediately follows.
For TV One and TV2, you get nine days' of listings, for Maori TV you get 10.
I've got a query in with TV3/C4 owner Mediaworks, but whatever the official explanation, it seems pretty obvious to me what's happened here: Mediaworks is getting its own back for Sony pushing TVNZ On Demand broadband content through the PS3.
Sony said it's still easy to record Prime and TV shows manually on Play TV.
Wrong answer. Digital TV recorders are all about one-click ease-of-use - with little details like the name of the show included. Like TiVo buyers, Play TV purchasers are going to be shocked at the gaps in onscreen listings. With TiVo, I find it a real hassle to work out which shows occupy which un-named block in the listings, then to record (which can only be done on the hour, not the half hour). Yuk.
Lack of Prime listings has hurt TiVo sales, badly, and Hybrid TV is wrong to brush off their exclusion (apart from one unscripted outburst).
Sony is right that it's reliant on each TV network to supply onscreen listings (EPGs).
Sky TV is trying to protect it's MySky HDi recorder (although that hasn't stopped some Freeview recorders, like Magic TV - more of which below - gaining a full EPG).
But Mediaworks supports all other Freeview recorders, and is clearly just out to punish Sony.
That's childish on Mediaworks' part.
But Sony's a big company. It's got to show some more commercial lobbying smarts or, if that fails, send a crew to camp outside the Broadcasting Minister's office.
Meantime, Sony said it was still talking to the networks and hoped to secure a full EPG for Play TV.
The company said "We plan to communicate the Play TV’s EPG availability on all consumer communications." Which would be a step-up on Telecom's evasive TiVo marketing (a Telecom senior manager - who did not use TiVo himself, told me he understood it was easy to record Prime shows - think test matches, Top Gear, Dr Who etc etc - despite the lack of onscreen listings. Wake up. It's not).
3. Is there series link? FAIL No. MySky HDi, TiVo and in fact every other digital TV recorder I'm aware of, lets you record every episode in a series by clicking on its title with your remote. Series link is one of the conveniences for which digital recorders, as a species, are justly famous.
Play TV does let you record a series (as I phrased it below), but only though a manual process.
4. Does Play TV support HD recording? PASS Yes. (I know, seems like a dumb question, but Sony's initial material did not say, and UK buyers complained that an earlier version of Play TV did not.) Like most Freeview HD recorders, Sony lets you add a 750GB or 1TB hard drive for extra storage.
5. Will Play TV let let you view content on other Sony devices? PASS Yes. Sony says Play TV "PlayStation3's Remote Play means that you can access content stored on your PS3. You can be at work or around the world and through Remote play (using PSP, some Sony Vaio laptops and Sony Ericsson's AINO) you will be able to watch live TV, watch something you're recorded or, if you'd forgotten, you can even programme PlayTV to record." A nice touch, and an edge on Sky TV's MySky HDi and other digital TV recorders (TiVo does let you copy content to a PC).
6. Does it support MPEG-2 or MPEG-4? PASS Play TV supports both, which is a requirement Freeview places on any company that makes a hardware recorder compatible with its platform.
7. Does it support remote recording? FAIL You can record remotely via selected Sony devices (see answer to question five; personally, I could be unimpressed to discover I owned the "wrong" Vaio). But that doesn't hold a candle to MySky and TiVo, that let you remotely record via any PC (or any device) with web access; TiVo also boasts an iPhone app.
Phew. That was all too hard. Somewhere, John Fellet is chuckling over his breakfast.
My guess is that Sony took so long to launch Play TV because there was internal debate about whether it was worth releasing with the aforementioned limitations.
They came to the wrong conclusion.
UPDATE: 11.20am Wednesday: Still waiting for answers from Sony. Just talk among yourselves readers (oh, I see you already are; scroll down for Comments).
UPDATE 12.46pm Tuesday: Sony's point man on the Play TV is in London, but answers are promised shortly. The only thing I've learnt for sure since this morning are that the twin tuners are for Freeview's terrestrial high definition (HD) service; it can't receive the Freeview's satellite-born SD (standard definition digital service.
Freeview GM Sam Irvine comments: "The government announced they were supporting the extension of that network from 75% of the population to 87% by the end of 2011.
"So as long as that goes ahead there will be most of the country will be able to get Freeview|HD broadcasts using Freeview|HD receivers such as PlayTV.
"You can’t use a DTT (Freeview|HD) receiver to get DTH (Freeview satellite) digital TV."
It's been a long, long time coming (your corresponded first had it demo'd at Sony's Auckland office in 2008), but Sony Play TV finally has a release date: November 25.
Priced at $199, the Play TV (the little widget to the left of the PlayStation3 in the pic above) lets you record Freeview TV - as such, it will go up against the likes of TiVo (now $449, or $360 for Telecom customers, down from its original $920) and Magic TV ($699).
Alternatively, you can get a Play TV free if you buy the new PlayStation3 which comes with a super-sized 320GB hard drive (and the word from overseas reviewers is that the "old" 40GB or 120GB drive starts to look very small very fast with every hour of recording chewing up around 1.5GB).
(TiVo's hard drive is 320GB; Magic TV's 500GB.)
As with other Freeview recorders, there are no monthly ongoing charges.
Play TV has two tuners, meaning you can watch one channel while recording another.
Like other makers of digital TV recorders, Sony will be looking to ride the change over from analogue TV broadcasts (now due by the end of 2013), which will require every household to be either on Freeview or Sky TV.
Rounding out the PS3
Sony’s spin is that Play TV rounds out the PlayStation3’s capabilities nicely. It can already play Blu-ray movies, and earlier this year it gained the ability to stream TVNZ On Demand content to your TV screen.
Such-all-in-one convenience holds appeal at a time when many TV cabinets are groaning under a half-dozen set-top boxes, consoles and gateways.
And overseas reviewers have praised Play TV for being easy to set up with a "Sony slick" interface.
Yet they also pinged it for feature limitations. A minimalist press release from Sony NZ doesn't give much away, bar that Play TV has a 13-day electronic programming guide.
My worries, pending further info from Sony NZ, or constructively phrased in-put from friendly bloggers and readers:
1) Does it support Freeview HD? That is the terrestrial transmitter version of Freeview, which offers a better picture than the standard definition (SD) digital satellite version of the service?
2) Does it support Prime TV's electronic programming guide (EPG)? Telecom's failure to reveal, up-front, that TiVo doesn't support Prime's EPG is borderline dishonest.
The closest it gets is a mention on Telecom's site that TiVo's EPG is "available for most Freeview|HD free-to-air channels."
Certainly, the lack of Prime TV EPG - Maori TV is also missing - means no one-click recording of Prime shows (think free-to-air All Black games and delayed coverage, Top Gear, Dr Who etc) must surprise and enrage some buyers. And the manual process is painful, because you can only record in one-hour blocks - there's no on-the-half-hour option - and recordings are un-named.
I had to explain this to a senior Telecom manager, who obviously did not use TiVo himself.
Grr.
Anyway. I hope Play TV does support Prime TV.
NBR was able to raise Freeview boss Sam Irvine over the weekend, who said it was a question for Sony.
He did offer the cryptic: "It does raise an interesting question if Prime are the only ones not available on both TiVo and PlayTV." (Maybe the question is: Can Prime's owner, Sky TV, do what ever it likes to kneecap any competitor to MySky HDi - soon to be boosted by "iSky" broadband content).
The no-brand Magic TV does feature Prime's EPG, incidentally.
3. Can you record a series? Freeview-style services differ from country to country, but UK and Australian reviewers have criticised Play TV for not supporting "series link" or the ability to record every episode of a programme with one click (a pretty standard feature on other recorders, including TiVo, Magic TV and MySky HDi). What's the NZ situation?
4. Will it support full high definition recording? I'm assuming so, although there's no confirmation in the first press material.
5. Will it let let you view content on other Sony devices? In Aussie and elsewhere, you can watch Play TV recordings on a PSP or certain high-end Sony-Ericsson phones. Local licensing deals will factor in here, but hopefully it will be the case (especially given TiVo lets you transfer content to a PC - one of it killer apps).
6. Does it support MPEG-2 or MPEG-4? One for the geek boys - and regulators, as we head to the digital TV changeover, and they try to avoid a mish-mash of standards. Online forums suggest the latter.
7. Does it support remote recording? As a free-to-air punter, I've hopped back and fourth a couple of times, torn between Magic TV (with its support for Prime and Maori TV listings), and TV, with its feature edge - most keenly, for me, the way you can set recordings on your TiVo at home via a TiVo website, or an iPhone app. It's a really useful feature (and an edge over Sky) and I'm curious to know if Play TV can match it.
Check back later today, and hopefully I'll have some answers.
