Sony recently announced the PlayTV for the Playstation 3. If you haven’t heard the PlayTV is a device that will basically turn your PS3 into a DVR. The PlayTV is going to be released in Europe in 2008. Sony’s Phil Harrison told Kotaku that PlayTV isn’t coming to the United States anytime soon because it does not have terrestrial digital television. Some cities such as San Diego have digital TV but other locations do not. But with the digital conversion happening in 2009 I expect Sony will decide to make it available in late 2008 or early 2009.
On to why I’m excited about it. It turns your PS3 into the ultimate home theater box. It is a high-def game console, a Blu-ray player, and a DVR all in one. What more could you want? Well it has two digital tuners! Hows that, oh you want more? The PlayTV will detect whether or not your TV shows HD by checking what kind of cables you have connected to your TV. If it finds out that your TV isn’t HD then it won’t record the programming in HD but will record it in SD to save space on your drive. PlayTV allows you to stream content from your PS3 to your PSP or transfer the video with a USB cable so that you can watch it on the go.
The PlayTV is really cool and even if we have to wait a year or more for it, I’m still excited.