I did more research on whether PlayTV would suit my needs, and it looks like there are a couple stumbling blocks:
- PlayTV only records to the internal HDD. Given that it doesn’t compress the files, and will be sharing the drive with game saves and installs, I can see this filling up very quickly.
- One can copy files from the HDD to an external USB drive, but there are extreme limitations. The PS3 only understands external drives in FAT32 format. This has a maximum file size of 4GB. Normally, this is fine, but under HDTV, you can squeeze maybe 30 minutes of TV. Forget longer shows or movies.
- No ability to stream back from the PS3 to devices on the network other than the PSP.
This is sufficient dealbreaker for me, so I’m going back to building my own PVR. So far, I’ve built up an pretty impressive machine which will cost around $600. I still haven’t added in the tuner or remote control, but still not a bad deal.
I’m also mucking around with MythBuntu in a VM to see what it’s like (lack of tuner notwithstanding).
5 replies on “No play with PlayTV”
Have you considered eyeTV? (http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/products/tuner/diversity08/product1.en.html) This is the one I have and the only problem I have wiht is is that the indoor areal doesn’t always pick up channel 7 – d, hd or 2. Every other channel is fine.
I originally recorded Being Human with it and the exported to DV from which I then used idvd to burn. Not HD but abc2 is not hd. It exports to many different formats but most come out not quite as nice as when viewed with eyeTV.
I have. If it were only for me, then I would almost certainly go for the eyeTV or something similar. What I’m currently after is something to go with that big TV in the living room, so pairing with my laptop isn’t so good. If P didn’t care about TV, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Still, if there are linux drivers for eyeTV then I could buy one for myself now, ahead of the rest of the machine… time for more research!
On further reflection, I think that my next course of action will be this:
Focus on video playback from centralised repository of video files. Currently videos are spread over a number of USB HDDs, not to mention a bunch of DVD backups I found recently. If I can get them on a NAS (with WiFi preferably), then I can organise them properly. If the NAS has DLNA features, then the XBox can play the files in the living room, or I can watch them on my huge monitor in the study. Or both simultaneously.
Then, if we decide that video recording is still a priority, building a separate box for that can be considered. Certainly, at this stage, P is not hassling me about it, and most of the shows I want to watch don’t air in Australia on a regular basis.
We use XBMC on an old Xbox at our house. Streaming files over SMB is incredibly easy (though the guys in the house that run Windows 7 haven’t figured out how to set up anonymous shares — Mac and XP people have it working.)
It works really well as both a video player (it can play /anything/, so long as it’s not HD), and as an audio player (again, it can play /anything/, as long as it’s not DRMed).
It’s why I’m putting together an old Desktop I inherited to put XBMC on. The house has gotten used to it, and it’s rather fancy. It doesn’t do TV recording, but we *ahrem*nocaps*ahem* download all the TV we watch.
I do have a spare XBox lying around, and it would have been ideal as a media player six months ago. But now I have an HDTV, so I want my cake and eat it 🙂
I’m thinking of speccing putting together a small form-factor desktop with a crapload of storage and decent networking and taking it from there.
.-= David´s last blog ..No play with PlayTV =-.