So, yet again, I must express my love for everything Playstation. Several options for streaming video and televisions shows have started to emerge. Sony’s integration with third party, VidZone [N4G Trailer, Gizmodo article] is on its way as well with music video streaming. Then there’s the Playstation Store and any number of applications and hardware on the way. What’s not to love?
Recently, I downloaded the public beta of PlayOn. With this installed on your PC, you can access any number of shows from CBS, ESPN, CNN, Hulu, YouTube, and in the works, content from Netflix. You can purchase the beta for $30, but for now, I’d hold out to see if they add Netflix. The trial lasts for 60 days. My guess is if enough people catch on, they’ll have Netflix up and running before the next two months is over…especially with everyone expressing the same thoughts in blogs and comment threads. Very cool though. Only thing I’m thinking is putting together or getting a cheap PC to stream from so I can use my laptop while watching content. The stream gets a little jumpy when I run too much else while PlayOn is running. Other than that, it’s pretty cool.
NOTE: At first, the beta kept giving me an error that the files couldn’t be found, etc. etc. For anyone who might run into that problem, they sent me a link to a fixed beta and now it works just fine. It seems to only happen on certain machines.
When I was reading blogs listing PlayOn, many comments suggested getting TVersity, a free app that streams conent. It’s pretty useful, but unlike PlayOn’s Hulu streams which feature full-length episodes, TVersity, as far as I can tell, pretty much only pics up clips of episodes. Basically, you can see the same sorts of stuff that you can get on Miro and such…podcasts, RSS video feeds, miniclips, YouTube clips, etc.
What else…all my songs, videos, photos, etc. are backed up on an external drive which show up nicely in the PS3′s XMB. Now, I can view videos from the drive on our TV. I have a Mac so I hadn’t bothered to look for media hub type solutions, but with NullRiver’s MediaLink I can easily see my iTunes playlists instead of having to download my songs from the external drive and then go about ordering songs into playlists. Doing that will all my music would fill up the PS3′s whole drive in no time. Instead, with MediaLink, I can easily see and play all of my playlists without having to copy the media. Same goes for photos and iPhoto.
Finally for now, there’s the beautiful looking PlayStation Network Store. Easily to navigate. My only qualm with the store is that not all of the content has previews. At least, for the most part, people post videos of most games on YouTube somewhere. I’ve downloaded several of the PSClassics (PSP/PS3), demos, themes, videos, and PS3 games. They all work seemlessly. And with my PSP and Remote Play, I can view most content from anywhere I have a wireless signal.
PlayStation = Beautiful Hardware. Simple as that.
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