SBS On Demand for PS3 Australia – fantastic stuff

I noticed on the weekend that I could have SBS Catch Up TV on our Sony PlayStation 3 (do you call it PS3?). To get the little app just turn your PlayStation on, go to the TV/Video Services section and under the rainbow-coloured My Channels icon you’ll find a small SBS On Demand application ready to download.

Once the app’s been downloaded, you’ll have access to a pretty well sorted version of the SBS On Demand website from the TV/Video Services menu and it looks to have a really good range of videos to watch. Video quality is not bad about the same as the ABC iView one.

So now us Australian PS3 owners have the fantastic ABC iView, the great SBS On Demand and the really, really poor Plus7 catch up TV channels.

Geez, the Seven networks Plus7 is so poor, I don’t bother looking. The range of shows is so small and so old it isn’t worth the effort. Last time I looked , I went to play a Get Smart TV episode – it isn’t even the original ‘60s series but the really bad ‘80s one. They should just shut it down or offer a lot more as it is I am sure no one even looks at it.

Sony Australia PS3 3.73 update

Sony has released a new firmware update for the Australian PS3 . You can get it via wi-fi on your PS3 and click System Update, that is the easy way or you can download it from http://au.playstation.com/ps3/support/system-software/detail/item420189/Update-features-%28ver-3-73%29/

When searching for what the update offered I find it strange that people ask on Yahoo Answers questions like

PS3 3.73 Firmware free download?? where can i download it?

All they need to do is go to the Sony PS3 site, I am sure they have done it before.

Anyway the update is not mandatory and the only thing it mentions is – Playback quality during use of some PlayStation 3 format software has been improved. The update takes less than 5 minutes so not a long time to do it.

And on some systems the firmware 3.73 also turns your PS3 white, so only proceed if you don’t want your Black PS3 changing colour.

PS3 update 3.70 for Australia – ABC iView problems

Well today I turn on the PS3 to watch a little ABC on iView and it pops up that there was a system update downloaded and ready to install. I go to install it – weary that an update might not be an actual improvement – and the agreement mentions that the TV tab will be changed to TV/Video Services.

Well, that seemed to be OK to me – maybe we will have a little more than ABC iView (a fantastic TV service – not just catch up TV but some shows are on iView before live TV), Seven Plus (which is really poor so I never use it) and Mubi (arty movies you need to pay for) . I installed the system update and it then auto-rebooted.

Now to check the cool new TV/Video Services. – what!!! nothing is there – iView on the PS3 is gone – iView is missing. Now I am cranky. The item I use most on the PS3 is not there. reboot, still not there. Start a game up and close it down then magically the new TV/Video Services is there!!!

Australian PS3 now has Plus7 TV channels

Our family has a slimline Ps3. I don’t play games much on it but my son does – what I mostly use it for is watching videos that are on the external USB hard drive (it’s great that you can plug in any old USB drive), watch videos streamed from my laptop (it sees it as a media centre or via Vuze),  and watch catch-up TV with the great ABC iView PS3 application. The Ps3 and iView team up nicely and it’s great to be able to watch a whole range of TV shows when I want to. It is simple to use and works well – not like the god awful Vidzone application.

One thing I would added would be more catch-up TV channels – I know I can always go to them via the internet browser in the PS3 but that is too awkward – I want a nice neat app like iView.

Well yesterday I noticed that in the TV tab under the iView logo was Plus7 – the catch-up TV channel from channel7 and yahoo. Excellent, one more channel to choose, although I would rather the Ten network if I could choose one. I clicked it and it seemed to work well using it’s menu. I did notice that it had only 18 videos in total and nearly all were shows that really failed in the ratings (like the magician show), so not really catch-up TV but showing mainly TV shows that are not good enough for prime time Seven. Some of their 7Two shows would be good – 007, the UK mystery shows and home shows. A pretty poor effort and I don’t really expect much from the seven network as they are the ones trying to push Freeview (which has in it’s specs all types of things to restrict viewing and force advertising – no skipping ads). And they were the ones that tampered with a car crash site to make the photos for the news better looking.

I clicked on one of shows and it just waited and waited until I left, did  not work. Later in the day I tried again and I notice the layout was a little different, it still would not play any shows though. So I left it as a bad joke thinking the 7 network still needs to fix it at their end – probably to figure how they can add 15 minutes of adverts into every 30 minute show (because I know it will be that bad).