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.
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.
I have just checked what I get as part of my Australian Playstation Plus subscription for October. Not mentioning the items like games and themes that you get a discount, just the free stuff as that’s all I am interested in.
I have a trial of the new Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (2.3GB)
Beta access to the multi-player version of Assassins Creed Brotherhood Multiplayer (3GB) , not sure if I will bother with that.
A PS3 full game Street Fighter 2 Turbo – HD Remix – great classic bash’em up re-done with better graphics.
Another trial PS3 game – Ferrari The Race Experience – but this trial only works for 60 minutes even if you quit the game after 1 minute and want to return later – I am not bothering to download this poor effort – give us a proper trial or don’t bother. I hope no-one downloads this and then the games company might learn to do it properly.
Two mini-games – Yeti Sports and Aero Racer. Both seem OK, I really like these mini games on the PS3 (love last months VectorTD)
A Playstation One game Kula World
A couple of Dynamic Themes, Start The Party and Halloween – they say they are exclusive for Playstion Plus members, who knows.
Four avatars, I don’t bother downloading these either.
All in all , not bad. I am sure I am getting my subscription price covered with the freebies offered this and last month. Do others think they will get $70 of entertainment a year? That’s how I see it – To go and see a movie costs around $15 plus your popcorn so $70 for hours of entertainment seems good to me.
Assassins Creed Brotherhood multiplayer beta for PS3 Australia - GoldCoaster
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light for PS3 Australia - GoldCoaster
Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix for PS3 Australia - GoldCoaster
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).
Way, way back when I was a teenager in the seventies the big thing was skateboarding. I loved it. I loved hanging out with friends who boarded as well – I guess it was a bit of a club that the oldies couldn’t understand and maybe that is what we liked even more. Actually the recent song ‘Forever Young’ by Youth Group is exactly how I remember it to be in Australia.
Fast forward to now and I doubt I could ride a skateboard any more, well not without losing my balance but my son has suddenly and I mean suddenly is interested in skateboarding and scooters. A few friends of his have them and I am sure this was a major reason why he is into boarding – back to my ’70’s club I guess. I was thinking that maybe he wants to be in the cool club but watching him with his friends he already seems to be the cool leader type.
He asked, on the weekend, to go to a skateboard park so he can skate around and learn some tricks and hang out with the cool kids. A skateboard park, gee, where is one near our house? I had no idea. A quick internet search showed a few skate parks needing only a little drive to get to and away we went.
Well, not quite away we went… first he had to have the skate shoes that needed to be just the right look. So, of course, me being the sucker took him to a few skate shops to start looking. We went to the Globe store – absolutely chock full of the latest skate and scooter gear, my son was almost drooling as we walked in. Dad, look at this cap, Dad look at this board, Dad look at these skate shoes, Dad look at this Razor Pro scooter.
My reply was pretty much something like , “Wow that’s amazing” but at the same time my brain was saying “Wow that’s expensive!!” 🙂 I guess I am showing my age because years ago I would have loved any of this gear; now when I picked up a pair of Globe thongs (flip flops in some other countries) I can’t see myself paying $60 for them when I know they probably cost $2 to make. Another thing my son loved about the Globe store was that the front was a mini skate park. So before the store opened he could practice doing his thing on his scooter and skateboard.
We ended at a Surf and Skate store looking at more shoes and he ended up finding a pair of Kustoms that he loved. Of course they were not much cheaper than the Globes but he liked them better. The next few hours was him lacing them up over and over until he got it just how he likes. One fussy boy!
Now he has the look, the skater look – the right shoes, the right cap, the right shorts, the right t-shirt – now all he needs to be able to do is ride a skateboard 🙂
(btw, I have copied this post. I wrote it at today.com but they locked my account so I am taking this back)
Just doing a little web surfing and came across the Guiness Book Of Records site. Lots to read there, some interesting, some fascinating, some just weird. Anyway , I found a bit of a weird one.
This woman is called Pikabellechu (not sure what her real name is) and she is one mad Pokemon collector. She has collected more than 8000 Pokemon memorabilia, all Pikachu, even has a Pikachu shaped VW bug – she says its an official Pokemon car – can’t see how unless she works for Nintendo. Wow, ten long years to collect all this and I would think many thousands of dollars as well. She has a bumber sticker in one photo saying “Pokemon Put Me in the Poorhouse”.
Now, my son really likes Pokemon games on his NDS plus some online pokemon games like his one time favourite Pokemon Crater but games and being a crazy collector are two completely different things.
Takes all types I guess and I guess she really likes doing what she is doing.
A new update for the M3 DS Real has been released recently.
It looks like it is only a few bug fixes, nothing major. An update from the M3 Group to get towards 100% compatibility even though I have never had any compatibility problems. This update fixes a few problems with certain games.
To download, see Hand Held Resources . Once you have it, just unzip and put those files on your M3DSreal microSD card and overwrite any files it asks.
Garry Conn is a god. Just as it was said on Goundhog day – not The God but a god. Why do I say this? The reason? Garry’s brillant blog tips and smart information has made me earn almost $1 million dollars via adsense revenue with the few blogs I have about the place. One blog started because I couldn’t find Free Online RPG Games for my son , my son also loves Star Wars Lego minifigures and so I started that, and I love eating Japanese Ice Cream .
I did say almost $1,000,000 didn’t I. $2 a day is almost isn’t – well it pays for a coffee every day – without Garrys advice I would be caffeine free (maybe that is a good thing 🙂 )
The Christmas just gone I bought a little gadget called M3DSreal for my son to use with his Nintendo DS..
What a neat little thing this is. I had to wait for the English version to be released, there are other items that do a similar thing but not quite the same or as good, R4DS is one of them.
What it is? It is a little cartridge exactly the same dimensions as a DS game cartridge but this has some smarts inside and a tiny flash card slot for microSD memory. I bought a 2 gigabyte Kingston microSD but you can use the newer SDHC ones which go to 6GB at the moment.
With this cartridge I put all of my sons DS games on it PLUS four movies PLUS a CD of music – now he has all of this on one cartridge rather than having to carry around multiple game cartridges that could be lost easily. It can even have PDA functionality, if you want, to store phone numbers, have a caculator etc. as well as and ebook reader and more.
Leave a comment if you want more details and I will answer or if needed I’ll write a better post. It really is a great product and cheap to buy.
A new update for the 
The Christmas just gone I bought a little gadget called M3DSreal for my son to use with his Nintendo DS..
goldcoaster 
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