It does more than gaming?

Had a chance to play around with some of the non gaming functions of the PS3 last night. Things i checked out are Remote Play (with PSP), downloading demos and trailers from the online store, photo browsing, PS2 games and DVD playback.

The most interesting was probably the remote play function. It took quite a few steps to get it going, none of them difficult but slightly confusing none the less – such as enabling AAC playback in the sound settings menu. What i couldn’t figure out was why i had to stop the whole process just to go to another menu, why couldn’t it just do it for me at the time. So what could you do once it was installed and set up? The most useful thing is the photo and video browsing. Photo browsing works almost as quickly as it does on the PSP when loading off a memory card, all the options that the PS3 offers are available so the interface is slightly different from the PSP photo browsing. Video works, but only for content stored on the HDD on the PS3. I had a 1080p clip of Casino Royale which, again, worked as well as it would have if loaded from local media – quite impressive if you can imagine the amount of work required to downscale and send 1920×1080 accross wi-fi without missing a beat.

All the games that you have available, including disc based games, show up on the XMB menus, however none of the games i had would play over Wi-fi which is exactly as you would expect. Sony only claimed PS1 and other simpler downloaded content would work remotely.

All settings and most other unavailable features are simply removed from the XMB menus when viewed on the PSP. And what does the PS3 display while doing all this? Nothing, just a little message letting you know that it’s busy doing other stuff.

All in all it worked really well, though I’m not convinced it’s a very useful feature just at the moment. Photos and movies could be interesting but with my situation i can’t imagine when I would need to do that. Not once I have some component cables for my dell monitor anyway…

Trouble in PS3adice?

So I’ve been having a great time blowing away mutants in the great PS3 game Resistant Fall of Man – that was until Shortland St got in the way and forced me to try out my recently purchased HDMI -> DVI cable on my Dell 2405FPW – Intended to allow me to free up the TV for my partner. Of course the Dell monitor is not HDCP compliant on any of it’s inputs (which i knew), however i only imagined that being an issue for Blu-Ray movies. Alas Sony saw fit to implement the check across the board meaning no non-HDCP joy for any aspect of the system when outputting video over HDMI. Looks like I’ll be picking up the cheapest component cables i can find to avoid any future issues of the HDCP kind.

Cheap cables galore

Having purchased the PS3 I am of course obliged to supply all my own cables if i want to use it for anything more than standard definition which seems like kind of a a complete waste. I don’t really mind that Sony doesn’t supply HD cables, with the myriad of options chances are that I would end up with the wrong cables for my particular configuration anyway – and I don’t want to pay over-the-odds for unnecessary Sony gear either.

A quick online search revealed exactly what i was looking for. Cables Direct is an easy to navigate, clean and responsive discount cable supplier. I purchased an HDMI -> HDMI, HDMI -> DVI and a TOSLink optical cable for around $60 total – the same haul from Dick Smiths would have cost around $150. Sure my cables are produced by an OEM manufacturer rather than Acoustic Research or some other name brand, and they aren’t gold plated but at a saving of over $90 and a much quicker and more enjoyable experience (I love getting deliveries at work) I really couldn’t care less.

They don’t just do AV cables either. They’ll supply you with all sort of discounted network gear from cables to add-on PCI cards or even hubs and switches. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to visit them soon.

Happy PS3 day (for PAL regions anyway)

Big, heavy and brown. Not the way you’d expect to describe a shiny new PS3 but that was my first impression of the new console that is now keeping my feet company under my desk at work. It was snugly wrapped in brown paper – i guess to keep it anonymous more than safe from bumps in transit.

Of course i had to unwrap and unpack it all, just to make sure it was what i expected it to be. Second impressions are as expected – shiny, smudgeable, and imposing. I like the way it looks though, i don’t need it to be tiny or light as it’s going on my entertainment unit at home – not in my bag.

I managed to take advantage of the special Ferrit was offering via Hill and Stewart 100% Electric Store. $150 off and a decent discount on games bought at the same time. Ordinarily I would avoid Ferrit (for various reasons – what is up with the name anyway) but now that I’ve tried it out I can’t say I have too many complaints with my experience – i paid them money, they shipped me goods.