How good is a ps3 for; blue ray, digital tv record, iplayer & streaming from pc?

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

EdwardTeach

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As per title how c good is a ps3 for; blue ray, digital tv record, iplayer & streaming from pc?

Situation as it stands:

I have a very nice 46" Sony tv, that I feel is being wasted as it is nearly never used for hd content, as I don't have sky, and don't have a blu ray player.

I have a digital recorder that is consistently useless. It regularly misses programs and needs replacing.

I was therefore wondering if getting a ps3 might be a solution to both these problems? I believe if you buy the play tv accessory your ps3 can be used as a digital recorder. Have any of you done this? Is it any good?

I believe the ps3 can also be used to watch iplayer? Is it any good for this? How is the interface?

I Have also heard that I would be able to stream media from my pc, is this correct? Is it simple to do?

It would primarily be bought for the above, rather than gaming. Is there a more cost effective solution? (e.g buying a combination of digital recorder and blu ray player that could achieve all of the above) if so what is the price difference, I think the ps3 + play tv would cost £240.
 
I have the original release PS3. Bluray playback is excellent. No problems, no worse than any Bluray player I've seen.

iPlayer. This is a different bag of spanners because while iPlayer works, I seem to have some troubles streaming sometimes. My connection isn't marginal for iplayer SD but not the best either, perhaps it is the wireless.

I hope that helps you, the only problems with iPlayer is the slow streaming it seems, but that might be just due to my slower internet connection and PS3 iPlayer needing a little more bandwidth than it's desktop brethren.
 
I use mine for streaming from the pc / blu-ray movies / gaming .... but i use a humax freeview pvr for recording tv. The ps3 is very versatile, blu-ray player is perfect and streaming files works well.

Perhaps if i was you tho, and didn't require the gaming, i'd be tempted to get a cheap blu-ray player, dedicated pvr (which will probably have a larger capacity hard drive than the ps3) .... and perhaps a WDTV live player.
 
Streaming is a breeze if you use PS3mediaserver. Install on your computer and it does any transcoding required on-the-fly pc-side. But there are other options available.

Blu-ray playback is good and unless you're pixel peeping most would struggle to notice the difference. With the firmware updates you know it's capable of any new blu-ray tech as it develops.

The last time i used iplayer was about 6 months ago but I doubt its changed. It is a browser based app (it launches into a skin over the web browser) rather than written specifically for the ps3 (as the xbox version will be) it is a little clunky and i found not everything was always on there or i couldn't find it, but it is no worse than the iplayer apps in smart TVs.

No experience with PlayTV, but from what I've heard it works ok. If you only want one box rather than three (BD player/PVR/streamer) it's probably a good buy.
 
negger said:
Perhaps if i was you tho, and didn't require the gaming, i'd be tempted to get a cheap blu-ray player, dedicated pvr (which will probably have a larger capacity hard drive than the ps3) .... and perhaps a WDTV live player.
Click to expand...

I have a feeling that there are blu ray players on the Market that can also stream and be used for iplayer. I have no idea how much they would be though. Anyone know?

I think a pvr would cost ~£100. I think setting up a ps3 with play tv and a br remote would be about £250. If a br player can be had for £50 then it's not worth it, but if it would cost ~£100 then the ps3 solution would be worth considering.
 
dont forget the ps3 is a decent gaming machine too... which is a bonus.

i stopped using ps3 for BR due to them being too noisy for me (my pioneer is silent). we use ours for streaming music from the nas in the lounge and its decent for that. the remote is Bluetooth too so you can use it all over the house... which is handy when you want to listen to music sat in the garden etc.

they are a great little gadget really.
 
Yeah Any Sony Blu-Ray player from the BDP-S480 can stream music/movies/photos from a DLNA server they all do iPlayer (and Demand 5, Love Film, YouTube etc...).

The 480 is Wired (wireless dongle extra) but the 580/780 are Wireless!..

The 480 can be had for £100 (or £110 MultiRegion DVD only) from a cirtain highstreet store!!..

I didn't need the streaming functions (my Bravia does that!) so I went for the lower BDP-S380 (multiregion DVD) which does all the iPlayer stuff like its big brothers, just no DLNA. (£90 from another highstreet store).

There are cheaper Blu-Ray players out there from other manufacturers (LG, Samsung etc..) but I'm not sure about their DLNA/online functions! :)
 
Simian said:
Yeah Any Sony Blu-Ray player from the BDP-S480 can stream music/movies/photos from a DLNA server they all do iPlayer (and Demand 5, Love Film, YouTube etc...).

The 480 is Wired (wireless dongle extra) but the 580/780 are Wireless!..

The 480 can be had for £100 (or £110 MultiRegion DVD only) from a cirtain highstreet store!!..

I didn't need the streaming functions (my Bravia does that!) so I went for the lower BDP-S380 (multiregion DVD) which does all the iPlayer stuff like its big brothers, just no DLNA. (£90 from another highstreet store).

There are cheaper Blu-Ray players out there from other manufacturers (LG, Samsung etc..) but I'm not sure about their DLNA/online functions! :)
Click to expand...

thanks!

How much would the dongle be? Could I use a normal pc wireless adaptor, or do I need a special dongle?
 
You'd need the Manufacturer Dongles for each player!, they retail between £50 and £75 each!!.. My Router is 3 feet from my Blu-Ray player so its hard wired!! :)

You could always get a Wi-Fi bridge and plug it in the LAN port (about £30 ish) or invest in 'Powerline' networking!!
 
The 560 is about £150-160. Plus a PVR will bring it to roughly the same cost as PS3 +play TV.

Thanks guys this was the kind of information I needed. Now for an interesting discussion with my wife!
 
realBabelfish said:
dont forget the ps3 is a decent gaming machine too... which is a bonus.

i stopped using ps3 for BR due to them being too noisy for me (my pioneer is silent). we use ours for streaming music from the nas in the lounge and its decent for that. the remote is Bluetooth too so you can use it all over the house... which is handy when you want to listen to music sat in the garden etc.

they are a great little gadget really.
Click to expand...

How noisy? Do you think it is the kind of thing most people would notice?
 
If you aren't going to be using it for gaming, there are better ways of doing what you want really. That's not to say the PS3 is poor at any of those things, but there are better solutions out there.

I use mine for most of my media needs; streaming from my NAS, watching Blu-ray/DVD and sometimes iPlayer (although my TV has that too). The PS3 is particularly good at upscaling video so even downloaded SD content looks and sounds pretty decent. The interface is very quick and easy to navigate too, especially with the remote. Far better than the Xbox.

That said, I use mine for games; if I didn't play games I'd get a decent Blu-ray player that supports MKV (the PS3 doesn't), or a decent media player like a WD TV Live or something.
 
EdwardTeach said:
How noisy? Do you think it is the kind of thing most people would notice?
Click to expand...

Mine grew noisier over time. It now sounds like a plane taking off and I can hear it in quiet scenes. Otherwise it's great - nice interface, quick at loading movies, plus some decent games too :)
 
Simian said:
You'd need the Manufacturer Dongles for each player!, they retail between £50 and £75 each!!.. My Router is 3 feet from my Blu-Ray player so its hard wired!! :)

You could always get a Wi-Fi bridge and plug it in the LAN port (about £30 ish) or invest in 'Powerline' networking!!
Click to expand...

Does the PS3 have wireless in built, or do I need to buy a dongle for that as well?
 
I use PlayTV with mine, works great. :)

The only annoyance is having to boot the PS3 up, and then launch the app just to watch TV.

No complaints about any of the other criteria from me either. I use it as an all in one package and I'm very happy with it.
 
EdwardTeach said:
How noisy? Do you think it is the kind of thing most people would notice?
Click to expand...

Warbie said:
Mine grew noisier over time. It now sounds like a plane taking off and I can hear it in quiet scenes. Otherwise it's great - nice interface, quick at loading movies, plus some decent games too :)
Click to expand...

I have four in my household. One for each TV basically, since they are ideal as media devices. Use PS3 media server to stream or copy a transcoded MKV's into the PS3's HD. Noise levels. My original launch day PHAT is audible but NOTHING like an old 360. The remaining 3 slims, range from quiet to almost silent.. The most recent addition being the almost silent one.. i.e checking to see if its actually on.. The 'slim' launch day one is the noisest of my 3 slims.

I also have a stand-alone Panasonic BD player, and there's no difference on my ASF calibrated THX Panasonic panel compared to a PS3 BD. Not to the naked eye at least. Perhaps if you had some measuring equip. But don't worry you'll be fine.

Go for it !

I should also note that each uses Netflix (but I'm in the USA) HD streaming is perfect, however I am on a gigabit lan, throughout my entire home. I did use wireless to test and it worked, but didn't test for long enough to find any real probs. So some may exist.
 
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We bought a PS3 to replace an ageing Humax PVR, PS2 and Blu Ray player about 12 months ago.

It's been great to be honest, we held off on the PlayTV purchase and didn't bother in the end as the only thing we'd have used it for was the recording functionality, and going without for a bit we realised we didn't us it that much anyway.

And most things are available on the catchup players which the PS3 has as standard.

4od is a bit naff on it, not used ITV player.

iPlayer recently had an update and it's a lot better than it was, and now does HD as well. I'm guessing it's not full HD but still looks good and works absolutely fine on my connection. I wouldn't have said it was a reskinned browser now but could be wrong, is like a proper app.

Streams stuff direct from our NAS no problems either.

Funnily enough it wasn't bought for gaming, but since I got rid of my PC have found myself racking up some hours on it, damn you BF3.
 
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I believe it is possible to switch out the hd and put your own in? Is this fairly simple? Is there a limit on the size of the hd you put in? Would it affect my warranty?
 
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