If any of you were spending part of your Sunday playing with you PS3, you may have noticed that there was a new option in the XMB for television, with the ABC iView logo sitting front and centre. That’s right – you can now access iView through the PS3.
I had a quick play with the service last night, watching the latest episode of Good Game on the big screen. First and foremost, I have to say that the video quality looked pretty good, even on the 50 inches of my plasma. There was no lag, no judder, and while it was far from being high-definition, it was more than just watchable.
The downside, from my very brief time playing with it, is that it doesn’t look like the UI has been customised for use through either a television or PS3 at all. The service goes full-screen automatically, but to actually navigate through the iView portal, it’s just like navigating through a webpage using the PS3’s internet browser.
Which is painful.
Seriously, scrolling through a list of shows requires you to navigate the browsing arrow to the scroll bar on the side, press and hold the X button, and then press down, like you’re dragging the scroll bar with a mouse. Tipster Sean tells us that you can’t use the PS3’s Bluetooth remote control to navigate it all all.
When Sony announced the iView partnership, I expected a dedicated app with customised controls for the PS3, not a version of the web browser that automatically scales to fill your HDTV. I’ll use this again – the actual video quality was really good – but it won’t replace my TV’s tuner any time soon.