Sony's PlayTV set for July release, UK pre-order now available

For those of you lucky, lucky folks in Europe (or the UK, more specifically), it looks like your wait for the PlayTV rollout is coming to a close. According to Amazon's British wing, you can now pre-order the PlayStation 3 add-on for £59.99 ($120) with an expected release on July 31st. Over here we'll just continue to twiddle our thumbs, watch paint dry, and check out our Blu-ray version of The Song Remains the Same... again

[Thanks, Mighty Zoltar]

[f.inscoe @ Apr 20th 2008 10:16PM]

If this becomes the new latin version of Rick Roll'd, I will shoot myself, and jason for having started it

[jason @ Apr 21st 2008 6:17PM]

aparently engadget doesnt like my chacarron comment... so here it is again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r7taMqA66c
click here for hilarity... nuthin to do with the stoopid article :D

[Raheem @ Apr 20th 2008 10:25PM]

Lmao. Anyone got the lyrics?

[kavendano14 @ Apr 20th 2008 10:28PM]

No lyrics, it's not in any language comprehensible to human minds.

[Tim @ Apr 20th 2008 10:30PM]

maybe its just me, but that logo looks kinda like the winged box was on the wrong end of a mob hit.

[jason @ Apr 20th 2008 10:37PM]

What does this have to do with el chombo?

[CaptSaltyJack @ Apr 21st 2008 10:41AM]

Funny, I always thought the logo looked like it had a case of explosive diarrhea.

[andres @ Apr 20th 2008 10:35PM]

my god, my ass may actually fall off after seeing that

[andres @ Apr 22nd 2008 9:52PM]

reply didnt stick, comment system, WHYYYYy

[mike @ Apr 21st 2008 1:47AM]

Finally something that we in the UK get before you americans, and while im on the subject i'm English not British, same as Scottish people are Scottish not British and Irish people are... Irish not British....

[Tom @ Apr 21st 2008 2:41AM]

Technically, you are both English and British - Amazon.co.uk is British as it serves the UK, not just one country...

[Marc @ Apr 21st 2008 4:11AM]

us irish are very much definately (infinity plus 1) not british. we prefer to have a president with no plitical influence rathr than a queen with no political influence

[Gaz @ Apr 21st 2008 4:49AM]

Irish people ROCK!!!! Sadly I am stuck in England

[Rob @ Apr 21st 2008 5:44AM]

erm, surely amazon.co.uk would be British if it served just England, Wales & Scotland.

.uk denotes the principality of the United Kingdom and therefore isn't British (i.e. from the island of britain). I'm sure those folks in Northern Ireland would take issue with being called British. Although I have a feeling the .uk site serves all of Ireland anyway.

Anyways back to the subject. Have they sorted out the issues with being able to record whilst you are doing some thing else? Seems like a near pointless product if you can't do anything else with the system if it is recording a program or you can't record a program whilst playing a game or movie.

I do think overall the PS3 is a better machine than the Xbox 360, but the media interface and integration with a media center PC makes the PS3 with a DNLA server seem pretty poor. Although codec support is much, much better on the PS3 (no surround sound at all on Xbox) and the constant updates to improve this are very welcome. That said they broke the MP4 support a couple of updates ago and still haven't fixed it properly (which is pretty poor considering this is supposed to be the main format it supports!).

[technophobe @ Apr 21st 2008 5:48AM]

I The UK is better than Ireland, I am British and English (but not European). People from Northern Ireland are (Northern) Irish and British but people people from Eire (unfortunately for them) are only from the British Iles.

[fanman @ Apr 21st 2008 11:22AM]

You all fail at geography.

Great Britain consists of Scotland, England and Wales. The UK is shorthand for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Eire south Ireland) is another nation entirely.

[Xee @ Apr 20th 2008 10:41PM]

Him, I guess "early 2008" means July then.

[Jonathan-DBOSS @ Apr 20th 2008 11:16PM]

hahahaha,
they use a greek calendar, so you nailed it!

LOL

[webon @ Apr 20th 2008 10:59PM]

cHACARRON, CHACARRON, CHACARIKI RON,

esewesedesisisesese

cHACARRON, CHACARRON, CHACARIKI RON,


chacarrikirron chahacarikiron


...nice lyrics

[Jonathan-DBOSS @ Apr 20th 2008 11:14PM]

Crap, I had to move out... BLOODY WANKERS!!!

[rv @ Apr 20th 2008 11:18PM]

You should have credited him as "the mighty zoltar"

[rv @ Apr 20th 2008 11:21PM]

at least there are bootys in this one

[Dark Knight @ Apr 21st 2008 12:45AM]

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen engadget's topics be so random...

Anyways, I'm still bummed that this isn't coming to America.

[Dark Knight @ Apr 21st 2008 12:46AM]

engadget's comments*

[Walid Dahdal @ Apr 21st 2008 1:35AM]

guess Im moving to uk :(

[GoonieGooGoo @ Apr 21st 2008 4:00AM]

As this is like 1/2 the functionality of Windows Media Center extenders.....who cares?

[Gaz @ Apr 21st 2008 4:47AM]

You mean people get Rick Roll'd and actually sit there and watch it!? What has the world come to!!

[Jim H @ Apr 21st 2008 5:29AM]

Got a link for the pre-order on Amazon? I can't find it.

[alanwestenbroek @ Apr 21st 2008 5:33AM]

Uh, no. It is like double the functionality of WMC itself. Finally Europe is going to get a real guide (WMC does not), subtitles, dual-channel audio, to go along with proper UPNP streaming and built-in Blu-Ray for about the price of one of those Linksys extenders.

[technophobe @ Apr 21st 2008 5:51AM]

@ Rob people from The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are commonly discribed as British, whether they are from the mainland (Great Britain) or Northern Ireland

[DingieM @ Apr 21st 2008 6:19AM]

Say, isn't PlayTV hard-linked to a BT account, so only usable with a BT account? And how expensive is the monthly fee for watching BT broadcasts with PlayTV?

I am lucky, because this Dutch citizen is going to enjoy glasfiber within a few months, with television (digital and HD will come). That will make my PC the transition to HTPC with 100's of Gigabytes of space!
100Mbit down AND up!

[gooftroop @ Apr 21st 2008 1:14PM]

Play TV has nothing to do with British Telecom (BT), no internet connection is needed for it, it receives DVB-T broadcasts through an aerial and there are no monthly fees

[Rich C @ Apr 21st 2008 8:08AM]

Er, the price just went up to £79.99 as I was watching it! Cheeky gits.

[playtv fan @ Apr 21st 2008 6:35AM]

I had a look on amazon an hour or so ago and they had it on pre-order for £59.99, so i snapped one up straight away. The pre order price has now gone up to £79.99! *chuffed*
oh, and according to this article, the ps3 allows you to record while playing a game
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93867

Only downside i can see is that you really have to upgrade the 40gb hard drive in order to use the ps3 as a freeview recorder, otherwise there wont be much space to record programmes :( So another £50 or so to use PlayTV fully.

[jimmy @ Apr 21st 2008 8:21AM]

Er, the release date has changed to 31 October 2008.

[Jim H @ Apr 21st 2008 9:21AM]

It's now no longer available!

Bizarre. I was hoping it'd come out long before 31st July. I thought that the BBC might do a terrestrial HD test for the games in London and I'd be able to watch it using PlayTV.

I suspect that Sony has delayed things because they've now agreed the terrestrial HD standard for Freeview and they're making changes to the hardware. It would explain the delay at any rate.

Not impressed with their price shennigins though.

[gooftroop @ Apr 21st 2008 1:14PM]

HD broadcasts over DVB-T via an aerial (what play tv and set top boxes use) wont start till 2009 in the UK.

The Play TV team have already had talks with the BBC HD team and other releated parties ages ago so that they could spec the correct hardware when designing it (early 2007 it was reported)

[Jim H @ Apr 21st 2008 7:42PM]

I think they must be doing some redesign work otherwise they'd've released the thing by now. Whether it's got anything to do with the new HD standard who knows but they're way behind schedule with the release now IMHO.

I was hoping to have one by now. Ah well, such is life.

[whoelse @ Apr 21st 2008 12:51PM]

That's not the actual logo.

But anyway, that's a good price. Especially since there is no copy protection on the files.

[ZaxCG2 @ Apr 21st 2008 4:58PM]

COME OOOOOOOOOOON SONY! Whats the big deal.