Digital TV tuner ahead for PS3

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 02 August 2007 03:43

Your IT - Entertainment

A digital TV tuner is on the cards for the PlayStation 3, cementing its positioning as a home entertainment centre rather than a mere games console.

In an interview with The Press, Warwick Light, head of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand, said "We're also hoping next year - about the same time that Freeview launches its terrestrial broadcasting service - to release a digital tuner for the PS3, turning it into a programmable TV recorder."

Freeview currently operates a satellite service, but is expected to terrestrial transmissions using DVB-T in early 2008. Six channels are currently available on Freeview, and a seventh was announced late last month. Several other channels are planned.

USB is a standard feature of the PS3, so Sony could easily adopt an existing tuner design and add the necessary software to the PS3.

No indication was given that Sony plans to introduce the tuner in other markets, but that seems likely since DVB-T is also used in Europe, Australia and other countries.

One question is whether the PS3 has sufficient performance to allow programs to be recorded while other activities such as gameplay are in progress. Recording a DVB-T stream does not heavily load the processor, but it does consume I/O bandwidth.