Sony PS3

In 2009 my self built PC was un urgent need of an upgrade. It would no longer even begin to run the previous years crop of games. I looked at buying the components needed, and found that pretty much everything would need replacing. Some of the legacy disks might have provided supplementory storage, but apart from those every component had been superceeded by some new standard. The existing bits were only four years old, and spending £600 just to upgrade a games machine seemed a bit much, so I started to look for some alternatives.

In the last decade or so the consoles have been catching up with the more general purpose machines, such as the PC and Apple offerings, and indeed with the PS3 Sony have given a facility to run a version of GNU/Linux (although have now withdrawn it).

As that was the case I decided to buy a PS3, and, in the year or so that I have been using it, have been pretty pleased with it.

• You get it home, plug all the bits in, and it works.
• It is pretty reliable, I have had three or four lockups in a year of use.
• All the add on bits and pieces, things such as the WinTV box, the Touch, and the BD remote control, work easily and reliably.
• The WinTV add on box is simply great - more below.
• The machine is adequate. Not as good as a top line gaming PC, but certainly as good as a low to mid range PC, and with no major incompatibilities.

• The standard game pad controller is a joke, you get virtually none of the fine levels of tactile .
• First person games tend to be "over the shoulder", which I don't like too much, although becoming more used to it.
• Often quests unnecessary to the main plot line have to be repeated until you have suceeded at them. I prefer to simply fail, then have some mechanism which simply advances the plot accordingly. I intensly dislike playing the same bit of any game repeatedly.

With the exception of the standard controller, most of the bad points of the PS3 are due to the nature of the games and their descent from arcade based predecessors. As the population of gamers gets older this will probably sort itself out as games for older players, more like PC games, come out.

As far as I am concerned what really makes the PS3 is the WinTV box, which is a small box which plugs into one of the PS3's USB ports, and a UHF signal, and it makes your PS3 into one of the best digital television hard disk recorders I have seen. The files recorded to PS3's hard disk are copyable and transferable between USB devices, and playable with the correct codex. A 500 Gigabyte HDD for the PS3 is recommended, my 60 Gigabyte version could do with expansion.

• The WinTV software is slow to get going.
• WinTV has no series record.
• The electronic programme guide is slow to populate.

Otherwise the WinTV box would be a perfect way to record and play digital television in the United Kingdom. I shall be first in the queue as soon as the high definition version comes out.

Here is a photograph of the whole thing. I have it attached to the wall by what must be the only solid mahogany PS3 stand in existance (made from scrap mahogany of course). The PS3 is the big box on the left, the smaller box is the WinTV, and the thing above it is the controller in a recharging stand which is attached to the television USB. Its best to keep all the cabling and stuff off the floor, and tied up neatly or you will be forever tripping over them in a house of the size of mine.