Be Excellent To Each Other

I was quite excited about this new firmware (released today, fact fans), because it contains the "BBC iPlayer". Previously, one could navigate to the iPlayer site in the PS3 browser and watch it in shitty artefact-y SD. Cue excitement when Sony announced iPlayer "integration" in the new firmware. Personally, I took this to mean a dedicated iPlayer "app" within the PS3's firmware, with, hopefully, HD streaming. That'd be ace. HD iPlayer on my massive telly? Yes please.

Apparently, the "iPlayer integration" is a fucking LINK which opens the PS3 browser and takes you to the same shitty SD website that we were disappointed with before. So, instead of opening the browser and clicking a bookmark, I just click a button now. Looks like my PS3 will remain unplugged when I get in from work, then.

Fucking bollocks.

Now that is disappointing.

I was expecting the same as you.
Bums.

Pff.

My trouble with the iPlayer on the PS3 is that it plays the first 15-20 minutes of a show and then starts stuttering every other second and doesn't seem to buffer anything if you leave it for a while.

Rubbish and unwatchable.

I was really looking forward to a proper iPlayer built into the PS3.

I AM GRUMPY NOW.

Total shite, eh? I was actually considering a trade-in of my Fat for a Slim earlier, but I'm not gonna bother now. PURELY BECAUSE OF THE iPlayer SHIT. Take that, Sony.

LOLZ

Really selling that feature on the new TV ads too

I too wish to add my disappointment of this news.

Hey! I wonder if it's got the Beteo forum feature too?

I wrote a PS3-specific theme for the few people that use a PS3 to get to the forum and were finding bits fiddly (ditto for the Wii). I hope it links to that.

My £12 PS3 Slim should be arriving tomorrow. I am not as excited as I would normally be about receiving a new piece of technological wizardry.

I amassed enough ipoints on ipoints.co.uk to get a £240 Amazon voucher.

!

Impressive work, sir!

I do wonder why the iPlayer doesn't even cache properly on a PC tbh.

And yes, that is fucking lazy of Sony. I think it would probably take Microsoft doing a good integration of the iPlayer on the 360 to make both Nintendo and Sony do "not shit" versions of it.

I'm hopefully in a similar situation. I've spent around £14 though. Some of the buggers just aren't paying out those points though and ipoints have stopped communicating with me about the issue now.

I'm actually up on the whole deal, so technically I've been paid £28 to get the PS3. One of the casinos I used runs off St. Minver software which won't let you place bets that are guaranteed to return your stake. So I put half on red and half on even, and it came up on red 26

I've used a lot of casinos and such as the Metro one wouldn't allow the red/black odd/even but it would allow me to select all three roulette columns, each of which paid 3-1.

I'm at about £90 of Amazon vouchers right now and there's been a lot of casino usage in the last month but most in the past week or two. Paddy Power never paid me or William Hill. I'm trying to chase up William Hill but as I say, ipoints don't seem to care anymore. First of all they asked for proof of my betting the required amount. After I sent them proof, I had no response.

I had to chase up 50,000 odd points from various places. I had to wait 45 days before sending proof to ipoints, but then the points were credited to my account a few days afterwards. That included William Hill (most of them were WHG places, actually). I meticulously took screenshots of each deposit and wager, though.

I haven't done the screen shots thing but I got an email from William Hill after asking them for proof of wagering. I'm going to have to chase up ipoints again I think on the William Hill thing.

Oh and when you say you got a £240 voucher is that in individual £30 ones or do they add them together?

I ordered eight £30 ones, but they add them together into one big £240 one.

The slim PS3 arrived this morning.

Calling it "slim" is a bit of a misnomer, it's still fucking huge. About the same volume as a 360, I reckon.

To be fair, Sony don't and never have called it the Slim, they just call it the PS3 instead of PlayStation 3. The press completely made up "Slim" because that's what Sony called the PS2 Slim and the PSP Slim and Lite.

I got 7000 points today via Slotmine and ME casino. Only about another 10 to pay up now..

OK, got a prob. Didn't take long.

I've got the PS3 hooked up to my telly over HDMI. I've got a hi-fi hooked up to the TV's audio out via the hi-fi's AUX input, using two RCA jacks at both ends.

Audio from the PS3 doesn't come out through the hi-fi, any idea why?

If you unplug the hifi, does the PS3's sound come out of the TV?

Sound comes out of the TV all the time, I just usually have the volume turned down to zero. If I turn the volume up on the TV, the sound is fine.

It's like the TV isn't sending the HDMI audio out through it's audio-out ports, which would be a pain in the ass.

The PS3 might not be sending the sound down the HDMI (there's a setting for that on the XMB somewhere; send down down optical/HDMI/both).

Nah, audio comes out through the TV speakers so it's definitely going down the HDMI cable.

I had this problem on the PS2 via scart. As soon as I disconnected all other scart leads it burst into audio life. It didn't like sharing, the saucy little Sony minx.

Ah. It has to be your telly then. Any other HDMI devices to hand to test it with?

Just dug out the TV instruction manual. Audio out is not supported with HDMI devices, for some unknown reason.

So, looks like I'm stuffed then. New TV time, I guess.

It'd be a lot cheaper to get a new amp with optical input. And you'd get surround sound out of that too.

I don't know what happens if you plug a PS2 AV cable into the PS3 at the same time as the HDMI connection. Could be worth a try.

Tried that. It results in extremely crackly sound, although even if it worked perfectly there still wouldn't be anywhere to plug it in to on the TV without fucking up the 360's connectivity.

Tell me more about this amp option - I'm clueless about this sort of thing, would I be able to have all my shit going through the amp - and then presumably the amp feeds the hifi?

Actually that's a good point. My 12 month old Bravia claims it doesn't do audio through HDMI from my DVD player. Except when it's playing a div-x disc, when it does.

Uhh, right. Heh. What have I let myself in for?

Right, what do you have now and how is it wired together?

I'll bet it's copy protection of some odd kind.

I suspect this calls for a chart of some sort.



Everything except the PS3 is hooked up through a connection that the TV supports audio out for, so the audio out just goes from the TV to the Hi-Fi's AUX input.

Well, if I were you, Gazchap, I'd consider upgrading the hifi. What is it, a 2-channel mini system? Got any budget for an upgrade

I'd replace it with a set of speakers like this and a proper AV amp like this. I'd buy second hand off ebay though, not new; there are bargains to be had on 18 months old hifi kit from people who upgrade. Hell, talk to me nicely and I'll consider selling you my Yamaha RXV-361 amp, which cost me £150 a year ago.

Alternatively, something like this would do you. I bought one of those from ebay for £100 recently. It offers two optical inputs (for 360 and PS3), one coaxial digital input (your PVR might use that), and three analogue inputs (for PS2, Wii, and maybe the PVR). Edit -- we had a thread about those speakers.

It's a lot of money to spend to just make the PS3 work, but you would be getting surround sound out of the deal, which is a pretty significant upgrade for gaming and movies.

Heh, I just bought a new HiFi because my old one took up too much space.

How much would you consider seling your Yamaha jobbie for?

Basically, what you need is an AV receiver. You used to be able to get cheap, complete surround sound sets (my first set of the receiver (or amp, whatever you want to call it), subwoofer, 4 sattelite speakers and centre speaker cost £150) - but nowhere seems to do these anymore. They all now come with built-in DVD players, so you have to make sure that if you're going down that route, you buy one that lets you plug things like your game consoles into it.

Most recently I bought this amp and while it may seem expensive, it is very good for the money as it has loads of inputs and does the full range of SD and HD surround sound formats, so I now get my BluRays in 7.1 (though I'm personally only using a 5.1 setup) Dolby TrueHD or whatever the DTS version is from my PS3. Of course, with this, all you're getting is the amp, so you'll need to buy extra speakers.

Maybe someone here can suggest a vastly cheaper solution for you!

Edit: Also, I only use the Richer Sounds website as an example - personally I'd be wary of buying from them. My personal experience (at least with their Watford branch) has been somewhat less than satisfactory.

That's exactly the sort of amp I need. I'd need to buy a new subwoofer as well though...

If your PVR is optical output you can use a convertor to change the signal to coax so you can use that also. I've got one for mine as I've only got 2 optical inputs.

I'm just looking now to see if I can find where I got mine from.

Edit - found it http://www.cableuniverse.co.uk/catalog/ ... erter.html

It's really very good, it must be said. I'm very happy with it.

One of the coolest features, and one that I was amazed actually worked completely as described, is it's auto-calibration function. Basically rather than you spending hours inputing the positions and distances of all the speakers into it and setting their levels, you simply plug in the included microphone and stick it wherever you're going to be sitting. You then hit the auto-calibration button and it spends 30 seconds bouncing weird sound effects off of all the speakers, from which it determines all the optimal settings for you.

That sounds ace.

I really want a new amp. SHUT IT ZIO. A colleague here has the Sony one or two rungs up from your one (he paid £400, I forget the model) and he keeps going on about it.

My old amp goes for random amounts on ebay and would cost £20 to post (because it weighs 10kg).

The PS3 has an "audio over HDMI/optical out" toggle in the system settings.

Give you £60+P&P for it?

Oh right, you don't want the PS3->amp, sorry, misread. It's probably copy protection related then. Or the telly. Most tellies don't do pass-through of surround anyway, just the stereo downmix they put of their speakers.

Are you sure? That's sort of on the high side, although I probably wouldn't go through the hassle of boxing and posting it for much less. You know you're going to need speakers too, right? Well, unless you just use the two you have on your current hifi, but I recommend you go for 5.1 if you're going to do this.

In other news, I've been reading about Zio's amp. Goddamn, it's good for the money. DAMN YOU ZIO.

My PC amp is the one I used to use on my PA system when I DJd. The volume is set to '0'.

£40+P&P? £50+P&P? What's your bare minimum? Oh, and what inputs are on it? Can't find a specsheet online, everyone just says it's discontinued and doesn't give up any info about it.

I genuinely couldn't give a toss about surround sound, although mainly because there's just no room for more speakers where I live at the moment, so I'd just use my current two

SHUT UP. That's the one thing I haven't renewed for many a year as my current Sony amp works a treat. However it is silver and all my stuff is black now so at least that new one would match. That's not really going sail with the wife is it?

Having said that I managed to to sell her on a 46" plasma to replace a 42" plasma on the basis that without a full 1080p (other one was 1080i) display the PS3 was next to useless.

I refuse to look at it any further so stop telling me how ace it is and don't buy one Doc - baby needs shoes and all that.