Playstation Plus

I’ve got a few good things to say about Sony’s Playstation plus, however a lot of bad things. Granted it’s still in it’s infant stages, but it’s so lacking at the moment, especially when you compare it with the Xbox Live service.

When firmware 3.60 was release, with the online storage option, I finally took the plunge and dropped £40 on a Playstation Plus subscription. I’m in a fortunate position where I have 2 PS3′s, (one in the front room, and one in the bedroom), and the idea of being able to save to the “cloud”, then pick up again in another room really appealed to me. I also like the idea of the automatic download feature, that basically downloading the updates to the games while the machine is switched off. This would fix one of the things I find most annoying about the PS3 over the Xbox, size of the updates, for some reason updating a game on the Xbox takes literally seconds, where the PS3 takes minutes….sometime even hours (Currently updating GT5 as we speak)

Now maybe I should have read up on this first, or at least spent some time in the forums reading peoples impressions first before dropping the £40, but was what I was hoping for.

• The ability to save directly to the cloud, and pickup on another PS3 (just like the Steam Cloud)
• The ability for the PS3 to download my updates while I slept (this way I never had to see again the “There is an update, do you want to download it” screen)

What I actually got….

The ability to manually backup my save games to the cloud (the same functionality we used to have with a USB stick……). Unfortunately non of my games recognise the cloud storage, so it means I have to manually download my save game, then remember to re-upload it once I’ve finished playing. This has already caught me out a number of times….I fired up a game of the other PS3, only to have to quit to the XMB to copy the save game local….or even fire up the other PS3 to copy the game to the cloud :s

On the subject of copying, Sony really don’t make it easy. Probably like most people, the first thing I did was to copy all my save games on to the cloud storage, this I had to do once save at a time !…..there is a “group saves by game” function, but you still have to go into the grouped folder and manually copy each one across….took me an evening to back everything up.

Next the storage size…..150Mb ?….in this day and age…..when each one of my later Fallout 3 saves were over 5Mb each….obviously I didn’t have room to fit them all on, come on Sony, if the likes of Dropbox can offer us 2GB for free, 150Mb is a joke.

So, once I’d back up all my saves, I thought…ok time for the automatic download setting. Once I’d finally found the setting, I selected my 2 hour windows of “when to download” and left it too it. I then went to the 2nd Ps3 to set up the automatic download on that, in the hope to select a different 2 hour windows, but was politely told that I already have automatic download setup on my account, and I do have it on this or the other 1, but not at the same time …….really ?

Now if my understanding is currect, the automatic download feature is useless if you use the cloud storage, as it uses your local save game files as it’s base of “what to download”, if there are no saves on the PS3 (which on mine there aren’t as they’re all in the cloud), then it doesn’t download anything !….*clap, clap, well done Sony*

Ok, so finally the content, and what you really get for your £40 a year. Now I agree, you do get benefit when you have a plus subscription, but are they worth it.

Below is the list of what I downloaded from the Playstation plus “benefits”

Sonic the Hedgehog (not HD’d up, just added trophies), looked and sounded horrible

Astro Tripper, Pix’n Love and Enigmo (all mini games, played once, and deleted)

inFamous 2 Dynamic theme (does look pretty cool, I have to say)

All apart from the theme have now been deleted, this was from the below list of possible downloads for the month of March

2 March to 5 April 2011
All titles are for PlayStation 3 unless stated otherwise.

Games
Sonic the Hedgehog – one month exclusive for PlayStation Plus members
Astro Tripper
Pix’n Love Rush (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members
Enigmo (minis) – two weeks early for PlayStation Plus members

Full Game Trial
Prince of Persia

Special Offers
PlayTV Live Chat – 25% off until 6 July 2011
Fat Princess – 50% off
Fat Princess (PSP) – 50% off
StarDrone (PS3) – 50% discount on day of launch
Premier Manager – 50% off

Dynamic themes and Premium Avatars
EyePet Avatars
inFamous 2 theme
Sega Mega Drive Classics theme
MotorStorm Apocalypse Urban Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Burning Avatar
MotorStorm Apocalypse Rookie XMB theme

Maybe I’m just disappointed as I was expecting more, I was hoping for Steam Cloud type storage, I was hoping to never see a “Update is available” screen again, but currently this isn’t the case.

Maybe now they have the Cloud storage backbone in place, developers will release updates to their games to allow saving directly to this. I do however think that if they get their butts into gear and get this working properly before the NGP (Sony’s Next Generation Portable aka PSP2) comes out, then saving a game on the PS3, then continuing on the NGP ticks all my boxes. I know that Microsoft attempted to do this Windows to Windows Mobile to Xbox….but it’s not really happened yet.

Personally if anybody is planning on dropping on the PS+ subscription, I don’t think it’s worth it yet, give it a couple of months and see if developers start to implement the “direct to cloud” saves.

Tags: Astro, bedroom, cloud, Download, Dynamic, feature, firmware, fortunate position, functionality, game, games, Impressions, infant, infant stages, machine, option, pickup, Pix, Playstation, plunge, Princess, PS3, reading, reason, screen, Size, sony, steam, steam cloud, storage option, time, xbox, xbox live, xmb

Apple TV 2nd Generation

So today my Apple TV (2nd Generation) turned up, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed.

Anybody who knows me or has been reading these my post, will know that over the last couple of years, I’ve become an Apple fan boy I’ve gradually replaced my MP3 player, my phone, my PCs and even my entire network with Apple products, and as time has gone by, I’ve organised my entire music collection to be “iTunes friendly”.

I’ve been toying with the idea of an Apple TV for a while now, and very nearly bought one of the 1 generation ones about 2 months ago.

I’ve been using a piece of software on my MacMini called MediaLink, to stream my iTunes content to my PS3, which to be honest has been working pretty well, apart from the fact that it won’t play DRM media.

So the announcement was made early in September that a new Apple TV would be out shortly, so me being me ordered one.

So what’s it like ?

Now this is the first time I’ve used an Apple TV, so some of the features I’m raving about, might have been in the first generation.

First of all, it’s size, this thing is tiny, it literally fits in the palm of my hand.

The device has a very small white light on the front, the flashes with the remote press. The rear has a USB port, a HDMI port, power port and an optical output.

Setup, as with any Apple product was painless, plugged it in, selected my language, added my apple ID and that was it, good to go.

So what is an Apple TV ?

Basically, it’s a device which allows you to stream content from the web, and a PC or Mac which is running iTunes home sharing (please note, you have to have iTunes 10 installed for it to be picked up)

The main menu gives you a few options.

Movies, and then the sub menu of Top Movies, Genres, Search and in Theaters.

The movie collection is huge, and everything I searched for came back with a result (kinda like the movie selection in iTunes)

The “in Theaters” option was essentially what you get on Apples trailer site, all the trailers for whats in the cinema right now.

The next tab is Internet, with the option of YouTube, Podcasts, MobileMe, Flickr and Radio.

The Youtube option will allow you to sign in and see your subscriptions.

The podcast option does what it says on the tin, it opens up the content as found in the iTunes store and splits them into Audio, Video or all. You can then “add to favourites”, which will let you know how many unwatched episodes you have, it also remembers your position which I thought was a good feature.

I don’t have a MobileMe account, but assume if I had, I would be able to stream from this.

The Flickr allows you to subscribe to public users and view their content. I can’t see a way of signing in, as this would be perfect as I’m a Flickr pro subscriber and have my entire photo collection hidden online, it would be nice to be able to access these.

Finally there’s the radio, which is the same content as the Radio tab in iTunes.

The next tab is Computers. Basically any machine that you have iTunes on (version 10 or above) with Home Sharing enabled, you can stream all you content from them.

Finally you have the settings tab, which you can…..well change the settings

2 interesting features in the settings are the AirPlay, and Remotes.

The Airplay allows you to use the Apple TV as an Airport Express, and the Remote option allows you to use you iPhone as a remote control. As your probably aware, the iPhone remote app has recently been upgraded to support the Apple TV. The app works with gesture controls, swipe left and right for fast forward and backward, tap to pause and play, and the godsend was being able to type in when searching. There is also flick up to get to chapter, and 2 finger left swipe to roll back 10 seconds, you can even move the onscreen content using this !

The AirPlay is pretty cool too, now granted, to play media from my Mac by selecting Computers > Mac Mini > Music > Album > Play or I also have the option to connect to my MacMini via the Apple Remote app, select the Album > Play > select the Apple TV as the speakers. This will not only output the audio to the Apple TV, but it will also display the album art and ID tag of the track being played.

Now I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, and it’s nice to see that if I’m looking at my Computers library, I then watch or listen to a podcast, this syncs back to the library. There was nothing more annoying than watching something using MediaLink, then having to Screenshare onto my MacMini to mark them as watched. This seems to be the same for Movies and TV too.

So far I’ve very happy with this device, and I guess I’ll be spending the next couple of months converting all my DVD’s to mp4 format and adding these to my iTunes library.

For anyone who uses iTunes for their media content, and if you have a spare £99, I suggest getting one of these.

As always, unboxing photos are below.

Tags: Airplay, apple id, apple product, apple products, apple tv, apples, content, entire network, fan, fan boy, genres, HDMI, iphone, itunes, light, MacMini, menu, mp3 player, music collection, optical output, option, palm, palm of my hand, phone, piece, play, player, podcast, power, PS3, Size, software, tab, theaters, time, usb port

Mac Mini

“Dear Mr Jobs,

When I said “Your work here was done”, in my previous post about my iPhone, I may have been telling porkies, as I still had a Windows machine in the house, however you’ll be glad to know, that I’ve done the right thing, and replaced it with a Mac Mini. Sorry for the porkie, and I am now 100% Apple.

Your ever faithful disciple

Darren.”

As you can probably tell from the above, I’ve replaced my last remaining Windows machine with a Mac Mini (Really ? No sh1t Sherlock). To be honest I’ve been toying with the idea since getting the MacBooks last year, as essentially all the Windows machine did was act as a server. It was my media server, my iTunes server, my torrent downloading machine (all legal of course) and a way of dialling into my network from the outside world using remote desktop and port forwarding.

As you can probably suss from my ted post, I spent a little time and ensured that I could still carry out the same functions on the Mac.

I’m using PS3 Media Server to stream to my PS3′s and Xbox,I’m using a uTorrents as my torrent client,iTunes (obviously) for my iTunes server and finally VNC to dial it.

All these pieces of software are available cross platform, so all is good.

The Mac Mini turned up on Monday (unboxing below). The thing that got me about this was just how small the Mac Mini actually is, imagine stacking 4/5 CD cases onto of each other, and that it !

This this is silent, so compact, so tidy, and takes up no room whatsoever !.

As this is just going to be used for the same purpose the Windows machine was, I didn’t really need a high spec, as the Dell I was replacing was only a 2Gb Core 2 Duo, with 2Gb of Ram.

I went for the below, which to be honest it more than adequate for what I need.

• 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 2GB memory
• 160GB hard drive¹
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Now unlike the iMac, this doesn’t come with a mouse or keyboard, these are optional, however I had a spare set kicking around. The Mac Mini does have an internal speaker (which to be honest I was a little shocked at, as this device is so small. You do however have the option of connecting external speakers via the 3.5mm jack plug at the back.

The Video out connections are both the Mini DVI and the Mini Displayport adapters, allowing you to connect this to VGA, DVI and HDMI, however you only get a Mini DVI to DVI connecter included.

As with all my apple equipment, I switched it on, entered my details, and done !

This has been the final piece is a very expensive jigsaw, however my household is completely Mac, Goodbye Windows, I hope I never have to use you again ! (well, I do have to use it every day at work…but I don’t really have a choice in that)

Tags: act, Apple, cd cases, core, course, cross platform, Darren, dear mr, dell, disciple, double layer, drive1, duo, DVI, faithful, faithful disciple, geforce, house, idea, iphone, jobs, little time, mac, Mac Mini, Mac OS, mac os x, macbooks, machine, media server, Mr Jobs, porkie, post, PS3, remote desktop, server, Sherlock, ted post, thing, Torrent, torrent client, unboxing, utorrents, way, windows, windows machine, work, X Snow, xbox, year