Is anybody else having mega "stuttering" issues for PlayTV when recording & watching another channel? I done all the latest software updates. Im not waching a Blu Ray or doing anything else on the PS3 that would seem to cause this. The signal strength is also very good. Thought it might be a one off, but its doing it a lot.
spacecadet: Is anybody else having mega "stuttering" issues for PlayTV when recording & watching another channel? I done all the latest software updates. Im not waching a Blu Ray or doing anything else on the PS3 that would seem to cause this. The signal strength is also very good. Thought it might be a one off, but its doing it a lot.
Yeah, a lot of people do. How big is your HDD? IF it's 500gb+ like mine then you will most likely experience it worse than others, this has been mentioned in previous posts and the 500gb HDD seemed to be the common denominator. My advice anyway is turn off live buffering while recording and avoid pausing the channel you are watching. Let me know if this works for you.
spacecadet: Is anybody else having mega "stuttering" issues for PlayTV when recording & watching another channel? I done all the latest software updates. Im not waching a Blu Ray or doing anything else on the PS3 that would seem to cause this. The signal strength is also very good. Thought it might be a one off, but its doing it a lot.
Yeah, a lot of people do. How big is your HDD? IF it's 500gb+ like mine then you will most likely experience it worse than others, this has been mentioned in previous posts and the 500gb HDD seemed to be the common denominator. My advice anyway is turn off live buffering while recording and avoid pausing the channel you are watching. Let me know if this works for you.
No its the standard 160GB PS3, I dont have it buffering and I experience these issues when Im simply recording one channel and watching the other. So no pausing and no rewinding etc as I have already switched off the live buffering. The weird thing is, this appears to have worsened after the last (latest) software update! I dont think its a "faulty" version of PlayTV, they just havent fixed it. I hope they can resolve this issue as its really no point using PlayTV with such a basic, yet annoying issue.
spacecadet: The signal strength is also very good.
How do you know this?
From memory the only way to test this was to watch the screen as it did a scan for channels.
Yup, thats exactly what I did. The main channels were all in the high 90's for signal strength. Never had a problem with my Zinwell Freeview receiver. Works perfectly, its just not a PVR lol. Kinda disappointing tho - I hope Sony can fix these issues with PlayTV.
spacecadet: The main channels were all in the high 90's for signal strength. Never had a problem with my Zinwell Freeview receiver.
Yep, that was what I experienced, and yeah, that same signal was fine for every other freeview device I had too.... The one exception to this is where you have a high signal strength but low signal quality. for example you could take a coat hanger, feed this into a mast head amplifier and get a really strong signal but with no real useable info in it.
I had really hoped Sony would include a signal quality meter, if for nothing else to cover themselves. But this would have made aerial checks etc a lot easier and shown you what was going on.
Personally I don't see that much has changed with PlayTV since the original update that allowed it to work in NZ. You can now buy it locally and get a partial 'full' EPG working for some channels, oh and chat with your mates online. PlayTV seemed great initially when I didn't have a TV with freeview built in. Now I have freeview in my TV, I have a separate PVR that has a working EPG, starts up almost straight away and has full twin tuner recording support. Oh and the new one doesn't stutter, ever.
Ok, my experience of 2.02 is mixed. Things I've noticed are: the skip button used to skip 1 minute but now skips 10 minutes, the copy to home menu is gone, EPG no change, you can specify default start and finish extra minutes, you now get better options when a new recording overlaps another on different channels and it is smart enough when on the same channel. I get stuttering but not so bad especially if you avoid watching and recording at same time. I'm thinking of going back to the earlier version though because I need the 1 minute skip to skip the adverts, but how do you do this?
PlayTVuser: Ok, my experience of 2.02 is mixed. Things I've noticed are: the skip button used to skip 1 minute but now skips 10 minutes, the copy to home menu is gone, EPG no change, you can specify default start and finish extra minutes, you now get better options when a new recording overlaps another on different channels and it is smart enough when on the same channel. I get stuttering but not so bad especially if you avoid watching and recording at same time. I'm thinking of going back to the earlier version though because I need the 1 minute skip to skip the adverts, but how do you do this?
I don't believe you can go back to "an earlier version" of the PlayTV software. To get back the features that you want (i.e. copy to home menu, 1 minute skip) all you need to do is change your location back to "other". You will also have to re-scan the channels. I'm not entirely sure if you will be able to keep the "tvtv" EPG listings when using the other locale, as I haven't tried going back to the "other" locale yet myself.
PlayTVuser: Ok, my experience of 2.02 is mixed. Things I've noticed are: the skip button used to skip 1 minute but now skips 10 minutes, the copy to home menu is gone, EPG no change, you can specify default start and finish extra minutes, you now get better options when a new recording overlaps another on different channels and it is smart enough when on the same channel. I get stuttering but not so bad especially if you avoid watching and recording at same time. I'm thinking of going back to the earlier version though because I need the 1 minute skip to skip the adverts, but how do you do this?
Go into set up and change location to other, the channels will be a bit scrambled but apart from that all the things you mentioned should go back to normal. This will not help with the stuttering though.
Thanks DontPanic42 and HobChild. I'll try the 'other' location. I've seen others talk about tvtv EPG. What is this, how do you get it and does it fix the 1-4 hour EPG limit in NZ?. Also anybody else had experience copying recordings to Home Menu? Is it true that you only get sound if the recording was from TV3?
Yes, have a read back through this thread and you'll find all those answers.
TVTV is an addon for PlayTV you can find in the PSN store I believe? (others will know for sure). Yes it uses the internet to download an EPG to PlayTV, so you'd need your PS3 connected to the internet full time for this. Doesn't work with all channels though currently, and given Prime,Maori TV are not on TIVO I can't see that changing too soon myself.
I wouldn't bother with the copy to the Home Menu/XMB (cross menu bar) at the moment for a few reasons. One is yes, the PS3 can not play the NZ Freeview standard audio format. So you will get no audio watching any channel other than TV3, as TV3 has a second Dolby audio track which the PS3 can play. The audio is still on the recordings, just the PS3 can't play it.
The second reason is the FAT 4GB file size limit which means you can't copy anything off from the home menu/XMB above this anyway, which is often shows in HD, (others will know file size for sure).
Hope some of that helps.
Yeah, changing location will bring back a lot of the capabilities but you lose things specific to NZ, like the channel order problem comes back etc. No biggy and this may allow you to export recorded files perhaps. Personally I'd treat PlayTV as a closed shop, you just start it and watch it.
Ok, so I've bought the PlayTV Chat TV addon (cost $15.50 NZ). I only did this because I wanted to get 7 day EPG. I had also moved location to 'other' and this fixed the 10 min skip back to 1 min skip (awesome! I hate watching adverts). Trouble is the 7 day EPG did not show up under 'other' location, even though all the chat TV stuff showed up.
So to recap: Location set to "NZ" gives you 7 Day EPG (missing Prime and TV3 and TV3Plus) 10 minute skip No series link
Location 'Other' no 7 day EPG 1 minute skip No series link
Any corrections or additions for other suckers like me out there trying to get a better product? Maybe the earlier comment about TIVO is right.
Interesting about the stuttering/pixelating problems that some people are experiencing with PlayTV. I had the same problem myself until I upgraded my HDD on the PS3. It had the original 80GB hard drive, it was a pain to watch any recorded material as it was so bad, I even disabled the buffer to see if would help, but it still performed poorly.
Last Monday, I installed a Samsung 640GB 5400rpm hard drive, and reinstalled all the data, now everything runs almost perfectly. I even played a game while recording and it still worked well. I don't know if it was a HDD issue or the fact that I reinstalled the software on the PS3 that fixed it (corrupt file perhaps?)
bill9001: Interesting about the stuttering/pixelating problems that some people are experiencing with PlayTV. I had the same problem myself until I upgraded my HDD on the PS3. It had the original 80GB hard drive, it was a pain to watch any recorded material as it was so bad, I even disabled the buffer to see if would help, but it still performed poorly.
Last Monday, I installed a Samsung 640GB 5400rpm hard drive, and reinstalled all the data, now everything runs almost perfectly. I even played a game while recording and it still worked well. I don't know if it was a HDD issue or the fact that I reinstalled the software on the PS3 that fixed it (corrupt file perhaps?)
Like wise I have an original PS3 60gb and upgraded to a 320GB HDD and have no problems with PlayTV at all and have had PLayTV since April 2009 (import) very happy with it.
Also, I paid full price for mine (pre ordered on Mighty Ape) I still think it is good value compared to buying other dvr's such as MagicTV. Besides it's heaps cheaper than my first VCR that cost me $1750 back in 1985!
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