The Sony PlayTV, which will more than likely never see the light of day in North America, is primarily being positioned as a Europe-only device, Sony says. While that’s not exactly breaking news—it only works with the DVB-T standard—some people are running into problems when trying to use it in European countries outside of the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and France.
The problem arises when trying to use PlayTV in countries where MPEG-4 is the encoding standard; PlayTV can only handle old-style MPEG-2 broadcasts. Now, that’s not to say the device will never support MPEG-4 broadcast, but that it doesn’t support them right now. Cross your fingers, Europe.
And if all of this is Greek to you, the PlayTV is an accessory for the PS3 that essentially turns the system into a TiVo. While using the USB device you can record over-the-air DVB-T broadcasts, pause, rewind, etc. Since it only works with the DVB-T standard we won’t see it in its current incarnation in North America because we, courageously, use the ATSC standard.