A while ago, my dad bought a PlayStation 3 solely for its media capabilities. Sure, he plays Fallout 3 and Gran Turismo 5 on it from time to time but the reason he spent hundreds of pounds on it was so that he could plug it into his HDTV and use it for PlayTV and to play videos.
Sony has, of late, quietened its marketing of the PS3’s media capabilities, instead focussing on the superb games line up it has. That might be about to change though, with Sony Japan announcing a new standalone streaming box with 500GB of storage. The box, which will be released this summer and retail for the equivalent of roughly £130, pushes media to Sony’s network capable devices.
It’s called Nasne and it works with PS Vita, PS3, Vaio and Sony’s tablets. It also comes with the Torne digital TV and DVR suite that Sony has been selling in Japan for a while now – it’s their kind of equivalent of PlayTV. The device is compatible with digital and satellite tuners and is capable of pushing recorded content, even before it has finished recording, to Sony’s other devices.
There’s no news of a western release but hopefully this product indicates Sony’s willingness to move into this area even further. I’d love an update for PlayTV.
Source: MCV
colmshan1990
So this is basically Sony’s Apple TV?
cc_star
Everything AppleTV does is built into Sony or any brands TVs…
The advantage to this is a PVR
gideon1451
Nasne & Torne must be names which sound better in Japanese or something.
colossalblue
I quite like them. Much better than all that Q-related nonsense like Qore and Qriocity. That was proper Qrap.
Youles
Lol.
I like that it looks like a mini-slim. But to get all the benefits you’d have to have quite a lot of money to have bought a lot of Sony’s hardware
Watchful
Nice idea, but only 500GB? I guess its down to Sony wanting you to stream data from its network services rather than store too much locally.
Perhaps I’m an outlier on the curve but my PS3 can see 4TB of external drives normally and has a 740GB HDD installed. And that’s before I switch my PCs on and it can see the content on those.
gazzagb
Eurogamer reports to increase the storage, you can add an external HDD to nasne.
Grey_Ghost13
Looks like someone sat on a verticle PS3!
coruscant
Yeah it looks really strange to me…
cam the man
Yeah it does :-}, not the best looking bit of tech I’ve seen.
gazzagb
Knowing Sony’s pricing of this kind of hardware, I imagine most people would just set up their laptop/PC as a media centre and stream it all from there.
ron_mcphatty
Yay! Now my dad can flog his Ps3 too! Shotgun.
YOURMUMANDME
My mums had a Sony digital box not too dissimilar from that (albeit square shaped) for quite a while. Like a digi-box-come-media-hub, it’s storage is expandable with external HDD’s as well.
What’s the difference?
JaffaMan24
If it does HD freeview I’m sold! Play TV is pretty damn good and one of the best PVRs i’ve seen and used. The menu system and fast forward/rewind puts Sky+ to shame. Just a shame the UK one doesn’t support our HD format.