The PS3 - mistakenly maligned next gen console?

The PS3 is a much maligned “Next Gen” console, by the way I remember when the Super Nintendo was a “Next Gen” console so everything is relative, however, I think it exorbitant price has distracted people from it’s many virtues and a new addition due at the end of March 2008 will add further arrows to its quiver.

First, it looks fabulous and you do feel you are getting value for money from this big solid “piano black” box (I have the 60gb UK version) especially when compared to the X-Box 360, which looks like a breezeblock and feels cheap and plasticky.  Second, the version I have not only includes the PS3 games engine and the Blu-Ray DVD player common to all iterations so far but also includes a handy card reader (Compact Flash, Secure Digital and Sony Memory Stick, of course) as well as the facility to playback CDs encoded in the Super Audio format (SACD).  Further, it also has four USB ports into which can be plugged external hard drives, although it is true you can do this with the X-Box there is one thing that Bill Gates’ boys can not do with its system that the Sony box can do but more of that later.

Aesthetically and externally then the PS3 is the winner in direct competition with its rival the X-Box, the Wii is not really playing in the same game to be fair as it is a “Next Gen” console in an entirely different way. However, the way that most players will judge their systems is through the main interface and subsequently the games that the system plays.  In the former the PS3 is again a winner.

The PS3 cross bar menu system is familiar already to those of us with a PSP and is a very clever way of having multiple sub-menus nested within a simple to comprehend string of overall headings.  Thus, the Settings menu heading has over a dozen sub-headings, most of which have multiple further options to fiddle with.  There are some wonderful touches, under the games headings for instance each game save has a thumbnail of the game in question and most, if left highlighted with no further action, will then turn the background into a large desktop image of the game in question, sometimes even with animation and a soundtrack too.  Compare this with the X-Box’s rather Star Trek Next Gen feel, all very 1980s and apart from a rather pleasant sliding card effect very unsophisticated.  There is no clever nesting of options and often it is very hard to find which screen has the item you are searching for, all of which is very unsatisfactory.  The games all have achievements, which is a good feature and helps keep the interest in games after the initial thrill has gone but there is no equivalent of the Sony thumbnail/desktop graphical extravaganza.  This is however, a constant theme of Microsoft products over the years, a poorly thought-out and badly executed interface, it is ironic that they mage their fortune on a poor interpretation of Apple’s interface and Vista continues this tradition as a poor man Mac OS X.

The real decider on which console is the best should be the games but often it takes a year or two for a console to start reaching its’ potential, thus the X-Box is now in its stride with many games looking great and playing very well, Bioshock being an obvious joy this year but let us not forget Forza Motorsport, Project Gotham Racing 4 or Mass Effect.  There are very few games available for the PS3 even now and none that exist solely on that machine which reach these heights.  Having said that there are signs that things are improving, Ratchet and Clank is beautiful to look at and the next iteration of Gran Turismo looks like it is going to be a winner and it was very generous of them to give us a free mini-game to download from the Playstation Network store (I will cover the respective internet stores and experiences in future blogs).

The one thing that the X-Box can not do and it is here that I think ultimately the PS3 will win out is in its use of the PSP.  I will compare the PSP and the DS in another future blog but for now it is the way the PSP links with the PS4 that is of great interest.  I have an external hard drive attached to my PS3.  On it are programmes I have recorded from the television as well as backups of some of my DVDs.  You can register your PSP with your PS3 and then enable Remote Play, this nifty software trick means that you can take over your PS3 with your PSP, pretty useless in the same room especially as you can not play games through the PSP but you can connect to your home PS3 through the internet.  Imagine the scene, you are sat in a coffee shop in town with some time to kill.  You turn on your PSP, link into the coffee shops wi-fi network and take control of your PS3.  You navigate to your videos and start watching that episode of the Mighty Boosh that you recorded last night.  Better yet, you are abroad on holiday and you can log into your PS3 to watch films from anywhere in the world.

The icing on the cake for this will be released around the end of March 2008 in the UK.  Play TV is a Freeview device that you can attach to your PS3 turning it into a Tivo like device (or Sky + without the paid for satellite channels of course).  You can then watch these recording on your PSP on the train on the way into work.  Hopefully you will be able to set recordings up from your PSP too.

Therefore, it is the media features of the PS3 that I believe will make it win out over the X-Box.  The Blu-Ray drive is a godsend, especially as the HD-DVD drive is a further £100- add-on for the 360.  The Play TV add-on and the integration with the PSP is a winning combination that Microsoft can not emulate as they have eschewed the handheld market all together.  Personally for me the SACD feature when hooked up to my AV unit via an optical cable is also a joy.  The 360 allows you to rent films already and indeed most are available in HD format but this feature is likely to come to the PS3 too given Sony’s link to the Hollywood film industry.  It is ironic that I have dismissed the gaming features of these consoles in just a few words and instead have focused on their non-core functions but he ability to access media from anywhere rather than having to carry your collection round with you is one of the key battlegrounds of this increasingly connected age.

Playstation Worldwide portal

Playstation UK portal

Playstation PC store

Your PSP website

Star Trek Original Series 1 - HD-DVD Set

One of the great joys of my childhood in the early 1970s was Star Trek.  My sister and I were transfixed by the mystery of each episode, of the fantastical future in which aliens mingled with humans, people spoke through small wireless handsets, computers analysed things so quickly and efficiently, food was cooked in an instant and the adorable tribles lived (we even adopted one at Trek convention in Slough).  This was a time when science was going to answer all the big questions (and many of the small ones too), a time when I could walk home from school, look up at the moon in the winter sky and know that two men were walking around on that distant satellite.

No matter how good Jean-Luc was or how terrific Enterprise looked they could never better those Monday eveings watching Kirk, Spock and the rest solve everything and get over the loss of another crew member all in the space of about 50 minutes.  I have bought the odd video and subsequently the odd DVD of later versions of Star Trek but when I got my HD-DVD player and saw that series 1 of the original Star Trek had been cleaned up and re-mastered for the new format I knew it would be one of my first purchases.

So here I am just before Christmas, staying with my parents (both rather long in the tooth), visiting my sister and my two adorable nephews watching the original Star Trek over evening tea, just as we did over 30 years ago.  The difference being the picture is beautiful, full of colour as anything from the 60’s should be and the only things they have really changed are the old special effects such as the Enterprise flying round a planet, which have been replaced by modern day CGI.  It is unobtrusive enough not to spoil the original look and feel but elps the modern mind believe in the story in the way the old effects could not.  Admittedly the wobbly sets and planet exteriors clearly shot on an LA soundstage do stop me from suspending my sense of disbelief but there is enough magic still in this programme to allow me to forgive all that, heavens I can even forgive the bloke in a cartoon crocodile suit that Kirk apparently find terrifying before defeating in a fight.

A glorious restoration that rather like repairing and rebuilding a grand stately home gives us an idea of the original brilliance of the future as seen by Gene Roddenberry over 40 years ago.  Read more about it here:

StarTrek.com

And you can read about the original series at Wikipedia here:

wikipedia.org: Star Trek: The Original Series 

How I broke my leg

So how did I end up with a broken leg?  Well, I was commuting to work and I had to change trains at Clapham Junction, as often happens there were delays (a landslip in the Westcote Park area was the apparent cause as it had been all week, the really odd thing I that I have it on good authority that the area is really rather flat).  Anyway, the platform was crowded and the timetable boards were not functioning properly so we had no idea when the next train was coming in.  One showed up and we let the half dozen or so people get off it and then we all tried to get on.  I was quite near the front and managed to get on when some guy on board decided that he had to get off.  He was in too much of a rush to ask us to get out of the way so he just pushed his way through.  Of course, he shoved me and I lost my balance.  I tried to put my right leg back down onto the platform to keep my balance but instead it went down between the train and the platform.  As I fell I grabbed nto the back of his coat but he kep on walking off into the distance and down I went.  My right leg, the one flayling in mid-air was fine, I was caught by a couple of people on the platform but not before I had heard my left leg crack as the pressure bent it in a direction it was not designed to go.

My language consisted mostly of “F’s”, with the occassional “I have broken my ankle”.  I was moved back onto the train but I was partially out of the doors and some helpful commuters said, “Can you try putting some weight on it, we need to close the door so the train can leave?”, to which I responded with more “F’s” and my statement about broken bones.  Now I am quite squeemish with anyones blood but I am especially squemish with my own and although I did not look straight at it I could see out of the corner of my eye that my foot was not facing in a normal direction.

I was carried off the train by a couple of burly guys, at least one of whom was a member of staff and a female passenger brought my bag.  She then proceeded to tell the train staff that they should not have moved me until the ambulance had arrived.  I waited what seemed like an age for the first aiders and they then called for an ambulance.  In all it must have been about 30 minutes before the ambulance arrived, oh the joys of rush hour in London, however, they were fantastic and the laughing gas helped with the pain.

I was taken to the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and to cut a long story short they diagnosed a broken fibia and tibia, which they repaired with some screws, a plate and a wire (can’t wait to go through the metal detector at an airport).

I will cover my hospital stay later on in this blog, meanwhile you can check out the hospital here:

Chelsea & Westminster Hospital website