PlayStation TV: Like Having a Second PS4 Anywhere

[Sarah LeBoeuf]

PlayStation TV: Like Having a Second PS4 Anywhere

Released in Japan as PlayStation Vita TV last year, PlayStation TV is making its way east in the fall.

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[Roxas1359]

So the west isn't getting the white model? That makes me sad because I really liked how the white controller looked with the Vita TV. The only reason I'm getting it is so that I can record some Vita games. This is cheaper than getting a Vita Capture Card installed onto your Vita for sure, as that costs between $300 to $500 just for one of them.
It'd be easier if Sony had just released cables like for the PSP, but I guess they just wanted to get more money. :/

 

[Darmy647]

Not trying to be a prude, but why didn't the article talk about the Vita aspect? I know you can play vita games on it too.

 

[RvLeshrac]

The PSTV is almost literally nothing like having a second PS4. If anyone is using your "first" PS4 for anything whatsoever, you can't stream to the PSTV.

I don't have a big opinion on the PSTV (All it is, is a Vita with no screen and independent controller), but explicitly wanted to call out that bullshit.

 

[Baresark]

Not trying to be a prude, but why didn't the article talk about the Vita aspect? I know you can play vita games on it too.

I too noticed they didn't mention Vita... which was actually the big draw for me. I wouldn't mind playing some of my Vita games on a TV when I'm home. But... did they remove that feature in the US release?

 

[Roxas1359]

... did they remove that feature in the US release?

No they didn't, the article doesn't mention it. I've read other articles mentioning that you can play some Vita games with the device as well. Hopefully this means Sony actually does things with the Vita in the US, because it's PSN stores is very very bad when compared to that of other countries. For example, you can't buy or do license transfers for the Crash Bandicoot series and the Spyro the Dragon series in the US, but you can in Japan and the PAL regions.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

I stillllll see no reason why you would want to stream from a PS4 in your house. Remote Play was a cool idea since your PSP could stream your PS3 games while you walked from the WC to the kitchen to make a snack then back to you PS3 area or out to the porch for some FF7/star gazing. With this thing that has to plug into a TV and wall outlet, your freedom from cords in not there. The PS4 could be moved with 2 cords being unplugged.(In fact, I kept a spare HDMI and IEC C13 cord(your basic computer power cord) left right in the home theater cabinet when I wanted to play on a bigger screen. It was super easy just to yank out the PS3 from wherever is was leaving the cords behind.)The fact that the host PS4 cannot do anything else while streaming just makes this feature a solution to a problem that's above first world problems.

It'd be easier if Sony had just released cables like for the PSP, but I guess they just wanted to get more money. :/

I'd bet as soon as the Vita picks up, Sony will reveal a 2nd redesigned model(I guess the original had an unused video scalier chip and port but the new model dropped it) with MHL support or a micro HDMI port. Of course they could have realized we liked plugging in our PSPs into bigger screens and used ports on the Vita from the get-go. But how were they supposed to milk us? Oh yeah, like you said in the last PS TV thread, proprietary flash memory.

Not trying to be a prude, but why didn't the article talk about the Vita aspect? I know you can play vita games on it too.

That's the main draw this thing has for me. But it seems Sony did pull their usual E3 fail of mentioning "please buy a Vita" once or twice then completely forgetting about its games when mentioning anything relevant to them. I also wonder why they dropped "Vita" from the title. That gives the impression they are loosing faith in their own product.

 

[Maxtro]

The future of the PlayStation TV lies with PlayStation Now.

For $99 you can play PS3 games without having to buy a PS3. Since a new PS3 costs around $220, that's a good deal. Well depending on how well PlayStation now works out.

The real kicker is if/when PS4 games will be available on PlayStation Now.

If that time comes and PlayStation Now has good quality, I don't see why I should bother with buying a PS4.

 

[J Tyran]

I stillllll see no reason why you would want to stream from a PS4 in your house.

So you can play in more rooms than the one the PS4 is actually located in? I have an Nvidia Shield and its great for that kind of thing, what happens if you want to play some PS4 in bed? Unless you have two PS4s you are going to have lug your PS4 out of the living room, sure you can attempt to dismiss that level of convenience by saying "first world problems" but that doesn't move your argument any further away from "I don't have a use for this therefore no-one can else could ever have a use for this". At the end of the day why should your needs and convenience dictate to an entire market what their needs and demands for convenience be?

$99 in order to not have to unplug things and carry them about is worth it to some people, its good value considering I paid £200 for a similar feature for a PC.

OT

This wont be any good for streaming beyond your house, with my experience with my Shield this kind of streaming is useless anywhere outside your own personal network (even then you need to make sure its pretty robust as well). I did have some luck with some 4x games but anything fast paced or latency sensitive you can forget it, even if you have a great connection with a good UL speed there is no way to tell or ensure reliability of the connection all the way from your PS4 at home to wherever you are trying to stream to.

Sucks you cannot use a Vita like this though.

 

[Strazdas]

ech, more lies in the title? Can i take a PS4 game disc put it into the PSTV and play it? no? well then it is not like another PS4. oh and even streaming from PS4, its still a single PS4 since the host cannot do anything else beside stream it.

So you can play in more rooms than the one the PS4 is actually located in?

because once you place PS4 in one room it cannot be moved?

 

[J Tyran]

So you can play in more rooms than the one the PS4 is actually located in?

because once you place PS4 in one room it cannot be moved?

Well considering that I never claimed the PS4 couldn't/shouldn't be moved (which would bloody stupid) you quote mined that bit to avoid the part where I highlighted that some people might want the convenience of not having to move it? Is there any actual reason you did that apart from being able to make a snarky comment? You have not actually presented anything at all really, contention for the point of contention with no real rebuttal against someone wanting the conveiance of not having to rummage behind their AV setup to unplug their console in order to move it.

Some people take pride in having a tidy setup, some people like to have well managed wires you cannot see and some of those people might want to play their PS4s in other rooms o a regular basis. If they play PS4, lets say in bed as much as they play it in their living room they are face with two choices. Either buy two PS4s or move it, if they have a tidy AV setup they have to carefully manage the wires every time and spend time and effort each time putting everything back right. The convenience of buying a streaming device may have some appeal for those people, for the people that just dump a console wherever or have a random collection of furniture they might not care about grabbing the console and moving it twice a day.

Oh and I can also see another use for this if the streaming is good enough, using it as "wireless HDMI" transmitter for a large wall mounted TV for anyone that hasn't got an open wall channel and either doesn't want trunking on the wall or having to channel the wall again to add another device (or dangling HDMI leads in the case of tramps that don't care, but then wires dangling is no biggie for them anyway). The PS TV is small enough to attach to the wall out of sight (strong Velcro should be enough to fix it to the wall or the TV/TV mount) so the PS4 can wherever else in the room and if the streaming quality is good enough it would be a good way of avoiding wall trunking.

 

[Kahani]

The game played fine, and I probably wouldn't even have known I was playing via PlayStation TV if I hadn't been told

Given the usual level of truthfulness at these events, you were probably playing it on a PC anyway. Seriously though, I really don't get the point of this demonstration. "Here's a way to play games when you're in a different place from your console. Why not try it out on this setup that's attached directly to the console in exactly the same way it would be if this new service didn't exist at all." If they'd opened up the unit and gone "Surprise! The PS4 is actually in the next room." it might have been a little more impressive.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

So both PS4 and this TV box have to both be on and connected to the internet? Or is the TV box connected to a cloud type thing which your PSN account is on? If its streaming from your PS4 wouldnt that cause problems with the person that playing the PS4? I dont no much about IT but that sounds like the PS4 is doing 2 things at once so wouldnt that effect the PS4?

 

[superline51]

If they'd opened up the unit and gone "Surprise! The PS4 is actually in the next room." it might have been a little more impressive.

What would have been truly impressive is if they said "Surprise! The PS4 is actually back at Sony HQ!"

 

[superline51]

So both PS4 and this TV box have to both be on and connected to the internet? Or is the TV box connected to a cloud type thing which your PSN account is on? If its streaming from your PS4 wouldnt that cause problems with the person that playing the PS4? I dont no much about IT but that sounds like the PS4 is doing 2 things at once so wouldnt that effect the PS4?

It works just like Remote Play with the Vita. The little box will connect to the internet, or to the PS4 directly if its close enough, and then you stream. I haven't really tested out what happens when you try to use the actual PS4 while its streaming.

 

[Vrach]

Sounds cool, this is one thing I didn't understand about WiiU, if you have a controller that can play a game on its own screen, why not allow it to connect through a wi-fi or something and let you play your games from anywhere?

That said, I'm not a fan of how you say they demoed it. Why not hook it up to a different wi-fi and show the capability that way? It's one thing for it to be on the same network, completely another to connect from anywhere in the world. What's the necessary bandwidth for it to work seamlessly?

 

[J Tyran]

Why not hook it up to a different wi-fi and show the capability that way? It's one thing for it to be on the same network, completely another to connect from anywhere in the world. What's the necessary bandwidth for it to work seamlessly?

From personal experience with this kind of streaming I can confidently say they didn't try to demo it because its useless and barely works, when it works well its as good as Onlive and there is no way to ensure it works well. You need a good and very stable internet connection at home or wherever the "parent" device is for a start, low jitter, excellent line quality, minimal packet loss and ping with a good upload speed.

Then you need the same from the connection you are using the receiving device on, with public wifi like in a cafe or airport and/or using a mobile 3/4G internet connection you can imagine how difficult that can be. Finally absolutely everything in between the two needs to be perfect. No scheduling, delays, throttling or running around multiple nodes if/when the connection is passed on to the higher tier part of the connection. It can help if you can setup a personal VPN though, but there are to many factors that will ruin the experience.

I do not own a PS4 or PS TV so I cannot make specific claims but the technology will not be all that different, when I tried the PS3 to Vita remoteplay it was fine (within the limitations and issues of that platform ofc) around the house and I could get it sort of working at my sisters who has a fairly good connection and shares the same ISP as me and lives fairly close to me, if you have ever been playing a multiplayer game with the occasional annoying but not unplayable lag spike it was like that. Annoying but playable and its something you can get used to like playing a slightly laggy game the way we do from time to time anyway.

Over 3G mobile data it was hopeless and when I tried it at public wifi it was good sometimes but generally bad. I never tried 4G with the Vita though, my Vita doesn't have wireless internet but I could have tried using a 4G phone as an access point but never have and being unable I never tried using a Vitas own 3G connection which might change things but I dont know. 4G didn't make much difference with the Shield when I tethered that as the speed doesn't seem to be the biggest variable once you get passed the "good enough" point.

The same goes for my Nvidia Shield, great around the house but hopeless whenever I tried to stream from my PC to the Shield over the internet. You need a robust home network too for the best experience, make sure it has good bandwidth (300MB/sec to throw an arbitrary number if you have multiple users/devices at home) and it has no scheduling settings or overly restrictive firewall that would interfere as well.

The PS TV cannot be all that different to existing devices so in my opinion it will be hopeless using it over the internet most of the time.

 

[Vrach]

snip

Yep, that was my point and what I expect as well. To be fair, the technology isn't at fault, you just need an amazing internet connection both at home and wherever you plan to use it, which diminishes its use to pretty much nothing.

That said, I doubt you'd want to use this at a coffee shop or an airport, from what I understand, you need a TV for it. And that would have its uses, bringing it to a friend's place rather than taking the whole PS4 or taking it abroad if you feel like gaming for a while in a hotel or something. But still, without rock solid connection on both ends (and a pretty amazing one at that), it's just... not likely to work.

 

[gorfias]

We are getting closer to that day I've been expecting. I have a nice, large, desktop computer behind my TV in a family room. I use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it and play games on an Xbox 360 controller. Steam offers a lot of bargains so it's all good. BUT

I know a day is coming when most of that functionality will come out of a small, inexpensive box.

My 5 year old computer cost about $1400 then. This box is $99. One day I'll have grand kids, and they'll mock me. A lot.

 

[J Tyran]

snip

Yep, that was my point and what I expect as well. To be fair, the technology isn't at fault, you just need an amazing internet connection both at home and wherever you plan to use it, which diminishes its use to pretty much nothing.

That said, I doubt you'd want to use this at a coffee shop or an airport, from what I understand, you need a TV for it. And that would have its uses, bringing it to a friend's place rather than taking the whole PS4 or taking it abroad if you feel like gaming for a while in a hotel or something. But still, without rock solid connection on both ends (and a pretty amazing one at that), it's just... not likely to work.

Sorry about that, I was mainly rambling about the Vita and Shield without making it clear about the PS TV needing well, a TV. I have not travelled for ages so my experience isn't recent but do hotel TVs actually have inputs now? Back in the day (9yrs ago or more) those special TVs they had never had any kind of SCART or AV inputs at all, they wanted you to buy the satellite TV service when you where so they made sure you couldn't plug in your own gadgets like those DVD players the size of a Diskman.

If they still have those special TVs without any HDMI or any other inputs I guess they only portable use would be if your visiting friends or family, which would be incredibly useful still if it worked right.

I wouldn't say it diminishes its usefulness completely, if (when?) I get a PS4 there would be four places around the house I might want to play it. Being able to stream it instead of carrying a console around would more convenient if say my friends came around and we wanted to play a local co-op game like Diablo III.