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ABC iView live on PS3

Less of a "channel" and more of a "bookmark", ABC's iView service went live after months of anticipation on the Sony PlayStation 3 on the weekend. Is this a new area of video-on-demand free of the shackles of Freeview?

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
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Ty Pendlebury
2 min read

Less of a "channel" and more of a "bookmark", ABC's iView service went live on the Sony PlayStation 3 on the weekend after months of anticipation. Is this a new area of video-on-demand free of the shackles of Freeview? Hell no.

The new TV icon and subsequent ABC iView link, which came at the same time as the latest 3.10 firmware update, is part of Sony's push to make the PS3 the centre of the living room. It now supplies games, movies, internet and live TV — with the addition of the PlayTV module.

The new "channel" is essentially the same thing you'll see if you type the address http://www.abc.net.au/tv/iview/ into the PS3 browser, or any browser for that matter. We were expecting a dedicated app, but it was not to be.

The one downside? Whether you use the Blu-ray Remote or a third-party solution such as the Logitech Harmony Adapter for PlayStation 3 it won't work with a remote control. But then again, neither does the PS3 browser. For it to work you need to use the PS3 controller. If this was to change, Sony would need to adapt the browser itself: say, for example, to have the cursor jump automatically to hyperlinks.

Video quality varies, but is mostly equivalent to YouTube quality. That being said, it looks great in a browser but pretty cruddy on a large-screen TV. Download limits still apply, unless you belong to one of these ISPs

You can expect to see more "channels" appear in the near future as other media companies struggle to get their names (and perhaps content) on the console as well. Let's hope they put a bit more effort into theirs.

Internode and iiNet customers are able to download iView content for free. (Credit: CNET Australia)