What's the betting that the reason for the delay is related to Sony trying to put in place some sort of DRM for the recordings?

When will retailers stop offering "pre-orders" ? Using the phrase "pre-order" is superfluous. Just like saying "PIN Number". It's just a b****y "order". There's no "PRE" about it.

"Well, I hope so, Blackadder. You know, if there's one thing I've learnt from being in the Army, it's never ignore a pooh-pooh. I knew a Major, who got pooh-poohed, made the mistake of ignoring the pooh-pooh. He pooh-poohed it! Fatal error! 'Cos it turned out all along that the soldier who pooh-poohed him had been pooh-poohing a lot of other officers who pooh-poohed their pooh-poohs. In the end, we had to disband the regiment. Morale totally destroyed... by pooh-pooh!"

I pre-ordered Mario Kart from them a couple of months ago and they had the release date down as 31st July 2008 (even though the release date had already been announced). Perhaps that's some sort of default on their system.

In all fairness; there is such a thing as a pre-order, it's just doesn't have anything to do with agreeing to purchase something sometime in the future..

personaly I spend my pre-ordering days checking out prices of rival websites and asking myself if I really need a new shiny gadget and how I will explain it to the gf when the packet gets delivered ;o)

Sorry to put the dampner on your Sony Hatefest, but it's already been confirmed to be DRM free..

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/29736/PlayTV-to-be-DRM-free

Whist I would agree that there are some b*st*rdisations of the english language that probably should not be used, it is not too hard to work out that pre-order is just short for Pre-Release Order.

And besides if you are buying something from a website you would like to be informed if it is not going to be sent straight away wouldn't you?

beat me to it. Classic Stephen Fry.

Tux cause thats what the clever clogs himself uses.

Thank you, thank you... thank you.

You edited your title, Mr Sherwood. Good man.

£60 isn't bad for a freeview DVR box.

£100 though, not a chance, so hopefully Amazon are closer to the mark.

£50 or lower though would be even better, after all it is just a receiver, the PS3 does the rest of the trickery, so they best not charge us through the nose for this thing.

'£50 or lower though would be even better, after all it is just a receiver, the PS3 does the rest of the trickery, so they best not charge us through the nose for this thing.'

Yes because as we all know software development is free. Us programmers don't need a wage, just throw us a bit of food every now and then and we'll be fine...

I'm with Gordon Ross on this. If it is short for pre-release order then say tat. You don't get charged per character these days!

Pah, I'm sick of this attitude. You're all too used to 'free' mobiles and 1 pound flights to Alicante. You get all indignant that you have to PAY for something. Freetard.

Out here in the bottom of the world, a PS3+PlayTV will be a very competitive HD DVR (let alone BluRay/DVD player or games console). In fact it'll be one of the few DVRs in the WORLD to record terrestrial Freeview HD (i.e. mpeg4) broadcasts. Maybe for you stone-agers in the UK this feature is overkill, but here it's a bargain.

Fry is a famous Machead, second only to DNA himself.

The most recent hands on report about playTV stated that it couldn't record programs whilst you're using the ps3 to play a game:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/02/ps3_takes_on_slingbox_and_wins.html

If they release it without background recording playTV will be worse than useless. Instead of making life simpler you'll have to check the TV guide for any programs you may have scheduled to record before you play a game! That's not a PVR I'd want to own.

Given that it's taken over 18 months for Sony engineers to work out how to get a text chat client to run in the background whilst playing a game (that's promised for firmware version 2.4, due out sometime this summer). I don't have much hope that they'll get background TV recording working before the release of PS4.

The most recent reports I read said the opposite, it seems that final verification that you CAN play while recording TV is what is holding the delivery of the system up.

Also, I'm curious, do you have no free to air digital HD TV in the UK as yet?

Even here in luddite Aus we've had that for years.

I disagree - it won't be worse than useless, it'd still be effective for recording programmes while out or asleep. After all, if you're in and want to watch a programme, you could always stop playing the game for a half-hour.

That said, it would be a handy feature.

As for a text chat client running in the background of games, great....I'll finally be able to see a thousand kiddies exclaiming "1337!" and "pwn3d!" while playing. I really can't wait.

@Stephen

Where did you read that they have managed to get background recording working? I'd be interested in reading the report.

No FTA HDTV in the UK (apart from a single BBC test channel in the London area), there is no room in the TV area of the radio spectrum for it. Switching off analogue won't help as the government is more interested in selling off the spectrum for a windfall income. As it stands terrestrial HDTV will probably never happen in the UK.

@Andy

Isn't the entire point of a time shifting device to record TV when you're doing something else? "Stop your game and watch the program" is hardly an appropriate solution, especially if you've paid for a pvr.

....it'll do the things i want and i don't care about the fact of playing games as i'll use my other consoles for that, but an HD DVR and a Blu Ray player for £320 (ish) is pretty bloody good value in my book... now if they can just get DTS-MA actually working that'd be spiffing :)

Ooops it seems that FTA HDTV is coming to the UK after all, they'll use new technology to squeeze the signal into the available bandwidth (and still sell off the analogue TV spectrum). I missed this news:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/05/ofcom_freeview_hdtv_dtg/

However even the playTV may not work with British HDTV since as well as MPEG4, they plan to use a new (not yet finalised) "DVB-T2" broadcast standard.