HARDWARE REVIEW

PlayStation TV Review

by Rob Pritchard, June 27th, 2015

Back when the PlayStation Vita made its debut, a lot of Sony’s fan base wanted to see some of the games with higher production values make their way to a home console, in particular Freedom Wars and Persona 4 Golden. Their prayers were answers when Sony announced the PlayStation Vita TV, known as the PS TV or PlayStation TV outside of Japan.

The PlayStation TV is a micro- console, similar in nature to the Amazon Fire TV, GameStick and the OUYA. Originally released back in November 2014 in the UK for £89, after initial sales proved less than optimistic, it was reduced to £45 back in March this year. It shares the exact same physical CPU and GPU as Sony’s newest portable, which makes perfect sense, as the main purpose of the unit is to allow PS Vita games to be played on a television. It is also able to connect to your PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 using the Remote Play feature, similar to how the PSP was able to be connect to the PlayStation 3.

Inside the box, you will find the PlayStation TV unit, along with a set of instructions, a power supply and at the time of print, a voucher to claim three selected games from the PlayStation Network. There are no controllers included with the unit, so you will need a DualShock 3 or DualShock 4. The latter controller is definitely the more favourable option, as it is possible to use the controller’s touchpad in lieu of the front and rear touchpads on the Vita. To connect and charge your controller, a USB 2.0 port is also included, but you will need to provide your own cables to sync the controller successfully. A word of warning, all the third party wired controllers from the PlayStation 3 that I tested with the unit will not work with this device.

The design of the PlayStation TV is small and sleek, about the size of a credit card, with rounded edges and covered with the piano black plastic that has been used on previous PlayStation models. On the back, you can find an Ethernet port, although the unit supports up to Wireless N Wi-Fi connections if you are not close to your Internet connection. To ensure total compatibility with your PlayStation Vita, you can insert any of the official memory cards from the portable powerhouse, although you can make do with the internal 1GB of memory if you do not wish to play any Vita games. If you have a back library of PlayStation Vita titles, there is a slot for the physical game cards on the right hand side of the unit.

Anyone without a high definition TV will not be able to use this console, as it’s only video output is through a single HDMI port. There are a range of video modes available, ranging from 480p to 1080i, depending on how you like to play. Although it is wonderful to see the Vita games in full high definition, my personal recommendation is that you play any games in 720p, as the interlacing effects found in the 1080i mode are quite numerous and can prove to be highly distracting. After playing several games on the PlayStation TV, I can confirm that they work exactly as the same as they do on the Vita, and thanks to the additional resolution, they look better than ever. There is no option available to connect an external sound system to the console, but if you happen to have a model that extracts the sound from the HDMI connection, it is more than likely that you will be able to utilise it.

Although it would be wonderful to play every Vita game on the television, sadly this is not possible with the PlayStation TV. Notable exclusions include Uncharted Golden Abyss, LittleBigPlanet and Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc. It is possible that some older games will become compatible via patches in the future, but Sony have insisted on the feature being included in future titles, as they did with the trophies feature on the PlayStation 3. If you were hoping to be able to record your gameplay using a capture card, I am afraid that HDCP is enabled, and there seems to be no way to disable it temporarily to my current knowledge.

With regard to the Remote Play feature, it can be used through an internet connection, or through a local network connection like with previous consoles. Nearly every PlayStation 4 game can be streamed to the micro-console, but if used with a PlayStation 3, the same limitations that are present on the Vita also apply to this unit. This means that only PS1 games and selected audio-visual content can be played using the network dependant connection. After testing the Remote Play feature, I didn’t find any major issues, and if you have a strong internet connection, it is possible to stream at 60 frames per second, over the 30 frames that is enabled by default.

Overall, the PlayStation TV was originally overpriced for the functionality that it offered, but now that the price cut is in place, I can wholeheartedly endorse Sony’s first attempt at stepping into the micro-console market. While it is a shame that some of the more popular titles are not compatible, and that it doesn’t come with a controller in the box for anyone who doesn’t own another PlayStation console, it is a well-built piece of hardware that deserves all the attention it can get.