
I really had my hopes up when it was announced that the Playstation 3 firmware v3.0 would include ‘iPlayer support’. The iPlayer site already worked rather well in the PS3 browser, so this sounded like a proper ‘iPlayer app’, allowing shows to be downloaded rather than streamed. I guess I read too much into that announcement.
Once the 3.0 firmware is installed, it places an iPlayer icon in the TV menu which then just launches the browser - business as usual. It does solve a problem with using the Blu-Ray remote though. It used to leave the cursor in the middle of the screen, which could only be removed if you used the standard controller to move it off screen (an art in itself). Now you just select the video and it immediately plays full screen without fuss. Not as much as I’d hoped for, but better all the same.
The main downside is that some of the videos that Matt Carey and I tried, were of noticeably lower quality, but not all. Hopefully this is just early teething troubles. If you’ve installed the update - how are you finding the quality?