TVNZ Ondemand now on Sony PlayStation 3

Just got back from a media briefing at the Sky City Club Lounge in Auckland - any eagle-eyed PS3 users would've seen that from 7am this morning, a new icon was enabled allowing them to watch TVNZ Ondemand on their TVs.  What a perfect way to convince the better half to buy a PS3!

TVNZ are making available 150 series, and 5,000 episodes to the over 105,000 Kiwi PS3 users.  Quality can be selected with either high (700kbps) or low (300kbps), with TVNZ hoping to have higher rates (up to 3mbps) available in the future.  The quality we saw was comparable to standard definition Freeview with the video running in full screen (all over wireless!).

 
The menus are clean and easy to use. Content has been split into different categories and is aimed at both users who are catching up on shows they've missed, plus users who are just browsing for new content.  For those hoping that ads won't show, you're out of luck - the clever boffins at TVNZ have figured out how to include ads, the first in the world to do so on such a platform.

Above: Chang from The Edge catching up on the midday news.

The data used still counts towards your monthly internet cap - only Snap and Orcon have unmetered data.

A great partnership between Sony and TVNZ, and with the ease of use, I can see this as another basic alternative to TiVo, MySky and a customised HTPC.  For more info, I spotted Ben Gracewood and Russell Brown at the same event; they will no doubt be blogging about this as well.

Note: To get TVNZ Ondemand on the PS3 simply update the PS3's system software to version 3.10 or above to ensure sign in to PlayStation Network. After a few moments the TVNZ Ondemand icon will appear on the Xross Media Bar (XMB).