I cannot help but find it somewhat ironic that I have barely used my Playstation 3 for gaming lately – and no, this isn’t a poke making fun of the PS3 for being a poor gaming platform, as I do quite enjoy my collection of games for it – but rather I have been using it as a media box. I have a 1TB media server that streams music, photos, and video to the useful little player, and I can access everything I want through the XMB with a handy wireless controller. Not to mention the BluRay player. Now, that has just gotten better after I’ve begun making use of PlayOn – software that allows me to stream Hulu, CBS, YouTube, Netflix, and more to the PS3.
It is interesting to me to see how much media center/server technology is developing lately and, while it is still restricted by a lot of draconian business practices in certain companies, I am very excited to see how it continues to evolve in the future. It is even better to me to see this usable on a game console, giving it far more use than it had before – even if that use was a good on its own. It is a bit like how the iPhone, which is already very useful as a multi-purpose device, but is becoming huge as a gaming platform.
