Since the release of the PS3, Sony has continued its push to expand PS3’s functionality through a mixture of hardware and software apps. Over the last year we’ve seen the release of Home, Life With Playstation, PlayTV, and now we have a new on-demand music video service: VidZone.
VidZone is a completely free application currently hosting over 10,000 music videos which are streamable directly to your PS3. VidZone CTO Michael Russo describes it as “not just about giving music fans access to thousands of music videos, but offering a completely interactive and personalised music experience”. It sounds good, but is it better than what the PS3 already has on offer?
The download is a tiny 23MB from the PlayStation Store, and once installed it sits neatly at the top of the Music section on the XMB. Initial setup is a bit of a laborious process, but within about 10 minutes you should be up and running, able to listen to the excellent selection of songs on offer. Videos range impressively from live recordings of bands such as Metallica, to current chart-toppers like Dizzee Rascal and Lady Gaga. The service offers more than just mainstream pop music though, so even fans of more avant-garde genres will likely find something to enjoy. The video quality is decent too, with video streaming in 4:3 at roughly standard definition. The service is ad-supported but the adverts themselves are unobtrusive, only showing in the menus and at the end of each video in a small banner.
The home page features a number of playlists to choose from, or you have the ability to browse the entire collection to create your own. Videos can be watched in a smaller window while navigating the menus and the switch to full screen mode is seamless with a push of the Select button. Sadly the search interface is sluggish and unintuitive, and can turn playlist creation into a real chore. You can search by video name, artist, or genre, but to narrow down your search further you need to scroll through letters akin to entering your initials into an arcade hi-score table. In the day and age of wireless keyboards and pad-mounted keypads it seems like a massive oversight, and we can only hope that this is addressed in a future update.
For those of you who are into your pop music, you’ll be happy to know that the current list is bang up to date. We are also assured by Russo that the videos “will be updated every week, and in terms of quantities, those updates will be in the hundreds”. Good news! And what else does the future hold for VidZone? The developers are purportedly “working on loads of new features and additions”, so hopefully the few minor gripes will soon be ironed out. Whether this free service might damage the popularity of SingStar’s SingStore is something that will become evident to Sony in the coming months.
But even with all of this functionality, the success or failure of VidZone will likely depend on whether it can outshine something that has been available on PS3 since its launch. YouTube works great through the PS3 Internet Browser, so why would users choose an application with a limited number of tracks when they can select from the vast number online? Despite the clunky search interface, it’s less of a stress using VidZone as you’re guaranteed a certain quality and availability of the video. YouTube is rife with poor quality, incomplete, and mislabeled videos, and this is where VidZone wins as a general music video service. VidZone will never have the sheer quantity of videos, but at least you won’t end up queuing a video of somebody dancing along to their CD player!
In all, VidZone is an excellent addition to the PS3’s multimedia portfolio. If you’re a PS3 owner with an Internet connection, an interest in music, and an interest in free things, then there is every reason to check this out.
The service is currently only available in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Australia; Americans will have to wait a while longer for this fantastic addition to the PS3 service list.
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