Hands up anyone who hates the concept of PlayOn?
The idea of having to keep my laptop on just to stream a reasonable quality YouTube video to my ps3 just goes against the grain. Even if PlayOn was free (costs $39.99), I probably wouldn't use it.
Well, with something like NetFlix, it looks like this may well be our only option for some time to come (boo hoo Sony!).
Sony needs to understand that just because I spent $399 on my ps3, primarily for Blu-ray / DVD and the odd game, that doesn't mean I have any spare cash to pay $1.99 to watch a single episode of a tv show, let alone $4.50 to watch the X-Files movie in HD, when it costs me only $9.44 (inc. tax) with NetFlix to watch 32 episodes (usually 8 DVDs a month, with four episodes per DVD) of X-Files etc.
Well, for YouTube at least, there is an alternative
.
Just on your ps3, you can use your favorite YouTube video grabber site to download a high quality or even hd (720p?) mp4 video to the ps3's hard disk and once downloaded, you can then watch the video full screen in excellent quality - the difference is significant (I should add, not all YouTube videos are available in HQ/HD). The normal quality videos are fuzzy and are doing my eyes in on my 1080p tv.
To get the address of the YouTube video, go to the YouTube page in the browser and press the triangle ps3 button and select "Copy Address of This Page" from the File menu. You can then Paste this url into the video grabber's site (buttom right button in text extry dialog).
To download the mp4 video from the video grabber site, do not click the video but instead position the mouse cursor on the video and select "Save Target' from the File menu. The video is then saved, optionally in background, to your hard disk, just like you were downloading something from the PlayStation Store. Once downloaded (you get a message where downloading in background), you just click on the video and hey presto!
As a matter of interest, while investigating this whole issue, I uploaded a high quality fmv video and flash player to a web site and tried to view the video in the ps3 browser; the video played but was super juddery. Whether this was because the web server couldn't deliver the video quick enough or something else, I don't know. The standard quality video worked fine.