Sony Remote Play: Cool tech you won't use

By Joseph Hanlon on 18 June 2009

You want to watch videos stored on your PS3 streamed to your mobile phone? It might sound like pie-in-the-sky tech, but Sony has developed exactly this and it's called Remote Play. It's a shame that most Aussies will never use it.

Sony Ericsson's Aino: the first phone with Remote Play. (Credit: Sony Ericsson)

Remote Play is software both on the PlayStation 3 and a compatible Sony Ericsson phone — to be released first on the Aino. Remote Play gives you control over your PS3's media functionality, letting you view media stored on the hard disk of the machine, and power it on and off.

When Remote Play is activated, the PS3 scales down its output to phone resolution (about VGA quality) and streams exactly what you see on the TV to your handset. On the TV this looks grainy and blurry, but on the phone you see the same picture crystal clear, including any full-length movie you have saved, or episodes of your favourite TV shows.

The reason most Australians won't use it is because streaming all the data to your phone will be prohibitively expensive. A Sony rep estimated that an MP4 video stream consumes about 750Kb-per-second, which would chew up even the most generous mobile data allowance in a single sitting. The alternative is Wi-Fi, but that's not going to help you when you're on the bus or train, or really anywhere outside a McDonald's in Australia. In fact, the only time we can imagine using Remote Play is in the bedroom, in lieu of buying a second TV, over our home Wi-Fi network.

The pain of knowing this tech exists but is mostly infeasible to use is heartbreaking enough, but consider how cool this will be when Sony finally gets around to releasing the Play TV digital tuner for the PS3 in Australia. You'd be able to set up your PS3 to record TV remotely using the phone, and because you are being streamed the output of the PS3 you could theoretically watch TV streaming directly to your phone.

To make this work Sony Ericsson will need to convince the carriers to give us the data outside the standard data allowances used in packages, similar to the way carriers create unlimited BlackBerry plans now. The difference, of course, is that BlackBerrys send tiny packets of data in emails while Remote Play will need huge amounts of data moving across the 3G networks.

Joseph Hanlon attends CommunicAsia as a guest of Sony Ericsson.

Topics: 3g, mobile phone, playstation, remote, sony ericsson, wifi, ps3, stream, play, phone

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Comments (5)

  • GregoryO commented on 19/06/2009 16:07

    Yay, yet another example of how Australia behind the rest of the world (including some third-world and most second-world countries) in data pricing!

    Pity it'll never change...

  • Can't WAIT commented on 19/06/2009 10:56

    Every since the announcement I've been looking forward to this phone! I am extremely excited to be able to use Remote Play on the mobile with a few of the places I work in are Wifi and would make excellent hubs to stream my music from.

  • WTF is he on about! commented on 18/06/2009 13:14

    I have been doing this for ages with my PSP to PS3. I share the media from my PC using TVersity. Then remotely I can turn my PS3 on over the internet and stream movies/eps/music or anything else I want. It's an extremely cool and useful tool. Obviously WiFi only but I can't do it as easy from any other device.

    The mobile handsets will be the same. As long as the console can access the media it can use it on the remote device.

  • remote play is sweet. commented on 18/06/2009 11:23

    I use it all the time on my psp love it.

  • aw123 commented on 18/06/2009 10:57

    i'd definately use it, mainly using wi-fi, for xample at a friends place, if i want to show them a video i have at home.. I've wanted to do that a bunch of times before.

    at the moment I watch ALOT of videos that are on my PC, through the home network onto my PS3.. media streaming... will we be able to watch those videos remotely on this handset?

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