PS3 web-surfing proved rocky

IGN took the time out to take the PS3’s surfing capacities to the test, and here’s what they found out.

First off, while the PS3 does allow you to open up and display multiple browser windows, memory may be easily used up, especially if the pages you go to are media or plug-in heavy. In case this happens, what you have to do is to then close a window or two, so you could get on with your web surfing. Also, connecting a USB keyboard and mouse was definitely easier to use than the standard keypad, which was brought up by the browser. The team’s tip: “If you’re planning on doing a lot of web surfing with your system, you may want to look at disconnecting these two peripherals, which work as soon as you plug them in.”

Second, the plug-in support of the system is extremely limited. The Flash rotations on PlayStation.com, which also happens to be the set homepage, runs slower than if run on a normal computer. The theory is that the PS3 is using an outdated version of Flash, hence, sites with the latest Flash plug-ins cannot be hosted properly. They tried this with Ifilm, and they found that it was rejected during browser use. Apart from this, there appears to be no Quicktime nor Windows Media plug-in support.

The last thing they discovered is that there’s also a limited amount of support for downloading content from the Web to your PS3, via the browser. The team tried to transfer a file from a website to the console’s hard drive, but unfortunately, weren’t able to. What they did instead was to get another location for them to save a file to an external storage media, like a portable hard drive or a thumb drive.

Now, for your PS3 to be able to recognize this file, its folder has to be in the same directory structure which the PSP or PS3 can recognize, otherwise, it will remain unknown to the system. Oh, and you can expect not to be able to lay files in a multiple folder-deep directory tree, since it only goes one level deep.

Via IGN

IGN took the time out to take the PS3’s surfing capacities to the test, and here’s what they found out.

First off, while the PS3 does allow you to open up and display multiple browser windows, memory may be easily used up, especially if the pages you go to are media or plug-in heavy. In case this happens, what you have to do is to then close a window or two, so you could get on with your web surfing. Also, connecting a USB keyboard and mouse was definitely easier to use than the standard keypad, which was brought up by the browser. The team’s tip: “If you’re planning on doing a lot of web surfing with your system, you may want to look at disconnecting these two peripherals, which work as soon as you plug them in.”

Second, the plug-in support of the system is extremely limited. The Flash rotations on PlayStation.com, which also happens to be the set homepage, runs slower than if run on a normal computer. The theory is that the PS3 is using an outdated version of Flash, hence, sites with the latest Flash plug-ins cannot be hosted properly. They tried this with Ifilm, and they found that it was rejected during browser use. Apart from this, there appears to be no Quicktime nor Windows Media plug-in support.

The last thing they discovered is that there’s also a limited amount of support for downloading content from the Web to your PS3, via the browser. The team tried to transfer a file from a website to the console’s hard drive, but unfortunately, weren’t able to. What they did instead was to get another location for them to save a file to an external storage media, like a portable hard drive or a thumb drive.

Now, for your PS3 to be able to recognize this file, its folder has to be in the same directory structure which the PSP or PS3 can recognize, otherwise, it will remain unknown to the system. Oh, and you can expect not to be able to lay files in a multiple folder-deep directory tree, since it only goes one level deep.

Via IGN