VidZone on the PS3

At last something more exciting that Home. VidZone is a free teeny download that adds an icon to your music menu and takes you to a online catalogue where you can stream music videos to your PS3.

Playing full screen I had no stuttering and no buffering - they just played. You can browse the catalogue and create your own savable playlists. Rewind, fast forward, skip, and pause with no problem. Whatever they're using as a transport mechanism - it's good.

So problems - we have a few. But then again, not too few to mention. The initial loading is slow, considering that technically the display itself should be contained within the initial 23Mb download I have to wonder what exactly it's doing. It's not syncing music feeds as after the information-less Vista-style loading bar we get the same bar with 'syncing music feeds' below it.

First view is the Home page which offers a featured set of playlists - current chart, 80's, that sort of thing. First problem arises when you realise there's no tutorial as to how to start until you notice the blurry 'Press 0 for menu" at the bottom; SD screens not thought of here. Second problem is that the featured playlists come as a package so press X and the entire playlist is added to your Now Playing. What you can't do is switch down to the playlist and add in only the few that caught your eye. As a result the first thing I do is press O and head into the menu structure.

You now have the option of looking at the current chart in a way that allows you to pick them individually, look at your playlists, look at your Now Playing playlist, change a few options and Search.

Obviously Search is a good place to start. It's split between searching by video (by which they mean title) artist, or genre. Okay Major Problem selecting anything other than Artist pretty much locked my Playstation while it downloaded the list. Most odd as in theory these should be the same lists just in a different index to Artist which appeared as if by magic. I can't even state that it's due to the number that are displayed for the default 'beginning with A' as I had about 500 odd in one and 623 for Artist.

Searching uses a scroll through the letters approach - you start on A and press down for B and up for 9 (or 0 I can't recall; annoyingly space appears after Z rather than before A) then across to repeat with the next letter. As the Playstation has a built in on-screen keyboard a question might arise as to why you need to labouriously scroll through this way, but it's down to the instant index. Pause after entering a letter and the list will update to match the search terms. This is nice as it also allows you to just browse through a list and spot names you might not have thought of. At least you could if the back steps worked properly.

Scroll down the list for someone and spot someone else select them then add a video and go back and you're thrown back to the top of the search list rather than where you last were. Means having to scroll all the way back through to get to your last position. Yeah seems petty, but it discourages browsing and rewards direct searches and I have an innate dislike to anything that limits free roaming.

Second problem... okay more a niggle. When it's loading up the tracks from your search you get a chasing dot circle with loading - fine. Except when your search turns up nothing you get the same chasing dot circle with no results found. Again with an SD TV and heck even with a HD what attracts the eye is the I'm doing something chasing dot circle. If you've no results it's not doing anything. Lost track of waiting for results before spotting it was the no results rather than loading info.

Third problem arises when you add a track to your playlist it's a simple press of the X button and a little CD disc appears next to it. Except it's not a toggle, change your mind and press X again won't remove it from the list, worse it'll add it again. To remove it you have to press Triangle to access a sub menu then scroll down to delete, then acknowledge that you want to delete it, then acknowledge the acknowledgement that it's been deleted, then back out the menu. Just Not Good.

So ignoring those problems let's say you've searched through and added a load of videos to your Now Playing playlist and you think "Hey to save me doing this again I'll save it". So you go to Playlists and create a new one. Excellent except it's empty. No you don't get asked if you want to create a playlist based on your Now Playing, no you don't get asked if you want to add the Now Playing to the playlist. Instead you have to go back to Now Playing and using the Triangle button enter the sub menu, select Add to Playlist, select the Playlist, acknowledge the addition, back out the menu and repeat for every single track there. If there's another way of doing it I haven't spotted it and remember no tutorial, no manual.

Last problem is with the advertising. This is a free service so I certainly don't begrudge either the menu adverts or the ones that appear at the bottom of the screen when playing in full-screen mode. Where the problem lies is if you accidentally click on the advert. Everything goes black - panic? No see it's closing down VidZone and taking you either to the Internet Browser or the direct purchase screen of the Playstation Store. What this means is that you have to exit that then restart VidZone, sit through the loading screen, then realise your temporary Now Playing list has been blanked. Come on people basic rules of anything that if an action closes a programme that is doing something you ask first. Managed to do it twice and the last time caused me to utter "Sod this" and go and do something else.

Okay it's free, the videos stream damn well and there's a reasonable selection although why some aren't present is no doubt due to licensing arrangements. But the interface needs some serious changes done to it and the loading time needs to be reduced before I'll be firing it up again to use for entertainment.

Okay I'm slightly lying it's got Kasabian's "Fire" and "L.S.F." as well as No Doubt's "It's my Life" and Nirvana's "Smell's like Teen Spirit" and just for those I'll be back on; where's "Bohemian Rhapsody" though?