Vidzone: My First Impressions and a Review

SCEE have redeemed themselves, at least in my Australian eyes. Gone are the days where we Aussies would be neglected by the European wing of Sony, and now we recieve much better regular updates. First we got Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation Network, which was mana from J-RPG heaven (mana pun intended) since it usually takes six months for a European Playstation Store update to come along which is actually interesting for PSN.

Now we get the home entertainment music video service Vidzone, which is only available in selected European countries. Australia, fortunately, is one of those selected countries taking part in the Vidzone program. Australia may be deprived of decent internet, but at least we now get a decent music video service which is customisable and has a great free catalogue of music videos to watch and put in playlists.

From what I’ve used of it so far it lends actual credibility to the Playstation 3’s claim as a “home entertainment system” rather than a games console masquerading as one. Yes, it’s a Blu-Ray player, but Blu-Ray is expensive right now, whereas Vidzone is a free service that costs nothing to the PS3 user, just a free download off PSN which takes up minimal space on your PS3 hard drive.

As far as video and sound quality goes it is superb. Considering most PS3 owners already have good video and sound systems if they bought one, Vidzone is the feature I reckon makes the most out of that hardware. It is a useful party tool, since it has a range of both recent music videos and classic ones which can be watched individually or put into playlists in order to be watched in any order you please.

Most parties I have been to have pretty dull use of TVs which can’t be turned on at the same time as the stereo because people at the party want to listen to music. However with Vidzone you could have the music video of the music playing running along with the music itself, it might not be as extensive a music collection as the average teenager’s music collection yet, nor will it satisfy the most hipsterish of hipsters in video catalogue selection, but it’s a service which is fresh, and new. More videos are added to the service all the time, and often you’ll find videos on there which you just didn’t expect to be there already.

The potential of this to the music industry is amazing. I can check out bands I wouldn’t normally check out using Vidzone, and buy their albums, whether in a record shop or off iTunes. The music industry needs all the help it can get, so I’m guessing that this might help.

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