Remote Play is expanding beyond the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and coming to the desktop. While Open Remote Play has been available for quite some time, this is an official Sony solution headed to Vaio laptops.
As is the case with Remote Play via PSP, users will have access to all their local content on the PS3 whether it be movies, music or photos. With the ability to access Remote Play from within your home network, or while connected to a remote network, your media can literally be a few clicks away. It would be assumed at this point that the same content restrictions imposed upon Remote Play (i.e. no Blu-Ray movie playback, copy protected video files, etc..) would remain in effect. Also, no mention of being able to play games of any kind, as is the case with the PSP has been mentioned yet.
Navigating through Remote Play is typically done with the PSP game pad, and that can be somewhat cumbersome at times. Using the up and down arrows to simulate it would suffice, but a better option would be a virtual keyboard. The inclusion of a virtual keyboard style onscreen navigation option not only makes sense, but would be a welcome change and would give Sony a chance to do something unique.
Unfortunately for those of us in the US, a variant of Play TV is not available here yet. However for those in the UK, the ability to watch live and recorded content is being included as well further making the PS3 become a home media aggregation point.
No word has given yet on which version of Vaio’s will be compatible, but we do know that they will be part of the summer line-up which will be announced soon. Presumably this could include the Orange Vaio P as well.
