Now, I’m not the chattiest of people when I’m gaming, but I am developing various levels for LBP and so I want to be able to name stuff and provide descriptions… using the on-screen keypad is, to put it mildly, like pulling teeth. It’s slow, cumbersome and just downright annoying and for the reasons I mentioned, a fullsize USB keyboard is just not an option so I was mightily pleased when I saw these little babies on the PS3 website.

The CECHZX1GB (UK Model) as it’s known is a small, lightweight Bluetooth keypad that clips onto official PS3 controllers. It provides quick access buttons to get at your messages, and also doubles as a pointing device by way of a touch sensitive area on the keypad. Whilst it’s small and the buttons seem tiny, operating it isn’t as bad as you might first imagine. I’ve made only a few typos courtesy of my sausage fingers, and well, compared to the on-screen keyboard it is infinitely better.

So are there any downsides? Well, I’ve only been using it a few days. Being rechargeable there is obviously the issue of battery life, but it does go into standby to conserve power. The only downside to this is of course it has to reconnect to the PS3 when you want to type some more, but that doesn’t take too long (a few seconds, if that). The unit itself was charged when it arrived last week and has yet to require a refill. It obviously goes without saying that the more you type, the shorter the recharge interval will be, and I suspect using the pointer mode will drain the juice substantially quicker. The upside however is that, like the controllers themselves, it can be used whilst charging by simply connect it using a USB cable.

One of the questions I had when I purchased them (notice plural) was how they connected to the PS3 and whether you could use multiple units at the same time. The answer is they have their own Bluetooth capabilities (which incidentally you can use with other Bluetooth capable devices – I can state that they work with the O2 XDA Orbit) so they connect to the PS3 with no regard for which controller they are attached to. So whilst you can use multiple units at the same time, they will all type into whichever message box has focus. It would have been better, IMHO, if they worked like the controllers… first on is number 1 etc. and were then paired with the corresponding controller number.

So in conclusion, these are a great little addition to anyone’s PS3 setup, but because they don’t pair like the controllers, I’m only going to give them a rating of 9.

Having been a VCR owner for many years, I felt a pang of sadness when Spirit told me my VCR was starting to chew tapes… a sure sign that its on it’s way out… but, considering it was purchased in 1999, it’s not done too bad.

So, time for a replacement… and this is it… the Sony RDR-HXD890 harddisk recorder.

A nice sleek black unit containing a 160GB SATA II harddisk, an analogue television receiver and a digital DVB-T. I will admit I dived in when Amazon had these on a special offer, but I did do some research before I ordered, and the rumblings were in general good about the Sony RDR series.

In terms of operation, setup was dead easy and took less than 5 minutes, and actually using the unit is also pretty easy. There are numerous compression settings, we started off trialling one that gave us in excess of 200 hours, but the quality of smaller items and fast moving features (we tried recording a grand prix) was not good, so we ended up settling for one that gives us about 108 hours (or something around that mark).

So all’s well that ends well… no?

Well, actually no… and here’s why….

The unit was working great, coming on every couple of hours to update the EPG, recording when asked, playback was good, and then *BOOM*. Thankfully, not literally but, the unit just stopped working one night. It was in warranty (although if I hadn’t insisted, I think I would have been fobbed off with a repair, but come on… under 3 weeks old and it stops working… thankfully Amazon were more than a little compliant) so a replacement was shipped out, BUT and here’s the crunch… it failed with a disk in the DVD drive.

After consulting with Amazon and Sony, I was told there was no way for a user to open the draw manually. Unlike most PC optical disk drives that have that little hole in the front for sticking a paperclip in to unlatch the draw, consumer drives seem to lack the forethought that actually they might fail with a disk in the drive. Now, I’m stuck with a unit that won’t power up that has a disk in it… and what am I told… BY SONY… take it to a repair shop. I ended up forking out money to get the disk out.

So, due to the lack of an emergency eject facility and the fact that the power supply went bang just under 3 weeks after delivery, I’ve given the unit a score of 7. Overall, it’s a fantastic unit that should (based on my past experience of Sony equipment) be reliable and of a good build quality (a view shared by the owner of the repair store that removed the disk), so I hope we were just unlucky.

I’ll keep you posted.