PS3

We tried to watch the first episode of this season’s Downton Abbey last night using Amazon streaming video through a PS3. If that didn’t make any sense at all, here’s how that breaks down:

First of all, yes, we’re fans of Downton Abbey. Roll your eyes all you want. We like it.

Tim left us his PS3, which is a computer made by Sony to play video games. He bought it to play one game in particular and then, when he got tired of the game, he boxed up the computer and pretty much forgot about it until he was cleaning out some of his stuff, found it again and was trying to figure out how to get rid of it. I had just learned that a PS3 will pay Blue-Ray movies and I’m too cheap to buy an actual Blue-Ray disc player, so I offered to pay him whatever he wanted for it, and that’s when he gave it to us. Thanks for the free computer, T-Dawg.

I don’t remember how I found out that we could watch Netflix on it, too. I think Tim told us that. However we found out, the PS3 works just fine as a Blue-Ray player, or to watch Netflix. Love it. What doesn’t work very well, though, is streaming instant video from Amazon. I’m not sure why. Netflix video streams with no problem, but Amazon video buffers all. The. Time. Try to watch a two-hour show when that little twirling arrow thingie freezes the action every three minutes. I can put up with some video buffering when I’m trying to watch a ninety-second video of kittens, but it drove us both up a wall last night. We eventually gave up and watched Downton on B’s tablet. By the way, watching TV on a seven-inch tablet isn’t so bad when you’re watching with somebody who doesn’t mind cuddling up to you.