Despite disappointing sales and no release date for Europe, Sony’s PSX home media centre – a unit consisting of a home media centre, a PVR, and a PS2 – has had a couple of new models added to the range.
The DESR-5100 has a 160mb hard drive, the DESR-7100 has a 250mb drive. Both look the same as the original PSX, though there will be a limited edition silver 5100.
Scheduled for release on July 1, the main enhancements are related to the PSX’s DVD recording features – users can now manually set the bit rate for recording, meaning that longer movies can fit on a disk. There are also 50 templates for creating DVD menus, along with much-demanded DVD+RW/DVD-RW compatibility.
Online PS2 capability has been improved ever so slightly – you can now browse the Central Station bulletin board – but that’s it. No online Twisted Metal Black for PSX owners then. If you have one of the older PSXs, a firmware upgrade coming along on the 15th will add all of the new features, minus the disk upgrades of course.
The units are expected to sell for about 74,000 and 95,000 yen respectively (€562 and €722), but there is still no release for Europe and the US.