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Did you know that Viera Link controls the PS3 XMB?

Oppo

Member
...because I sure didn't, until last night.

I had enabled the "Control for HDMI" setting at some point on my slim PS3, and not thought much about it as I figured you needed a Sony TV to make it work. Anyways last night I noticed that when I turned off the TV, it turned off the PS3. So I investigated, and quickly realized that the directional pad and OK (middle) button would let me page through the XMB on the PS3 as well.

More buttons that work: the play/pause, skip back and forward transport controls, the colour-coded blu-ray remote buttons, and get this – if you hit the "sub-menu" button with a blu-ray playing it will actually act as if the Select button has been pressed. It's crazy. (selecting "content" will bring up the blu-ray specific content menu). Pressing "return" button will act as if you had hit circle, to cancel viewing and return to the XMB (complete with prompt).

So basically if you have a recent Panasonic Viera, which is a popular choice on GAF, then you effectively don't need the PS3 blu-ray remote, with the caveat that you can't actually turn on the PS3 with this method. (maybe not, see post 5). What I've done is set my dual shocks to power-save after 15 minutes, so I use one of those to turn on the PS3 then put them down to fall asleep by themselves, using the Viera remote for everything else.

Anyways I had no idea you could do this, and I had never bought the PS3 remote, so that saved me a bit of bother and I thought I'd share. Hooray for HDMI-controlled devices.
 
Nice. My brother has a VT25, will setup and check this out next time I go over to his place.

edit-
UltimateIke said:
My Samsung LCD from 2009 does this. The Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC) feature.
oh, guess I can try it right now on my d8000 lcd then, awesome!!
 
Was thinking of buying a Panasonic Plasma soon, so this is cool to find out. Id have to go buy a slim though (was thinking of doing that anyways just to have a more reliable ps3 since I'm not using the ps2 feature of my 60gb that much now).
 
I like that I don't have to change the input on my Panny when I want to play my PS3. All I do is turn it on with my DS3 and it automatically changes the input.

I didn't know about the remote thing though. Nice.
 
Going the other way, I was surprised when I found my Sony TV was able to control my Samsung Blu-Ray player.
 
My old Samsung did it but it was laggy as fuck so I never bothered. Might try it again with my new Panasonic.
 
I've been using it on my Panasonic X20 since I got it about a year ago. It's great. Having set it up, all I have to do is turn the TV on with the remote, switch to the PS3 input and then I can control the PS3 straight away. Given that I use my PS3 for media streaming, it's a massive time saver.
 
_Isaac said:
Wow. I'll have to investigate this with my Sony Bravia.

It works with mine, but it's kind of a pain to control the XMB with the remote. Kind of a useless feature unless you don't have a controller nearby.
 
This is an HDMI feature. Most TV's with an HDMI connection should be able to control things connected that way as long as the device supports it.

Of course every manufacture calls it differently, it's called Simplink on my LG for instance.
 
Indeed, absolutely awesome feature I (accidentally) discovered a couple of months ago. I had my TV for a while but only connected to a fat, 60GB PS3. That fat PS3 sadly died, twice.. so I kept the remains thinking I might repair it a second time eventually, and bought a Slim. I accidentally sat on my TV remote after turning the PS3 on (I though HDMI control was only for shutting on & off the PS3/TV simultaneously) and it moved around the XMB. Now I don't need to buy a PS3 blu-ray remote anymore, I can now control everything via my Samsung TV one. Awesomely awesome.
 
bloodforge said:
This is an HDMI feature. Most TV's with an HDMI connection should be able to control things connected that way as long as the device supports it.

Of course every manufacture calls it differently, it's called Simplink on my LG for instance.
Yeah. The general name for the feature is HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control).

From Wikipedia:

"Trade names for CEC are Anynet+ (Samsung); Aquos Link (Sharp); BRAVIA Sync (Sony); HDMI-CEC (Hitachi); Kuro Link (Pioneer); CE-Link and Regza Link (Toshiba); RIHD (Remote Interactive over HDMI) (Onkyo); SimpLink (LG); HDAVI Control, EZ-Sync, VIERA Link (Panasonic); EasyLink (Philips); and NetCommand for HDMI (Mitsubishi)."
 
Why will this feature not work with my Samsung C8000? I turned on HDMI control on the PS3 and Anynet+ on the Samsung. When I try to connect them it always tells me I need to search for devices and it finds "Player" but it can never connect to it. It did however connect once, but the only thing I could do was turn my TV off with the remote and the PS3 would go off too. How can I make it so it will stay connected and I can control the XMB with the Samsung remote?
 
xXJonoXx said:
Why will this feature not work with my Samsung C8000? I turned on HDMI control on the PS3 and Anynet+ on the Samsung. When I try to connect them it always tells me I need to search for devices and it finds "Player" but it can never connect to it. It did however connect once, but the only thing I could do was turn my TV off with the remote and the PS3 would go off too. How can I make it so it will stay connected and I can control the XMB with the Samsung remote?
Are you able to bring up the source list and select the PS3 as the "HDMI-CEC" device? That's how it works on my Samsung LN40B650. It will turn the PS3 on if it isn't already and allow the TV remote control over the menus.

It also makes it so turning on the PS3 automatically powers on the TV and switches it to the correct input channel.
 
UltimateIke said:
Are you able to bring up the source list and select the PS3 as the "HDMI-CEC" device? That's how it works on my Samsung LN40B650. It will turn the PS3 on if it isn't already and allow the TV remote control over the menus.

It also makes it so turning on the PS3 automatically powers on the TV and switches it to the correct input channel.

Now I can't even connect to the PS3 via the TV. It finds the "player" but when I try to connect it, it tells me "Anynet+ device not connected. Please check connection and retry."
 
xXJonoXx said:
Now I can't even connect to the PS3 via the TV. It finds the "player" but when I try to connect it, it tells me "Anynet+ device not connected. Please check connection and retry."
Is your HDMI cable connected directly to the TV from the PS3?

Our TVs may handle it completely different ways, but I'll tell you how I set mine up.

After connecting the PS3 and turning on the setting to allow HDMI control, I pushed the "Tools" button on the remote. The first option is "Anynet+." On the Anynet+ screen, I selected "Setup" and made sure HDMI-CEC was turned on. I went back to "Device List" and pushed the red button to refresh. It found "PlayStation 3" (it never calls it "player"). From here, everything works just by me selecting the Playstation 3 from the source menu.

Yours might be different, so check for any online guides.
 
UltimateIke said:
Is your HDMI cable connected directly to the TV from the PS3?

Our TVs may handle it completely different ways, but I'll tell you how I set mine up.

After connecting the PS3 and turning on the setting to allow HDMI control, I pushed the "Tools" button on the remote. The first option is "Anynet+." On the Anynet+ screen, I selected "Setup" and made sure HDMI-CEC was turned on. I went back to "Device List" and pushed the red button to refresh. It found "PlayStation 3" (it never calls it "player"). From here, everything works just by me selecting the Playstation 3 from the source menu.

Yours might be different, so check for any online guides.

I got it working. Since you mentioned it actually shows up as PS3 and not just "player" something had to be wrong. I tried everything to fix it, and what worked was turning the "Control for HDMI" off on the PS3, turning Anynet+ off on the TV and turning both off. Then powered on the TV and PS3, turned HDMI control back on the PS3, then Anynet on the TV. I then searched for devices on the TV and it finally showed up as "Playstation 3". Thanks for the help!
 
xXJonoXx said:
I got it working. Since you mentioned it actually shows up as PS3 and not just "player" something had to be wrong. I tried everything to fix it, and what worked was turning the "Control for HDMI" off on the PS3, turning Anynet+ off on the TV and turning both off. Then powered on the TV and PS3, turned HDMI control back on the PS3, then Anynet on the TV. I then searched for devices on the TV and it finally showed up as "Playstation 3". Thanks for the help!
Haha, no problem. I'm glad it's working for you now.
 
OK, I did this and it is amazing.
What I particularly like is, if you are using PS3, then switch to a regular TV station, the PS3 will still turn off when you turn the TV off. Very clever stuff.
 
Anynet+ doesn't map the controls properly, though. The pause and play buttons on the remote don't work like they do with Bravias, so you have to use the button in the centre of the d-pad. And Samsung TVs won't turn your PS3 off when you turn the TV off.

It's bullshit.
 
So I did confirm last night that you can turn the PS3 on (as several have confirmed); on Viera it's the Link button then OK. This is even with everything running HDMI through a Pioneer receiver, only one HDMI cable is actually connected to my TV, so that's very cool to know that the control signal can "survive" intermediate steps.

I knew it was an HDMI spec, and that Sony did it, but I had no idea it was so prevalent already in the various devices. It really is something that makes tons of sense.

You know there are probably tons of folks who bought a PS3 and a new TV, and got up-sold on the BT remote, not knowing that they actually don't need it.

If Sony had this in the original units they could have avoided a lot of gnashing and wailing from the Harmony Remote crowd...

kvn said:
Does anyone know the reason why this can't be added to older PS3s via firmware-update?

I think it's the spec of the HDMI plug, i.e. phat was 1.2 and slim 1.3+? Not sure exactly but pretty sure it's a hardware thing.
 
Hmm... I'll have to try this on my Samsung tomorrow...

Edit: oooh... my model does have Anynet+ according to the manual...
 
Snap, I have a G10, and this is news to me. And Ive been debating getting a slim to replace my MGS4 80 gig phat before it kicks the bucket.
 
I assume this only works if you connect your PS3 Slim directly to the TV, correct? Then I'm out of luck, since it passes my Onkyo receiver. :(
 
BeeDog said:
I assume this only works if you connect your PS3 Slim directly to the TV, correct? Then I'm out of luck, since it passes my Onkyo receiver. :(

Try connecting your PS3's audio output with optical fiber to the Onkyo set.
 
Does this also work if the PS3 is connected through a receiver to the TV?

Waited too long to hit submit. Same question just asked above. lol.
I'll test out some configs tonight.
 
BeeDog said:
I assume this only works if you connect your PS3 Slim directly to the TV, correct? Then I'm out of luck, since it passes my Onkyo receiver. :(

No it should still work, used to with my Samsung + Onkyo combo.
 
I will have to try this when I get home. It would be nice if I can control everything with my Harmony remote since the PS3 is the only device I have without IR. If this doesn't work, I guess I'll have to get one of those IR receivers. I get tired of swapping between remotes all the time.
 
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