Warwick Light, the marketing boss at Sony's New Zealand division tells The Press that the PlayStation3 that the company hopes to release a digital television tuner for the gaming console next year.

That would essentially let you turn your PS3 into a digital video recorder. The system already has the key components including a hard drive, graphics processor, Blu-Ray/DVD support, and networking capabilities.

The key word in Light's comments is "hopes." As in "hopes to release." That's not quite as firm as "plans." So we won't know for certain whether Sony will release a digital tuner and PVR software in New Zealand for a while. And we also don't know if there are any plans to launch a similar device/service in the US. But aside from the fact that a PS3 has a relatively small hard drive for recording HDTV, there's no reason the equipment couldn't handle standard or high definition television capabilities with a USB tuner.

[via Kotaku]