OK I wanted to use my ps3 as a decoder it seemed bit of an epic to find out some technical information. So I thought I thought I would post the very simple information for the benefit of anyone doing the switch.
First what you will lose when switching to the ps3 decoder.
* HBO on Demand
* The recording function which I think is about 5 stations
* Also the other demand features.
On the more technical side
They switch out your modem with a modem/router with a DHCP server which messes up with your existing DHCP at home. Your ps3 has to be plugged into their router and get an IP from their DHCP server. So if you have an existing computer acting as a uPNP media server for streaming videos this will cease to work while on the other internal network.
Their DHCP range 192.168.8.0/24
My DHCP range 192.168.11.0.0/24
Well you might think why not just plug everything into their router and get the same subnet, well for one no port forwarding, they turn off the wi-fi feature from within the router so you can't use wi-fi at home. Pretty funny that they offer unlimited wi-fi with the plan with 6000 hotspots but your home is not one of them.
Not all is lost what you can do if you don't care so much for the basic limited features with in their router, it does have a DMZ, wi-fi with n, port forwarding, but you can't do remote access, vpn etc, very basic router. What you need to do to get into it and turn on the wi-fi and the other features they said you cannot have.
1. Remove the pstn line from the router so you have no internet.
2. Then plug a LAN cable from your laptop/computer to the any port on the router, open your browser up and type setup.net add the http:// if using IE. if you have internet access as this stage it will try and do a lookup on the internet, you don't want this.
3. The username and password is user/user just enter that and your away, from there the menu's are very simple set your access point name, your apn password. Port forwarding DMZ whatever you want.Then just save and exit, plug in your cable and your home is a new hot spot so you can say they now have 6001 hotspots.
Now the other option to use your existing router, this is where it become a pain because I could not turn off DHCP with in their crap router. My router kept getting assigned an IP from their router's DHCP range instead of using the PPPoE session and obtaining a Public IP. So I could not use port forwarding, my vpn, get to my home computers etc.
So what I did was just get into to the netvigator crap burning hot router and change the DHCP range just to the two computers I want to use on their range. The ps3 and my other media streaming server, so I had just 192.168.8.3 and .4, .2 is reserved, forcing my home router to go out and get a public IP. My other pc had two NIC's one being their range and the other being my internal range. That way I could use my ps3 to to stream videos with subtitles and I could still use my internal network for my webserver, torrents, news server, vpn for when in China and other stuff.
I have to say I do love using my ps3 as a TV Decoder, now with full bitstream I get the full use out of my receiver with the nice DTS-HD light on for blurays, the ps3 has full internet flash/java, video streaming, music streaming. One HDMI input and so many functions you have to love it.
Limitations.
You can only use your ps3 for one thing at a time of course. The aspect ratio gets messed, well not actually messed up just displayed correctly, nowtv has not setup this correctly so I get some black bars all around some pictures quite annoying. Take note they will take away your old decoder so you will only have one decoder.
Lack of instructions for the ps3 decoder but easy to figure out.
Pricing:
Just 20 HK for using the ps3 as a Decoder, if you want to keep the existing decoder you have to pay around 150 extra to use the ps3 and keep the existing.
Also one last thing they just release a new version of the decoder software, it only uses two channels pretty crap. When initially starting the software a loud annoying buzzing noise would come out my right hand rear speaker they fixed this with the latest release. So if the PCCW man comes and then disables all the 5.1, 7.1 etc in your ps3 to limit it to 2 channels just punch him in the guts and tell him to get out. They have fixed this in the new version mine works perfectly.