Just a quickie for those of you in the know, but after the PSN update on Wednesday, I proceeded to watch a DVD with media being downloaded from the store in the background. Or so I thought at first. Whilst watching the DVD, I noticed that the WLAN LED wasn't blinking at all. When the DVD finished, I returned to the XMB to find that my downloads had paused themselves. I now ask if this is correct, and if so, then what is the point of having said feature if it doesn't do as it is supposed to? Or have I had a dodgy firmware update?

Thanks in advance.

Yeah for some reason you can't do both i believe the same goes for when you watch a Blu-Ray as well.

If i remember rightly you can play a game while downloading....

The PS3 will download perfectly in the background so long as you are not using the disk drive, play content from the hard drive all day and even use the browser but starting to spin any kind of optical disk causes the D/L to pause.

So I probably am not alone in thinking this is something that needs to be addressed in a future update.

I don't it can be fixed in a future update. Even if it could I don't think Sony would do it. This is more of a technical limitation of the PS3 then anything else. It also effects the 360 too. I think it's more of a question of console resource allocation. I seem to remember reading that somewhere. On the other hand I could be mistaken and it may get fixed.

I'm sure that 360 downloads in the background whilst playing disc based games? I'll have to check, as I honestly can't remember.

Yes, it definately does continue downloading. The only time downloading stops when the 360 is powered up is when you play online and it needs to use all of the resources for that (even then when you stop needing the bandwidth it automatically resumes downloading). Definate plus point to be able to download without having to give up on playing games to do so, if Sony plan on switching on some manner of IPTV or VoD service then they will have to fix that... bit much to expect people to leave PS3 on overnight downloading or some such.

I see it as a bonus, you get signed out when watching a film so no one bothers you with messages or game requests, I hate getting interrupted when watching a film, I doubt theres a technical limit for this.

Well they just need to put the option in to disable notifications while watching a video the same as the 360 has
Another feature which I wouldn't mind is to power down after finishing the download so I can leave the PS3 on while I'm at work.

Ability to be able to power down after download would be a good addition as i'm always getting nagged by the Mrs for leaving it on, and i'm obviously trying to reduce my ''carbon footprint''