PS3 Firmware 2.30

I just got the bluetooth Logitech Di Novo Edge (after I heard Arwin mention it), and navigating pages on the browser and the PSN is now much better for me. Both have been greatly speeded up in 2.2 and 2.3.

Thanks for the tip Arwin :D.
 
Yes ! Despite my constant usability rants, keyboard navigation in PS3 is pretty fun (and smooth !) to use. Once Sony maps all the keys, I would even use it as my primary XMB navigation device.
 
Is anyone else amused by Sony's apparent ineptitude to properly tell the users what an update does?

According to their prompt, the only thing 2.30 did was update the store. Which is nonsense.

This isn't that hard to get right, is it?
 
I just got the bluetooth Logitech Di Novo Edge (after I heard Arwin mention it), and navigating pages on the browser and the PSN is now much better for me. Both have been greatly speeded up in 2.2 and 2.3.

Thanks for the tip Arwin :D.

You're welcome! Still happy with it too. That thing just never runs out of juice ... I've so far charged it only once since I got it!

The only thing I now need to do or have better support for is the zooming option in the PS3 browser. Scrolling and viewing works amazingly well with the analog sticks, and that's what I miss having an equivalent for on the Di Novo. The pad for changing the volume would be nice to have configured for zooming in/out for instance. (Or else use it for the volume ;) - currently it doesn't do anything yet). But these are small niggles.

Yes, I agree, a proper change-log (one of the things that Microsoft does flawlessly) would be nice.
 
Is anyone else amused by Sony's apparent ineptitude to properly tell the users what an update does?

According to their prompt, the only thing 2.30 did was update the store. Which is nonsense.

This isn't that hard to get right, is it?

I think they simply prefer to note the aspects that cannot be ignored, and let the other information travel virally among those that are interested in those aspects. It may seem obtuse, but I see their reasoning for it. If the majority of owners don't care about DTS-HD MA for example (or even know what it is), it might be counter-productive to their image among the larger populace to be seen as continually focusing on these 'baubles.'

Not saying it's right or wrong, but it's why I think each firmware revision has so much under the radar.
 
Is anyone else amused by Sony's apparent ineptitude to properly tell the users what an update does?

According to their prompt, the only thing 2.30 did was update the store. Which is nonsense.

This isn't that hard to get right, is it?

When I upgraded my FW it said, Store update and other things, please check out your regional Sony/Playstation site for more details.
 
The official note is up.

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/About/SystemUpdate

The PLAYSTATION®3 system software version 2.30 update includes the following:

* PLAYSTATION®Network

Redesigned PLAYSTATION®Store

PLAYSTATION®Store has a new design and includes new features. > See details.



* Other new or revised features in version 2.30:

Video

Blu-ray Disc playback now supports DTS-HD Master Audio™ and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio™ output.*
* The PS3™ system does not support playback of DTS-ES and DTS 96/24 for DVD-Video or DTS-ES Matrix for Blu-ray Discs.

Leaving out a big item like DTS-MA is strange. Perhaps the Japanese devs felt ashamed that they left out DTS-MA for so long. ;-)
 
I'm gonna speculate that 2.3 may have also changed the OS load, because I see much less tearing on the platforming sections of Uncharted outside the Fortress, which was quite visible before.
 
Did you try Uncharted on 2.2 ? According to the net, 2.2 freed up OS memory, and probably introduced some other optimizations too.

I thought something under the hood changed also. The slide show is slightly less responsive in 2.3 (Sometimes it will pause for a second before accepting my input). May be they shifted some priority and workload around.

Overall, 2.2 + 2.3 looks good (BD-Live + Resume Play + New PSN Store + reduced OS memory footprint + better playlist and RemotePlay integration with PSP + browser speed up + assorted media playback enhancement [e.g., WMV > 2Gb support])
 
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I have a problem with the new store, and that's that it seems a step away from a unified Sony content portal. I was expecting a service that provided games, films, music, and all downloads, for all platforms including PC, to appear, like iTunes. Instead we have a shop that's not really structured to offer huge amounts of content. Films have no categorization. Fine while there's only a few trailers to browse through, but if there was a lot of content, it'd be hard to find anything.

And indeed it is hard to find stuff. If I want to look for what demo's our out there from curiosity, I have to wade through all the titles looking for any marked demo. titles are also duplicated across different themes. The categorization is basically a sort mode. Sony would have done better to offer a store-like categories and search engine. Think something like Play.com. You type what you're looking for and select whether your looking for movies, games, music, and and a few checkboxes to show demos, trailers, full titles, retro etc. and it'd be easier to both search things and browse.

So, the store as is isn't going to be a cross-platform unified content portal for Sony. They've turned the opportunity this time. What other chances do they have? HOME, I guess, but how is that going to interface across PC and PSP, and perhaps other devices like phones?
 
TBH, I like the new design a lot more than the old one. However, the shop seems a lot slower now. It takes quite a while for all the icons etc. to load.
 
I can understand that as everyone is hammering it from curiosity, but what surprises me is they're not cached at all. A small image cache would make a visit to the New Releases, the most sensible place to look for anything just out, a lot better than a big blank wall slowing filling over a few minutes with images you've downloaded a dozen times before!
 
Shifty, a search box can still be added later on. They can also add a separate Store (same look and feel) for movie download. It is better that way -- IMHO of course.

I was told the categorization in Europe is different from US. They may have sorting issues in Europe because of non-English fields. Hopefully these will be addressed soon. They are not small issues.

The icons load faster now (within 5 seconds), still not good enough. And they should at least have a placeholder icon/text for them.


Still a sizable improvement with these problems. I believe they probably optimized for space rather than time this round (The PS Store could be even faster but they may have a memory cap and cannot hit the HDD cache for in-game access).

If so, I expect them to introduce an out-of-game mode where they can optimize for image load speed also.
 
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I can understand that as everyone is hammering it from curiosity, but what surprises me is they're not cached at all. A small image cache would make a visit to the New Releases, the most sensible place to look for anything just out, a lot better than a big blank wall slowing filling over a few minutes with images you've downloaded a dozen times before!

what's worse is that they are loading thumbnails sequentially, damn thing blocks...
 
what's worse is that they are loading thumbnails sequentially, damn thing blocks...

The speed of moving around inside the store has improved for sure! The slow loading of the icons is almost counter productive though. I figured it was just the pre-caching that was taking so long for them to load. I only checked it out for a bit this morning, but if the icons take that long to load everytime, it may prove to be rather discouraging.

I sat for 2 minutes on the GT5 movie section and only got past about 12 icons. I turned it off and went to work.

It's confirmed that it really takes that long to load the icons each time?
 
Dividing games by genre is a bad idea. A lot of today's games span multiple genres. Where would GTA4 go or Folklore. Having to look through a those menu's makes no sense.
 
It's somewhat inconsistent. At first, it took a really long time. Subsequently it's ok but still a little laggy. Once you quit out of the store, you seem to reload the images from the net again (instead of loading from the HDD cache).

Over the last few days, the initial load time has decreased (May be they brought up more image servers).

Sony should trottle their test machine bandwidth to surface issues like this before launch.

Dividing games by genre is a bad idea. A lot of today's games span multiple genres. Where would GTA4 go or Folklore. Having to look through a those menu's makes no sense.

The problem will generally exist for any kind of taxnomy (short of alphabetical or chronological order). They will have to alias or duplicate the entries in all the relevant groups.
 
I just found this:

We are aware that many of you have experienced delays whilst the PS Store's thumbnail icons are being downloaded. This is a temporary consequence of a new system implementation and high global traffic levels, and will be resolved within the next few days.

http://community.eu.playstation.com/playstationeu/board/message?board.id=138&thread.id=7875

That's a positive sign. But then that would most likely mean that we do have to download all the icons and each subsequent visit should not be as slow? I haven't gone into the store multiple times yet, but if its that slow everytime, I'm really curious at how fast the it will really end up being.
 
If they akamaize the images, it would be like using a browser without cache. 2-3 seconds on the average.

If they don't, it will depend on your ISP's peering. >_<

Either way, it should be transparent to the PS3. So they can improve along the way.


EDIT: The categorization (aka "finding titles easily and quickly") problem is more critical.
 
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If they akamaize the images, it would be like using a browser without cache. 2-3 seconds on the average.

If every 'page' of the store takes 2-3 seconds to load all text and icons thats satisfactory. But if it takes 2-3 seconds per icon. Not so much.
 
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