PS3 Firmware 2.50

[patsu]

Got it !

* Set the system-off and controller-off settings under "Power Save Settings"

* No more BD/DVD menu item. It's lumped under "Video" now. They finally cleaned up the "Settings" category a little (Just a little), but I am happy.

* Account Management has been revamped and looks similar to the rest of XMB now. They have added DRM management to the system. You can now activate/deactivate systems for accessing protected videos and games. They have also added Download List and Services List so that we can check our purchased content on XMB directly (Nice !).

Code redemption is now also at the XMB top level. Great job Sony. It makes sense with so many betas and Qore demoes going on. They also added code redemption to the PS Store.

* Speaking of PS Store, they spit-shined the UI slightly.

* Friends icons now show "Last Sign-in Time" when people are logged off. The profiles are slightly more polished.

* The web browser can play the videos on the Official PS Blog site now. hulu.com, gametrailers.com, justin.tv, pr0n video sites worked. pandora.com didn't but the video section worked. Annoying plugin dialog is still there. The Flash 9 kit seems pretty robust. I can play very complex movie (Tried stuff that slowed down my Mac 2 months ago). However, the speed is slower than a fast PC.

* Hotlinks from the Information Bar can launch a web page now. I can't get it to go to a PS Store page though.

One of my favorite updates so far. Very happy that Flash 9 support seems solid. My prototype Flash app could run too.

EDIT: I also tested video scene searches. If you press up and down in the D-pad, you can increase or decrease the search interval. Then press left and right to scan through the list quickly.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Well, if the Screenshot feature has to be supported by the game, then that means no cool screenshots of Resistance 2 or LBP. I still don't own any game that allows me to play music from my HDD ! Community will have to shout about it for these to get implemented!

One question: Does in-game custom music work in all games on an X360?

EDIT: Good to know that gametrailers will work now ! and Powersave for the controller is a required feature as I had to do it manually all the time!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just a guess, but does the PS3 browser perhaps downsize images when a webpage is too big to fit in memory? In other words, as memory gets low, it goes back to already loaded images, scales them down, and discards the original.

Even if so - and with 500 MBs to play with and little multitasking when browsing that'd be a lot of images! - the problem is highlighted with the text. Rather than draw the text in large with R3 pressed and the window zoomed, the text is drawn small and upscaled.

 

[Arwin]

Good stuff! I updated the PSP and it looks very good, the layout has been updated a little and especially the store looks and works great, big improvement there.

Also, a picture on GAF of how the new trophy notification looks:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=13229411&postcount=1226

EDIT: a whole bunch of americuns are going wild over that Hulu.com works now ... doesn't work outside Europe so I can't test it, but it seems like a decent site. Also, as expected there seem to be one or two memory leaks in the Flash plugin, but in the main from what I'm reading a lot of stuff works well, which is awesome.

Also, everything seems to have been tuned (faster icon loading, icon loading in players met, etc.), account management has been greatly improved (this is also a big win now on PSP - it also automatically picked up my account there because I used it for logging onto my PS3 before and used the save function, which is awesome).

 

[Silent]

video scene searches seems also to work with content that is streamed from my linux server (running twonky) from downstairs.

This is a feature that I will use a lot because I don't always finish content from the start to finish. Forwarding works but its clumsy, this will work a lot better.

 

[djskribbles]

not sure how much i'm going to watch videos (meaning videos on the HDD, not BD movies) on my PS3 now that i have a HTPC, but the new video search is really good!

 

[patsu]

What does the DiVX VOD registration code do ?

EDIT 2: Found http://vod.divx.com/?lang=en
Looks like someone will launch a VOD service accessible from PS3 in the future.

EDIT: They changed the default Playstation 3 Home Page too. Now it includes big buttons to a few official PS3 websites (e.g., PS Blog, PS forum, LBP, ...). If they are going to link the games to the web, a PS3 portal to surface highligts would be a good follow up (e.g., See published YouTube videos for LBP, web-based gamer profile, etc.).

deepbrown is complaining about jerky text entry. I don't have that problem but if you do, you are not alone.

 

[Arwin]

Hopefully either the today released Flash 10 won't take off too soon on PC, or it'll be ported to PS3 a little sooner than 9 was ...

 

[patsu]

It took 3 months for about 60% users to migrate to Flash 9 last round. Flash 10 has hardware-accelerated graphics and a more advanced video codec. Both are proven on the PS3. *If* Sony is committed to Flash, then we should see Flash 10 for PS3 someday. Besides, Microsoft is going after Adobe's Flash platform. I think the latter will be very open to expand its Flash footprint.

 

[Silent]

I don't know if its me but the PSN stores also feels snappier here.

 

[archie4oz]

What does the DiVX VOD registration code do ?

EDIT 2: Found http://vod.divx.com/?lang=en
Looks like someone will launch a VOD service accessible from PS3 in the future.

That's actually been hidden in there since 2.0. Just finally got exposed...

I don't know if its me but the PSN stores also feels snappier here.

It is, you'll notice more tweaks here and there (e.g. more SKU slots for a product, code redemption in store, etc.)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Gametrailers works, which is nice. We also get in-page Flash adverts - woohoo! I also found why my browser was blurry. Text is tiny, downscaled from 1080p to 945p, and many sites have fixed text size. I had to crank up text sized in the settings, which scales as a bitmap rather than as rendering vector text larger. Zoom is still of a bitmap. Text rendering seems pretty weird, rendering to a fixed-resolution surface instead of rendering to screen-space.

PSN Store has a cute intro and now caches the icons! So everything loads faster.

Life With PlayStation has replaced the Folding icon. This cements my idea that it's very much a trojan for Folding. Now people who had no idea what Folding was will be running it as they try out LWP.

 

[Arwin]

Gametrailers works, which is nice. We also get in-page Flash adverts - woohoo!

Look forward to trying eurogamer then ...

I also found why my browser was blurry. Text is tiny, downscaled from 1080p to 945p, and many sites have fixed text size. I had to crank up text sized in the settings, which scales as a bitmap rather than as rendering vector text larger. Zoom is still of a bitmap. Text rendering seems pretty weird, rendering to a fixed-resolution surface instead of rendering to screen-space.

One of the for me best things about the PS3 browser seen on a biggish LCD is that zooming works so nice and smooth - but clearly that's partly a result of "texture-zooming" rather than vector zooming, which considering the way websites are built, is really the only way. Still, its zooming features are a step beyond most windows browsers, I think.

PSN Store has a cute intro and now caches the icons! So everything loads faster.

Caching?! What a brilliant idea!

Life With PlayStation has replaced the Folding icon. This cements my idea that it's very much a trojan for Folding. Now people who had no idea what Folding was will be running it as they try out LWP.

Yeah, that happened last update already, or whenever you updated Folding@Home. So I guess that updating the firmware now does that update for Folding@Home for you also.

 

[patsu]

That's actually been hidden in there since 2.0. Just finally got exposed...

You know what ? Sony is the only company I know that exposes a consumer service incrementally from the foundation up. Others usually deliver in a top down fashion (e.g., Focus on one simple, vertical service and pan out sideway to related applications).

In general, what is coming for DiVX VOD ? Is the Playstation Video store DiVX based ?

It is, you'll notice more tweaks here and there (e.g. more SKU slots for a product, code redemption in store, etc.)

So this time is for real. I thought it was faster the last update. Did they beef up the servers too ? The network was done for maintenance yesterday.

I also found why my browser was blurry. Text is tiny, downscaled from 1080p to 945p, and many sites have fixed text size. I had to crank up text sized in the settings, which scales as a bitmap rather than as rendering vector text larger.

Good. At least I am not imagining things when the text looks fine on my screen.
deepbrown now accused me of lying to him. He has some problem with jerky text input. Do you guys see the same thing ? (using the small on-screen keyboard). Mine works fine; both the big and the little virtual keypad.

 

[Arwin]

Eurogamer works fine including Eurogamer TV ... almost everything works now, which is great. Hopefully Flash 10 doesn't screw things up too soon.

Apparently using www.ps3iplayer.com allows you to use iplayer.com on the PS3 pretty well now too, if you're interested in that (didn't see it mentioned anywhere).

All in all very good update.

 

[tirminyl]

Well, if the Screenshot feature has to be supported by the game, then that means no cool screenshots of Resistance 2 or LBP. I still don't own any game that allows me to play music from my HDD ! Community will have to shout about it for these to get implemented!

One question: Does in-game custom music work in all games on an X360?

EDIT: Good to know that gametrailers will work now ! and Powersave for the controller is a required feature as I had to do it manually all the time!

Am I wrong, but can't you take screens in LBP? Also, it was hinted at Youtube LBP support in a Sony release pertaining to an official Playstation Youtube page as well as a LBP page.

I think R2 should support screenshots as the first game supports it.

No, in-game custom music is up to the developers to support it. It is not at the OS level like Microsoft's as I assume it's because Microsoft owns the patent to it. I do wish Sony enforced custom soundtracks. Hopefully they do for titles released in 09 and forward.

 

[itch]

In case anyone is interested, I just noticed my HD recordings in mythtv play back with sound on the ps3 now! yayyy! It used to only play the video without sound. (I'm in the US)

 

[patsu]

The official feature list for 2.50:
http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/About/SystemUpdate/PS3_250_update.html

 

[rabidrabbit]

Does the "Other (Network Standard)" option in printer selection now mean that I'd be able to use my wireless network printer with PS3, or use it wired to my router that's connected to a PC?

 

[deepbrown]

You know what ? Sony is the only company I know that exposes a consumer service incrementally from the foundation up. Others usually deliver in a top down fashion (e.g., Focus on one simple, vertical service and pan out sideway to related applications).

In general, what is coming for DiVX VOD ? Is the Playstation Video store DiVX based ?



So this time is for real. I thought it was faster the last update. Did they beef up the servers too ? The network was done for maintenance yesterday.



Good. At least I am not imagining things when the text looks fine on my screen.
deepbrown now accused me of lying to him. He has some problem with jerky text input. Do you guys see the same thing ? (using the small on-screen keyboard). Mine works fine; both the big and the little virtual keypad.

Yes, it's all buggered up. When scrolling through letters it flicks to the curser at every change - making the whole keyboard flicker and jerk about...making it impossible to see the words you're trying to type, jumping to letters you don't want. And ingame...since the whole activity has a slower response time, it's almost unusable.