* What’s new? – Shows new content available in the PlayStation Store and on the net regarding PS3 games and other media.
Status bar – The upper right corner shows a lot of handy information about your online status, including the amount of friends online right now and whether you have any new messages. A clock icon is also added, that also acts as the new ‘loading’ icon.
Friends list update – A new look and the ability to show te entire message history you’ve had with your fiends.
PlayStation store shortcuts – In the Games, Videos, and Music sections of the XMB (Cross Media Bar), you’ll see new links to the PlayStation store, including shortcuts to the (for us Europeans still upcoming) Music and Video stores.
New and paid avatars - Tired of the same old avatars currently available? Well loads of new ones will be added soon, and paid avatars will become available in the PS Store as well.
Dynamic Themes – Soon, new animated themes will become available in the PlayStation Store, instead of the ‘boring’ static ones available now. Most of these will most likely not be free though. The default PS3 theme will be updated slightly to included new sparkles!
Trophies update – Developers will now have the option to list ‘main game’ trophies and ‘add on content’ trophies separately. Also, the platinum trophy will not be counted in the completion percentage of a game anymore.
Upconverting Audio from USB – You can now upconvert audio from the hard drive or a USB source to 88.2 Khz or 176.4 Khz.
Multiple output sound – The sound settings let you select simultaneous audio output, so that sound can be output simultaneously through HDMI, optical, and AV Multi.
Video playback controls – Video playback speed can be adjusted with your right analog stick now.
Video language settings – New options for selecting the default audio and subtitle language of HDD movies are available.
Web browser – In addition to being much faster, there is a new print screen feature in the PS3 browser.
Startup – All models, ranging from 40 to 160 GB, slim or not, now have a new shorter startup screen with the new PS3 logo. The sound is also slightly different. In addition, the PlayStation 3 logo appearing before starting a PS3 game has been removed, making game startup slightly faster as well.
TV section – A new TV section has become available for UK users, including a link to the BBC iPlayer. Users elsewhere in Europe will have to wait before their local tv stations ready support for the service.
iPlayer will be "followed shortly" by:
- rtve (Spain)
- Antena 3 (Spain)
- laSexta (Spain)
- ZDF (Germany)
- NOS (Netherlands)
- ABC (Australia)
DTCP-IP support – Settings to allow viewing copy protected videos on a media server have been added.
Larger font – The XMB’s font size has been increased, so that readability on small screens with a high resolution has been improved.
Copy & Paste – Copy & Paste ability is now added to the messages screen
Remote Play on mobile phones – It is now possible to add mobile phones to your PS3 system, so that they can enjoy Remote Play features of the PS3. The first mobile phone supporting this is the Sony Ericsson Aino.