Hi, everyone. When you turn on your PS3 today, you’ll be greeted with the newest system software update, v2.20. We gave you the heads up last week on what the new firmware would deliver, and, as promised, we have Eric Lempel back on camera to walk through a demo of some the new features. Also, to set the record straight, Blu-ray Portable Copy was never a part of this firmware update, and the feature isn’t related to BD-LIVE. We know a lot of you are excited about the ability to take a copy of a BD movie with you on the go on your PSP, so we’ll keep you posted on any developments with this cool feature in the future.
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269 Comments
you should put this and other firmware videos on the playstation store. It makes more sense there than the blog.
This is a great update, I hope you guys at Sony are really working hard for Bul-Ray to PSP, or even DVD to PSP in the next firmware update! I own a lot of DVDs, and it would be awseome if I can port them over to my PSP. You guys are doing great, and you know everyone wants IN-GAME XMB, and HOME SOON!
@153 (and others). I thought Blu-ray to PSP would only work if the Blu-ray includes a digital copy (e.g. Hitman, Juno etc.). In this circumstance the copyright owner would have agreed to the usage of the digital copy. Wouldn’t you be infringing on copyright if you were to make copies of any DVD in your collection for playback on your PSP?
Is there any word on if/when the PS3 will support a lossless audio format like FLAC or lossless WMA?
Eric, I would love to use the ps3 as my media center for pictures, as I do for music. Yet one of the most frustrating things about the ps3 is the fact that the ps3 does NOT have a shuffle/random feature for showing photos! So when my friends and family come over, and I’m instead using my Wii to play random photos on my wall-mounted flatscreen tv, they laugh when I tell them I can’t do this with the ps3. And they all add how typical this is of Sony, how Sony is great at hardware but just doesn’t get it when it comes to user interfaces. And to anyone who says I should use the playlist feature as a work-around, this is NOT an option, because 1) the number of photos I have exceeds the playlist limit, and 2) again, there’s no shuffle/random feature, not even for the playlists! Seems to me that if Sony truly wants us to use the ps3 as a media hub for all media, that adding this long overdue capability is a no brainer… Maybe we can get this feature in v2.30?
Please give us the option to adjust for overscan on videos… Having subtitles cut off can be a massive pain, and even many HDTVs have overscan…
Not to beat a dead horse, but I’m going to beat a dead horse.
Sony does realize that all firmware updates without In-Game XMB will be eclipsed by the many voices here screaming for it? It really wasn’t cool to post on the blog that you guys were being “cheeky” by making In-Shirt XMB T-shirts for GDC and two updates later we still don’t have the function. It really felt like a slap in the face. We know you’re working on it; you’ve said so – maybe a statement giving us a general time frame?
I’m sure the functionality for BD 2.0 is great, but I really don’t care since what we want (In-Game XMB) continues to appear to be on the back burner with little to no priority of ever being implemented.
Thanks for listening.
Hopefully Sony will be smart enough to publish videos like this for ALL FUTURE firmware updates!
Here were some wishlist ideas I’d e-mailed Sony, might as well post ’em here too. :P
* MKV (Matroska) container support (the container supports multiple audio and video formats internally; support I’d like to see would be for MPEG-4/AVC, Divx/Xvid, AC3, DTS, FLAC and AAC).
* FLAC audio playback support, as well as support for FLAC inside valid containers when used with video files (I think FLAC is really only valid inside an MKV, so unless MKV is added, I’m really only asking for FLAC playback of my ripped audio CDs). Support for 5.1 (multichannel) FLAC would be great too.
* dts HD Master Audio and dts HD High Resolution decoding for Blu-ray Disc.
* Better error handling in all of the codecs (MPEG-4/AVC, Divx/Xvid, MPEG-2, VC-1/WMV). Right now, if an error is encountered playback usually stops. Ideally the error would briefly corrupt the video output and playback would resume. This is important for partially corrupted files (internet downloads would be the most likely culprit). At least this way the content could be watched even if a second or two was corrupt.
There’s a couple things I have always wondered if they were gonna fix that seem small and functional.
After you sort your downloaded games by console, it seems to me that there is no way to organize them in a way that you want. No custom sub-folders, no alphabetizing, nothing. All we get is our list in “Date Modified” form. *shrug* Something that I feel would be easy to fix.
Then the ever elusive in game chat. I’d love to put that Bluetooth headset to work a little more often.
Also, anyone know if there’s a way, aside from just starting an mp3, to set my PS3 to play music while I’m browsing around my XMB? Would love to put something ambient like the Kingdom Hearts theme song just playing quietly in the background. *dozes off to sleep*
_MrBlastotron
way to shut the rumors down yesterday. it was a beautiful moment to behold.
get Windows/Linux SAMBA sharing support then i am going to be the happiest person on the world.
i have a 500Mhz Via Epia linux server (25watts peak for the whole system) Samba sharing because DLNA is way too slow for low-powerd devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_(software)
awesome stuff
keep it coming
this update is really nice..
any browser enhancements are very welcome, but we really need flash9 support on the browser.. i mean this is almost worse than using safari to browse the internet.
on the divx side of life though everything seems peachy after this update. i haven’t really had time to check all the divx features available, but after i updated my system to 2.20 it can now play some more divx files which wasn’t supported on earlier firmwares. i haven’t checked which features are actually supported now, but some of the more advanced codec options seems to be supported now..
i reckon about 90-95% of all divx/xvid videos work on the PS3 now.
thanks eric, i actually liked the divx update more than the whole bd-live thingamajig thingy or the psp-functionality which i actually have no use for whatsoever.
it’s nice to see that you try to improve the functionality of the media part of the PS3 continually..
kudos again to sony :)
It seems that the v2.20 firmware fixes problems with playback/streaming of some MPEG-2 1080i streams. However the same problem still exists with some h264 1080i streams (I haven’t seen the same issue with progressive streams ever). Although the issue has been fixed for MPEG-2, it seems that it does some bob-style de-interlacing. It could have always been that way I suppose, and perhaps I was just distracted by the playback artifacts that used to exist.
The issue that still exists with h264 1080i streams (that used to also exist with MPEG-2) is that on occasion (more often related to a scene change) it appears like it fails to decode a frame/field, but still displays the left-over buffer that it failed to decode into. If very little has been played so far, that buffer could display green (which is 0 YCbCr data) because that buffer has yet to have anything decoded into it. Or if enough has been played so far, it could display a frame from minutes previous – whatever just happened to be in that buffer last time it was used.
So, I’d like to see that fixed!
I’d also like support for playing back/DLNA streaming of DTS streams (as bitstream is fine for me), not just AC3.
I’d also like greater support for less “standard” h264 streams – eg. if more B-reference frames than the standard normally allows for a give profile or level, or more macroblocks per second than the standard normally allows, etc.
I’d also like it to not re-capitalise all the names of the files provided by a DLNA server. eg. how currently “5th” becomes “5Th” and “ac3” or “AC3” becomes “Ac3”.
I’d also like the pressing of a button on the BD remote to bring the PS3 out of ‘screen saver’ mode. It seems only controller 1 can do that. That *really* annoys me.
Woohoo! I really love these updates!
I also love the video’s about the updates. So please continue demonstrating the additional features of every update this way!
I’m starting to really love my PS3 as a MediaCenter. (Only lacking decent XviD support ;o))
Thanks a lot and keep up this pace of progress!
I thought we could stream video now?
When I use the save target feature, it asks for a destination to save, I thought it would save to the PS3 hard drive?
Other times it will save the location as a bookmark.
so…what about the ps3 clock? shouldn’t that be a really quick and simple thing to put in?
It seems like my xvid files are playing at a slightly faster speed than normal. I did not notice any playback speed issues in the previous firmware. Can anyone else test their files?
Great Firmware and the video is great too.im down to only 2 complaints now lol …..@ SONY ill skip the first complaint so here is one that i think most will agree on, i honestly dont think there is enough responses from u guys i know u all got stuff to do but i thought this was for all of us to connect and discuss pretty much all things sony EVEN the bad stuff only one or two comments are left by u guys if were lucky and every GREAT once in a while one of you will leave a few more but its very rare.so all i want is more input from you guys even if its idle discussion, the main reason i use this blog when i do is to get my opinions to you guys and see what ya have to say about them (and the other PS3/PSP users too) well like i said its been a damn good week and a half or so and i hope it stays that way …( a response to this would be nice lol ) well see all of you this Thursday :D
Another great firmware update. However I’d like to report an issue with streaming .mpg via dlna. It seems the picture quality of NTSC movies have degraded since the previous firmware when streaming. There was a particular movie I watched just before the upgrade that looked great but just checked it after and now looks terrible. PAL movies seem fine though I need to confirm this…
Hey Eric Lempel!
If you are reading this…
I really dont know what to say, you guys have done such a great job that I am speechless, I really dont know what to say, Iam just so happy right now.
It feels so good to be a Playstation 3 ownerer and will continiue so for ever! :)
Eric Lempel and you other guys that been working on PS3, you guys and girls ROCK!
WE NEED DOLBY TRUEHD BITSTREAM!
WE NEED DTS-HD MA BITSTREAM!
You want to make this the best Blu-ray player it NEEDS to have these features.
I am looking into buying the Sony STR-DE5300ES and for $1800.00 I want it to do the decoding!
More Codecs PLEASE!!! And I agree with:
macpac24
“Just a quick question , Is there no way you guys can update the flash player for the browser? a lot of sites (including this one) are no accessible through the PS3 as you cannot view any of the videos.”
I really would like something to make our PS3 browser be able to play online video’s in the same way a PC browser can. This would be fantastic!
On a lesser not mentioned much note. How about more updates for avatars on our PSN accounts. (Maybe even our own downloadable???) And I loved the Music Player visual add on in one of the last updates! More and more more more please!!!
Sony won’t say it but I will.
Please disregard my previous post I have found the truth of the Bit streaming matter.
http://www.siliconimage.com/news/press/detailpressrelease.aspx?id=384
NOT POSSIBLE!
However it appears the PS3 can still decode onboard, which is currently does for TrueHD, and outputs as PCM.
Also Bit streaming won’t be needed if Blu-rays go to a PCM audio standard as this is uncompressed audio.
BUT, WE STILL NEED DTS-MA DECODING ONBOARD!
This is the kind of stuff I am talking about Sony you need to be more open with your customer base!
Hope this update fixes the issue that my PS3 doesn’t play any DVD or CD????? :(
Also requested is the MKV support…that is a highly anticipated issue!
Keep the updates coming!
Just some thing for the next update. Why is the “download manager” susuended while playing a blu-ray disc?. Media downloads in the background when playing a game, but if your watching a movie, when you go back, nothing has happened. seems fairly easy to fix.
I don’t want to rant, but I guess I have to. There are too many ignorant people on this blog.
FLASH IS OWNED BY ADOBE!! SONY DOES NOT OWN FLASH! There will never be flash9 support for the ps3 browser until adobe releases a newer flash sdk that supports flash9. Its the same issue with the opera browser on the wii. The best sony could do would be to update to the flash lite 3 used on some mobile devices which supposedly supports up to flash8. So hassle adobe or hassle XYZ website for not including backward compatibility for flash7 on their site interface, but quit wasting space on this blog with your ignorance!
For comparison of the different flashes:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/version/flashlite_feature_comparison.pdf
Hello again. Still thinking about the updates. so far 2.20 has been great. Not so on the gaming side, but it´s nice to know my ps3 is a top BD player now, and i think this will atract more potential buyers. A friend of mine just bought a 40gb version just for the BD movies, but he also bought one game, just for showing, but now he is a player, hooked from day 1!
Besides the list i mentioned in a comment before, yes, there would be nice to have a clock, like in the ps2. And also more codecs.
About the Video to the psp, more than having a phisical copy in a dvd of the BD movie like hitman, it would be nice that the PS3 make a “compressed version (h264 or divx i guess)” of the movie, for the psp, i guess locked at X plays, or X time, then it locks or erases itself. That way it would be nice to go on a trip, select 1 or 2 BD i own, download to my PSP, and see them on the journey.
Great to see good PS3 updates on all its fronts!
I’m assuming the divx subtitles refers to the xsub’s of the .divx media format? (.divx media format is different than just .avi with the extension changed to .divx) Could this be a precursor to full support of divx, like Interactive video menus, Chapter points, Multiple audio tracks, etc.?
http://www.divx.com/divx/advanced.php
Also, I highly doubt that mkv or ogm support will come to the ps3 any time soon. This is mainly because
A) mkv is a relatively new container format and doesn’t have nearly as much commercial adoption (or any that I know of) compared to mp4.
B) Because of A, most of the content using mkv is produced by single users or small groups with limited audiences, and a lot of the content is pirated and/or infringes on copyrights somehow (episodes of LOST, etc).
While mkv is the superior container, and support would make a lot of folks happy, I doubt it’s high on sony’s to-do list.
Also, I don’t know about you guys, but I haven’t had any problems watching divx 5 and up. Anything with a fourCC of DX50 works. Divx 3.11a and divx4 (fourCC’s of DIV3 and DIVX) will never be supported because the codec contained pirated code from microsoft, so get over it.
Xvid on the other hand is a toss up for me. Some work some don’t, probably having to do with what version of the codec was used to encode it. Since the fourCC for all xvid’s is XVID, there’s no easy way I know of for seeing which version was used. :-/
Apologies if someone has posted this before.
Could I request a feature whereby if you hold down the PS3 button for a certain amount of time it turns the PS3 off similar to holding down the power button on your computer?
Countless times I change the video inputs on my TV and then either have to cycle back or walk up to the PS3 to turn it off.
@183 straus: Holding down the ps button on the controller gives you a menu to turn off the ps3. Touching the power icon (next to the disk slot) for a couple of seconds will also turn off the system. Flipping the switch on the back is equivalent to pulling the plug and is not recommended unless the ps3 is already off.
@138 Steamy_Mo: The 4gb limit is a limitation of the fat32 file system on the hard drive. There is no way around this (aside from using a different file system). I’m guessing the reason fat32 was chosen is because it’s compatible with just about everything. Besides, I’d be very interested to know what file you could possibly want to play that’s larger than 4gb.
Ok, I have to say this once again. Please add more pictures to the Online Profile avatar selection. Some Heavenly Sword or Patapon would make me very happy. I’ve been using the same one since launch, and I really would like to have a better one.
– Feature request, please extend the international language support a little bit in the Video playback (BD, DVD, DivX, etc..) by the mean of Audio/subtitle language selection, the PS3 just thispaly the English language name, any other language is show up as “other”.
– In the DivX playback while you change the subtitle option, the playback is disrupted.
I can´t believe the so called subtitle update doesn´t support not embedded subtitles like .srt!!
Sony… What´s happening?
I love the update but i still wonder why do we not have a update adding DTS Master Audio. A lot of Blu-ray movies have this audio so why is this not a concern for sony.
Great update.
Could we maybe see more updates on the PS3 web browser?
A newer version of Flash
Updating the engine to something more recent would be great.
Seems MP4 AAC/AVC is badly borked in 2.20. I get constant stuttering when streaming. (wired network).
Files played fine in 2.10.
On the upside, you fixed WMA streaming in 2.20, that you broke in 2.10.
Can we have a bugfix that sorts out these issues?
Thanks for the update.
Now we need MKV support, faster fast forwarding speed for audio and a clock please :)
and oh yes… RSS please!
A very obvious feature is missing when it comes to the Web Browser: PRINT BUTTON
I had to print my grades one day and didn’t have my laptop, I remembered that you can hook up the printer up to the PS3, but to my surprise when I went to the web browser I couldn’t find the Print button. Tried using the print button on the keyboard, but to no viel.
Resume Play only works if you stop playback and then eject. If you eject the disc while it’s playing, it won’t resume when you reinsert it.
This looks like an oversight.
@Nemo20000 I noticed that to not sure if its an oversight. May be an issue of setting a resume point that cant be dynamic as it saves data to the HD? hope it is a oversight and gets added.
With BD-Live…if you have the setting set to “confirm”, once you let one disc access the internet it changes the setting to “Allow” on all subsequent discs. If I have it set to “prompt” shouldn’t it prompt for each disc?
ps3 firmware top 5
I’ve kept these realistic and reasonable
1. INTERNET RADIO. the psp has this, so lets see it added to ps3. I wouldn’t use this a massive amnount, but it’d be nice to have it there
2. SKYPE. booting up my pc is a pain to have a skype call, I’d love to see it integrated into the PS3 like the PSP has.
3. CLOCK. A pretty simple one but I’d like to have a clock in the top right corner when I hold the PS button.
4. MORE CODEC SUPPORT. I’d really like it if the PS3 could play my unprotected iTunes Plus purchases (.m4a). My Nokia N95 can play them so the PS3 should be able to too.
5. WEB APPS. I’d love to see some web apps built in such as a Flickr photo browser (like the Apple TV has) and maybe Google Earth/Maps
Great update guys. Not much to complain about it, I just love DLNA, i get to listen to all my music that way. A couple of hints though, maybe for the next update you guys can implement this. Try out FLAC, and OGG container support. FLAC is rapidly becoming popular, and i really don’t get why ogg isn’t supported. Many videogames title store their audio in ogg vorbis. I don’t think it would be that difficult to implement. Both are open source, so the code is just out there.
FLAC support would really help us audiophiles who have our whole CD collection ripped in this format.
Thanks Sony keep it up, you guys are doing awesome.
I’m definitely seeing a problem now with MP4 AAC/AVC streaming with the new 2.20 firmware. Someone mentioned this already in the comments but I thought I would post as well. I have two PS3s (60GB versions) in the house and now after upgrading both of them I get constant stuttering when streaming.
All the files played fine prior to upgrading. I even used one of the PS3s over the Easter weekend to watch some movies when the family was up for a visit.
I hope somebody is looking into this matter. I’m definitely not the only one since there are many other posts about this in the official playstation.com forums. Hope this gets fixed soon.
thanks!
but the information is not working since updating…
information board*