Firmware (v.2.30) Details and Store Walkthrough

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Hey Everyone! We know you’re all patiently waiting for the next PS3 firmware update, ver. 2.30, which includes the revamped PLAYSTATION Store. The good news is that it’s coming soon, and you can now see how the new user interface will look in this video demo featuring Grace Chen.

I have more good news to report today – the system software update will also add DTS-HD Master Audio output for Blu-ray videos, which means the high-definition visuals of Blu-ray will now be matched with the highest quality audio for the ultimate movie-watching experience on PS3.

DTS-HD Master Audio is literally bit-for-bit identical to the studio master recording and makes movie soundtracks and sound effects truly come to life. The technology delivers audio at the incredibly high rate of 24.5 mega-bits per second (Mbps) on Blu-ray disc, which is significantly higher than standard DVDs. DTS-HD Master Audio also offers 7.1 audio channels at 96k sampling frequency/24 bit depths, so you’ll be totally immersed in the sound. The firmware update will add DTS-HD High Resolution Audio as well, which is a similar output technology that requires less disc space. You can read more about both codecs here.

A lot of you, particularly the home theatre enthusiasts and audiophiles out there, have been asking us for this capability, and we can’t wait until you have an opportunity to pop in a compatible Blu-ray video to test it out for yourself.

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410 Comments

  • NIce one! Can’t wait to check it out! Good job Grace, and the Sony team.

  • Hmm. Usually I know more about this, but I’m getting format overload. (Will firmware 2.4 support playing vinyl. ;) )

    For DTS-HD Master or DTS-HD Hi Res, is everything done on the compressor side, and my existing receiver, which supports DTS, already support DTS-HD, or do I need a receiver that explicitly supports DTS-HD format?

    I’d normally just belay the issue for the future, but I need to buy a new sound system for the master bedroom. I was thinking about just going with one of these Bose Cinemate idiot-proof units that DSP 2.1 analog inputs for that “surround” feel — sounds impressive by the way; I find Bose has a name but doesn’t always get it right; they did here, for rectangular rooms with evenly spaced walls, of course, like bedrooms.

    But if I need DTS-HD support in addition to DTS, I may move the Onkyo from downstairs up there with two new fronts and a sub — it’s full 5.1, but has a very good 2.1 5.1-faker DSP mode — and buy a receiver that supports DTS-HD.

    • The PS3 decodes and outputs the DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD Hi Res to PCM (5.1) or (7.1) depending on the number of audio channels supported in the DTS-HD audio. An A/V receiver only needs to support PCM 7.1 or 5.1 in order to receive the audio output. It is not necessary to have an A/V receiver to support DTS-HD for playback.

  • Looks amazing! Thanks for the update!

    Will North America be getting a Easter Egg Hunt like Japan?! :)

    http://www.xtremeps3.com/news.php?id=249

  • Grace please come over to Europe and kick SCEE where it hurts. Seriously, you guys at SCEA do such a great job it makes SCEE look even more inept and useless than I thought possible!

  • Will North America be getting a Easter Egg hunt like Japan?! :)

    http://www.xtremeps3.com/news.php?id=249

  • Opps, sorry for the double post..

  • AWESOME!!!!

    DTS audio output!

    this is great news for audio/videophiles like myself!

    Finally now all those review that say the PS3 is the best Blu-ray player on the market except for _________ (DTS output)_________

    now they will have to change the reviews!

    thanks for continuing support with these codecs!

  • I Love it!!!!

  • How about restoring access to 750Gb and 1Tb SATA drives that was broken with 2.20?

  • AWSOME!

    That’s all I can say, AWSOME!

  • DTS-MA! Yes! Oh yes oh yes oh yes!

  • is there any way we can get a feature for the psn store personal download list to let us organize and DELETE we dont want in the list any more. for instance I have downloaded the demop for devil may cry 4 and have since bought the game because the demo was so awesome. but having the game i dont need the demo on my list anymore, it just takes up space and makes it harder to scroll through everything I have downloaded before. The same goes for everything I have downloaded since the system first came out a year and a half ago. if I format my system and want to download stuff I had before, that is a big list I have to go through each time I download an item. Just a small request, dont know if you guys have touched on this before or not, but please respond.

    thanx

    Jason

  • great job Erick and the psn team on the new look and feel of the ps store. I personally love the Preview feature it will save me time and space on the hdd. great job sony

  • AWESOME! I LOVE YOU SONY!

  • Thats great really cool

    I am happy when i see things going well on ps3 and i know every update is improvement of ps3 (remember what father of ps says when announce ps3)

    i am from Turkey i live in istanbul and in Turkey thats not been easy to be fan of any brand couse of prices :) and i use american account to buy something in store :D (sorry guys i must to do it )

    THANKS A LOT guys keep up good work

    Not: i bought ps3 in may 2007 around 1000 american dollar $ (60 GB ) I LOVE ps i love sony :) ……..

  • I didn’t have a problem with the store to begin with, but this all looks really great. What I DO want is more PS1 classics. I’ve bought over 10 games on psn >:0 I think I deserve it.

  • PlayStation tech support in Australia won’t return emails on this subject, so I’m putting the issue out there.

    I had been using an external 750 GB hard drive in place of the original 60 GB drive of my Australian PS3 since October last year. The drive is housed in an externally powered USB caddy that supports an eSATA connection. The hard drive is connected to the internal SATA socket of the PS3 that is exposed when the PS3’s internal hard drive is removed.

    Up until I upgrading 2.20 I had experienced no problems using the large external drive. When I upgraded my PS3 to 2.20, the new firmware downloaded and installed without error. However, when it restarted after the firmware install, all it showed was the blowing silk background. It did not bring up the XMB.

    I’ve done a bit of testing and found that a 2.20 PS3 will happily format both 500Gb and 750Gb drives, but can only boot with the 500Gb and not the 750Gb.

    Does anyone from Sony care or know about this?

    Was support for 750 GB and larger drives in 2.20 dropped intentionally? If so, why weren’t users warned prior to the 2.20 upgrade so they could save their data and upgrade smoothly.

    Will support for 750 GB and larger drives be restored in a future firmware update? How about putting it back in 2.30 with your precious store update?

  • Its looking awesome guys! I can’t wait to see the store and in person and be able to browse it. Also looking forward to the next update.

  • Where the hell is Home at? Its starting to become a joke waiting for it and waiting and waiting for it..seriously, we can’t even get in-game messaging.

    No wonder PSN online play is free. ITS GARABAGE

  • Great work!

    Does the store feature background music ? that would be a great addition, unless you finally make possible for us to play our own background music during games, the store, etc. <<<<——-I know you’ll make it happen. Thanks so much again.

  • Looks good, but I wish you’d find somewhere other than Crackle to host your videos. I’m on 20MB broadband, and always get stuttering video and audio. No problems anywhere else, so it must be them.

  • Who tha hell is rating this under 5?!

  • Since you’re adding the red shopping bags to indicate which games, add-ons, etc. we’ve already purchased, will the update recgonize the items we’ve already purchased? I personally liked the feature when it removed what we’ve purchased from the list. Would it be possible to include that as an option?

  • Advanced Codec bitstream via HDMI? , not “just” DTS-MA decoding -> PCM over HDMI?

    Please say something about this

  • Very nice. I was skepticle I admit, but I like what I see.

  • The new store looks pretty slick (has animation like OS X). And I can’t wait for DTS-MA upgrade… :D

  • Thanks for giving us a sneak peak at the new PlayStation Store layout. I particularly like the animation effects. I can’t wait to see it up and running.

  • do we twice as many demo’s when new store comes out. Since we haven’t had any in two weeks. And I thought PS3 already had 7.1 audio out put. And If you do have a reciver that can handle that (you got to much money give me some).

  • its april 15th the date for the new store and firmware update ?
    I bought my ps3 last week and im pretty happy .. and now more stuff is coming ! yeah. i want HOME right now :D

    this year will be awesome: MGS4,MGO,GT5,LBP,K2,R2… SF4,KOFXII…. AMAZING !

  • I would hope to see bitstreaming of the new audio formats at some time, but moreso I would love to see more game demos, I download them all the time to see if I like a game before I buy it, this is a great idea to get people interested in a game.

  • Well done, and thank you! :D

    Hopefully you’ll be able to concentrate on the multimedia side of things for a little longer. Such as adding WMA pro to WMV, sending DTS data in vid files to the receiver instead pretending that there’s no audio. Region free PAL DVD playback on US PS3 would be most pleasant too, pretty please.

  • Now add a clock to the XMB…

  • Awesome I cant wait for it to come out! :D

  • Wow, all I can say is WOW! Everything I was looking for. Great layout and interface. Video preview FTW! All the content for one game in one spot, AWSEOME! Worth the wait for sure! Thanks!

  • try not to forget that this is firstly a GAMEs console…….what about ingame XMB???? Been waiting almost a year for it, are you guys having problems getting it working????

  • The PS3 is surely proving to be limitless. Now if they’d just get the ‘you know what’ into the ‘you know where’ then no one would have any reason not to buy one. :)

    You know what i’m talking about.

  • Amazing update as usual, great work Sony :), next update ingame-xmb ^^

  • Video… doesn’t… work… at work! Must watch somehow. Though I can’t see that video, I think it’s awesome that the STORE team is so proud of their work and willing to flaunt it and put it out there early. From all the screenshots, this is going to be great.

  • Dear Grace,

    sorry if the guys on here are all hubba-hubba over you. but your are cute, so with that said.

    thank you for your work, i know you get alot of flack, so its nice to bring great news to us all. keep up the great work.

  • I’m liking this a lot.

    Will the store be easier to update being natively on the PS3?

    Will the store still only get updates every Thursday?(I think this needs to change myself)

    Grace is way better looking than I thought she would be

  • This is the update I’ve been waiting for.

    I was worried that Sony might hold back on the DTS HD MA support to promote their standalone Blu-Ray players, thankfully PS3 returns to being the best Blu-Ray player on the market.

  • Looks great, similar to Singstar. Also great idea to drop the cursor hand and just move around from box to box….

    Looking foward to next week!!!!

  • Great update!

    Will the store be easier to update now that its natively on the PS3?

    Will the store get updated more often then once a week?

    Grace is way hotter than Eric

  • 85: Gah. I was hoping I’d be the first one to make the joke of pretending to be an angry ingrate demanding XMB. Looks like you beat me to it.

    Congratulations, Sony. Best update in a long, long while.

  • @94. Very funny!
    Awesome update.
    Let’s not forget that many customers also want HDMI and Optical Cable output simultaneously. All in all, a 5 Star rating…no doubt!

  • Awesome!

    Here’s to hoping we can create custom themes for the store now that it’s native to the PS3 (like with the XMB).

  • Will we still get trailers for games and movies in HD? I hope those won’t be limited to the streaming preview video format. They are more convenient for sure, so it’s a great feature – but a good trailer is much more impressive in HD if you want to show them to friends or something.

  • Me likes the new store. enything that makes it faster is good. BTW, I am still waiting for a screenshot of the SD version…

    Is also nice to know that the Blu-Ray is getting updated all the time even though i’ve never used my (1 year and 2 months old) PS3 for Blu-Ray viewing.

    P.S. Grace Chen is much better at the video walkthrough that Eric Lempel! sorry haha

  • Looks amazingly seemless as it should be. Very happy with this upgrade especially the Bluray support added. The only thing I was hoping they would cover was the video services (ie movies for download). Hate paying MS or Comcast for movies to watch on the spur of the moment.

  • i am liking this new look!!!

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