Firmware v2.20 bringing BD-Live to PS3

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Hi again everyone. Here’s a quick preview of the next PLAYSTATION 3 system software update coming up in the next few days. Firmware v2.20, introduces a number of features to further enhance your PLAYSTATION 3 as the hub of your entertainment center.

Most notably, the update enables the PS3 to support Blu-ray Disc Profile 2.0, also known as BD-Live. You can connect now to the Internet while playing discs that support BD-Live to obtain additional content and special features. These features vary from disc to disc, and will keep your BD discs fresh with new content and in some cases exclusive content only accessible to owners of BD-Live enabled discs. On April 8th Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will release The 6th Day and Walk Hard on Blu-ray; these titles will be among the first to take advantage of BD-Live. With this update, the PLAYSTATION 3 becomes the first Blu-ray player on the market with BD-Live functionality.

Here are some of the other new features/enhancements that will be included in Firmware v2.20:

  • The ability to copy PS3 Music and Photo playlists to a PSP system. We introduced the ability to create Music and Photo playlists on the PS3 in firmware update v2.0. Now you can easily export your playlists to your PSP.
  • You can now play DivX and WMV format files that are over 2 GB. In addition, you can now display subtitles when viewing DivX files.
  • Resume Play – begin playing a DVD or BD disc from the point where you previously stopped it, even if you eject the disc and insert a different movie or game.
  • Use your PSP as a remote control to play back your music files on your PS3 without turning on your TV.
  • The Internet browser now displays some web pages faster. In addition [Save Target] has been added as an option under file. This option lets you save a file that is linked to a web page to your PS3 hard drive or storage media.

There are a few other tweaks and upgrades included in v2.20 – we’ll provide more specifics as the update is about to go live.

Comments are closed.

380 Comments

  • I think they owed it to us after the last update of just bug fixes! But much appreciated Sony team!

  • @100
    thanks for the comment.
    Just for your information, since you seems to be so good in video and h.264.
    I’m a pro in computer science, and i work in a research project about new (scalable) video file transmission, so i do think i know what i’m speaking when i say “X doesn’t work”, with X a video file.

    Do you even know what i speak about “level 5.1” , and do you know why the player of PS3 is “only” 4.1 ?
    It’s simple :
    4.1 are required to play BD. and 5.1 is the default level when you encode with x264.

    I do know how to encode a mp4 that can be read by the ps3, but
    1°) i don’t want to encode more than 400 Go of video with my “little” personnal XP 1800+ (which is big enough to read an SD h.264 or an 720p Xvid) in h.264.
    2°) Most of my h.264 are encoded with H.264, and aren’t playable by the ps3. Same thing with my xvid video.
    3°) with x264, you need to precise that you want to encode with level 4.1 … as i said previously.

    I’ve a friend of mine who have test one thing, and you can do the same :
    Take the fansub of the new apple seed film (which can be illegal in your country, but it’s not the point here, since you want an example) . Extract the audio and the video from the mkv, re-encode the ac3 in aac.
    Mux it into an mp4.
    Push it to your PS3 and say to me “I can see the film. It’s great”.
    If you do this, you’re a liar.

    And the mp4 we’ve done can be read with mplayer (on linux).

    I forget, you are better than me, since you pay something to do some enco.

    Ps, i forgot: i’m the only on to wish this in this thread ;)

  • Nice looking update, disregarding home and in game xmb there are a few things that sort of annoy me about the ps3. Small things that could hopefully be fixed in a similar software update.

    Starting with the most annoying thing, MESSAGES. The ps3 just doesn’t seem to notify me properly that I have received a new message.
    Back when the information bar was introduced I remember some fans doing mockups of how Sony could make it more useful. One of the things I liked was how a small envelope would appear on it when you have received a new update. Please include this feature in a future update relatively soon. Receiving a message from a friend asking if you want a game of Warhawk a week too late sucks and vice versa.

    The friend list should be bigger, maybe you should allow for grouping as many instant messengers do, family, friends, school etc. This way it wont be a chore to find one of your 100 friends because it would be a few clicks away(fitts law).

    The ability to have any RSS feed for the information bar would be great. The default news in the information bar for Ireland isn’t updated regularly enough and If you allowed for custom feeds you could have other uses for it like a clan info bar where you could be notified of when the next clan game of warhawk is etc.

    Clock – everyone needs to know the time

    Weather – I miss this from xbmc.

    Dell ideastorm type of page for users to give there input on what features they want the most so the Sony developers can concentrate there efforts on the ones that will build up their reputation as a company. Obviously it would need to be moderated so there are no duplicates, like 10,000 entry’s for in game xmb.

    And last but not least, If in game xmb is truly in the works then I guess the clock will definitely be taken care of along with messages while in game and other such things.
    Maybe it would be wise to do a snapshot video of the current status of in game xmb and what it will bring to the plate.
    This would cure some fans curiosity over whether its actually going to come or not.

  • what do you people want? you guys say more game related updates but you dont give any suggestions. you probably cant even think of anything you want but you just need to whine about something.

  • @152

    let me think….ummmm….in game XMB!

    what a chump

  • @ willacuz #146 i mean damn, I am speachless, you put that together so well, i couldnt have said it any better myself, look at my other comments and you will see you are not alone

  • @152

    how about what everyones been complaining about for the past year. in game xmb! think before you type.

  • Don’t drink the multimedia Kool-Aid! it’s a game platform

  • Great update.. I like the PSP as a remote idea instead of having the TV on….nice…

  • @150 briaeros007

    If you were really a “pro in computer science” you would know how to use Google, everything I found was from a 5 minute search.

    Try this program: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=131782
    It remuxes the video and audio files from the mkv to a vob file. While doing this it chanegs the tags on the h264 video from 5.1 to 4.1. The video is still 5.1 but the PS3 thinks it is 4.1 and now the PS3 can play it.

    Since you already know how to mux it your self, but for some reason cannot find a program to change the tags of the 5.1 h264 to 4.1. You might find this program useful:v http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=123392

  • well obviously everyone wants in game XMB. but you should already know its not coming until 2.4 in the summer.

  • havent you realized sony does not care about the gamers and what we want evertime they put out an update the say we have been listing to feekback whatever, but it seems like that they always miss the part about the in-game xmb, i mean that is really all we have been asking for and that is the only thing they wont give us

  • I’m not understanding the “using the psp as a remote control” can you please elaborate? GREAT UPDATE by the way. Thx Sony!!

  • @ 158 why do we always have to wait, we have been asking for this since launch, launch that should have been priority, but no, what teh gamers want always takes a back sent to blu-ray

  • @161

    im with you. i was just sayin we know when its comin out so no point still asking for it.

  • This is a very nice update. I bought the PS3 maily to play games.

    You know what most of us really want…but I guess there is no need to go there again..and again…and again….

  • @161 and anyone else wanting In-Game XMB

    You need to realize complaining here wont do anything. The firmware is mainly developed by SCEJ (aka. Japan). Don’t complain here, go to the SCEJ site and complain there.

  • Can anyone please explain using the PSP as a remote? Eric Plz?

  • come on sony! why you dragging your feet on dts ma?

  • I have a PSP, but not a PS3 yet. The remote play features you are adding sound great.

    I would like to ask that you make it a priority to give the PSP an ability to create on-the-fly playlists in an upcoming firmware update. It is kind of silly that this doesn’t exist already. Thanks!

  • Any chance on putting our own feeds on the feed player? Or maybe a seperate one where you can get ticker news, sports, etc. from CNN, ABC, or ESPN? That would be great, along with the clock that should go in the upper left hand, and an In-Game XMB feature (lawl).

    BTW — Sony, keep making things that will “Fill” the XMB. I hate having all that open space around my icons, it’s just a waste. There’s tons of stuff going on in the Xbox Dashboard, and it’s way more populated. Get some things goin’ on in the background, but go light on the usage of RAM (maybe let us use Yahoo Widgets, or something!).

  • The biggest question for me, is will it fix the broken WMA streaming, that got broken in Firmware 2.10, and is still broken in 2.17

  • XMB is comming this summer,, period…

  • #168 You’re clearly not a designer, are you? The last thing we want is to clutter up the beautiful XMB screen with a bunch of crap around the icons. Keep it clean, just like it is.

  • XMB is coming in 2011 … period.. lol

  • oh really? this summer? even that hasnt been confirmed.

    its sad but true. gaming has taken a back seat to blu ray. while the 360 is a red ring of garbage, i give microsoft props for designing it with the gamers in mind. sony nearly destroyed the playstation name trying to win the format war.

  • XMB is coming in 2011.. period .. lol

  • what’s the point of this blog and comments if you don’t respond to the questions that 99.99999% of the posters are asking?

    I like that you’re responding but could you please answer the big questions, at least acknowledge that you’re reading what we are posting?

  • At this point I gotta agree with others. Sony needs to put its domination agenda on hold for a minute and made the PS3 a GAMING machine first. Once its in the lead then you can proceed to take over the world one entertainment center at a time.

  • I am with TouchyED keep the XMB clean. Dashboard is a mess of ads. If you do add clutter widgets make them optional.

  • any chance you could respond to the big questions?

  • All i need now is Bravia Theatre Sync control and all I have to worry about is turning on my psp…what a glorious world you’ve created!

  • @slickrich05

    sony does not care about the gamers

    Maybe they don’t and Maybe they do. But I disagree with your premise. No “gamer” has any use for in game xmb. I consider myself a “gamer” and when I’m playing games, I turn all the excrement (extraneous crap added by game companies for the kiddies) off, and play the game. if Sony wants to cater to “gamers”, it needs to make sure all games have a gamma correction option and if the game offers voice com, that it also must must MUST have a way to mute players. Just because someone calls the crap they listen to “music” doesn’t make it “music” or mean I or others want to hear it.

  • 2 tweaks I would like to see.

    1. Date/Time on pushing PS button. Come on Sony, thousands are asking for this, how diffucult is this in the scale of things…

    2. Being able to have streaming files in my playlists, that I use for ingame music. It sucks to have to copy them locally currently…

  • I agree with you Eddie but they don’t seem to have a standard set. I still don’t get how Resistance has such a solid voice chat setup for online and yesterday I find out that Hot Shots Golf has 50 players online but no voice chat?

  • I have a good chuckle when people say, “If I worked at Sony, we’d already have in-game XMB”.

    Sure we would Gun-Slinger. Sure we would.

    From a technical standpoint, implementing In-Game XMB is far more difficult (and time consuming) than many of you people seem to think.

    The original design of the PS3’s gaming architecture obviously didn’t include In-Game XMB (which is unfortunate). But you can’t just slap together an embedded feature like that and then just release it to the public. The world of software development (and software deployment) is a little more complicated than that.

    For Sony to implement in-game XMB, I’m guessing they’ll basically have to redesign the entire platform software, and then test the hell out of it to ensure that it remains fully compatible with the SDK, with the complete library of existing games, with hardware, etc…

    It’s a MASSIVE undertaking. Far beyond the little weekend project that some of you imagine.

    Send in your resumes though. I’m sure the development team at Sony will find your two years of BestBuy experience really useful. Afterall, every company needs someone to go fetch coffee.

  • Well I for one bought the PS3 for BOTH gaming and to have a media center hub!

    I stream my music and movies to my surround sound all the time!

    I think SONY is doing a GREAT job balancing the gaming aspect and the blu-ray side..I mean WHO DOESN’T WANT IT ALL?!?!?!?

    WHY COMPLAIN WHEN YOU ARE GETTING MORE FOR YOUR MONEY?!!?!

    geesh, these kids nowadays!

    lol!

  • Very nice. Good work Sony!

  • seriously sony,great job, here’s a request i’msur you guys havent heard, back when the voice changer was added there was complaining and i reallydidnt have alaptop to comment, but i was wonderin if you guyscould make the voice cchanger while on eye create as i use it alot and find it annoyin having tto get out of eye create just to use the voce changer

  • Kenji I agree. But its the double edge sword of having an open platform for developers almost nothing is required. I think Sony would do well to make some more requirements or hooks that developers must use.

  • @175 – Agreed, these guys need to learn that communication is a two way street.

    From the first PSblog entry…..

    “Now, what we’ve learned, perhaps the hard way, is that a blog like this is really about you and the things you want to hear, share and discuss with us. With that in mind, you’ll notice that comments are enabled – and encouraged – so tell us what you want to see here and we’ll do our best to make it happen.”

    “Like we’ve said, we’re excited to finally have a platform for conversation and connection. “

  • Don’t you think you could spend your life doing something more productive other than complaining about XMB?

    How about getting up and going outside and burning some calories?

    How about thanking your parents for buying you the PS3 in the first place, since you spoiled little brats don’t deserve the hardware this generation has to offer.

  • That’s pretty good. I don’t care about the PSP stuff. Being able to play DivX files over 2GB’s is the best sounding thing from there and improved internet speed. I wonder if I can access this blog on the Playstation now without it crashing.

  • Subtitles for divx movies…. wow great job… I was hoping for this one..

  • @ PsychoEddie
    you must work at sony, how stupid is your comment, so what you are saying is i dont need to be able to send messages to my friends or know when they are online and what they are playinig, all i should do i play the game and be happy

  • Personally, I didn’t spend nearly $1,000 (after cables, PS3 Eye, extra controllers, blu-ray remotes, console stands, etc) to only use my PS3 as a gaming console.

    I absolutely LOVE the media capabilities of the PlayStation 3. I stream movies and music from my computer nearly every single day.

    I plug in media cards and view photographs from my Digital SLR camera.

    I video chat with my brother (who lives in a different country).

    I browse the internet and watch Blu-ray movies.

    Oh…and I play games as well.

    So I’m EXCITED that Sony is dedicating time to improving all aspects of the PS3 (not just gaming).

  • Nice. Maybe the other features are in-game XMB access (or at least in-game messaging ..)

  • That’s awesome, looking forward to it.

  • Hi! Great upgrade! But what I am looking forward is SUBTITLE SUPPORT!

  • all that media stuff is cool not disputing that but the main reason to own a ps3 is games, games. Do you thinki waited in line at launch to get a blu-ray player NO I waited in line to get a ps3 to play games

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