New PSP Firmware with Built-In Web Browser

Volksport writes "Sony has released a new major firmware update for the PSP, bringing it to v2.00 (This link points to the install file). This new version offers updates such as a built-in web browser (User agent says it is Mozilla/4.0) and Korean language support. Although it was only released in Japan so far, it installs normally on US PSP systems." This version apparently breaks all hacks so far too.

Comments

Be nice

[Karem Lore]

If we could actually buy the unit here in Europe...Have to wait until September, but hey, the firmware is at V2...

Re:Be nice

[jimicus]

AFAIK, the basis of the legal action was trademark infringement; thus:

"Fred's Imports has no license to use the names Sony, PSP or the logos. They're all trademarks owned by us. We've asked them to stop using these names, they refuse. Please order them to stop, your honour."

Judgement for the plaintiff, now Fred has to sell his Sony PSPs without telling people what they are. And to really hammer it home, Sony consider "Fred's imports" shipping a box with Sony PSP on it a trademark infringement - and the court agreed.

Does this sound like an abuse of the system to you?

A bold move on Sony's part

[Frangible]

I have to wonder how much of the new features in this release are to "compete" with the old firmwares people are keeping to run ripped games and homebrew? If so, it's certainly an interesting and bold move on Sony's part -- keep offering more and more compelling features in the "secure" firmware and eventually enough people will opt for it over their older firmware.

Tempting - but no

[Dark Paladin]

Sadly, I've enjoyed too much of the homebrew software to stop now (such as playing my Game Boy games - yes, I own copies of them on my PSP, or Chess, or watching the progress of the movie player that supports AVI and OGG), so while the web browser is nifty, and better playback of MPEG-4 video is nice, I'm keeping my PSP at 1.5 for as long as I can (which means I can't buy any new games, which is all right since there aren't any PSP games right now that interest me, and looking ahead none that will until early 2006, while the DS has some good ones coming out late next month).

Odds are, though, a Sony rep/fanpeople probably read the above as:

"Blah, blah, blah, I pirate software, blah, blah, blah, I'm a thief, blah, blah, blah, I have a tiny pee-pee because I like the DS".

But I'll give points to Sony for at least trying to meet people's needs. Good start - just needs better follow through.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Re:Tempting - but no

[Dark Paladin]

I wrote a thing on this some time ago, but here's my humble thoughts. They are probably flawed, but it's a good launching point.

What I would do as Sony is release a $100 "amateur developers kit", with the license that all programs created can only be offered free of charge unless published by Sony, and Sony has no liability on programs. With the program as compiled is a big warning "Sony takes no responsibility if you break your PSP running this program!"

This way, Sony gets both money and developers creating content. They can cherry pick what they really like and publish it if they want (since the author is not allowed to charge money under the license). Regular publishers know that they have more competition, but as the PSP's list of apps grow this sells more PSP's, so "big name" developers get to step up and market to a larger base. (And let's face it - shareware/freeware games hasn't killed off big PC publishing games - mainly console competition.)

This is kind of my "launching point" on this thought. Yes, it severely restricts development - but it's still a hell of a lot more open than the Nintendo systems, but not as open as the GP32, so Sony stands to win either way.

Like I said, just an idea. I could be wrong.

Re:Tempting - but no

[Lothsahn]

Sony could digitally sign certain homebrew applications and verify that they're legit for a fee from the developers.

Or better yet, Sony could manage a user-based voting system where applications not supporting piracy would be approved by voting consensus, and those allowing piracy would be denied. Entry into this voting forum would be fee based for voting users ($10 admission?), to pay for Sony's moderation expenses. Users found improperly voting on a repeated (intentional) basis for software products known to be piracy would be banned. In addition, the forum could be web-based and provide advertisement revenue.

All homebrew applications that come out would be required by Sony to also install the latest firmware version, thereby discouraging piracy even further. This would also decrease demand for attempting to find exploits in the PSP to circumvent piracy protections by those people wanting to simply run legit homebrew applications.

I don't see why it couldn't work--if Sony wanted it to... but I doubt they care.

Re:Tempting - but no

[cduffy]

So how can we help Sony design a way to authenticate that homebrew apps aren't in fact pirated games?

Provide a mechanism by which folks can either:

- Send a homebrew game in for automated signing (after basic automated validation using some straightforward heuristics that the game doesn't look pirated -- say, validate that there are no consecutive 1K blocks that match those from any commercially published game after some basic normalization like removing NOPs) for use on ONE PSP, for free, with minimal turnaround time, with a limit on how many requests an individual can make per day (so crackers can't repeatedly attempt to break the automated system or, once they've broken it, churn out copies signed for tons of PSPs).

- Send a homebrew game for manual validation that it isn't a ripoff of a commercial game. If it passes manual validation (which would of course require automated validation as a prerequisite), it gets signed for use on *all* PSPs. The individual who sends it in is charged some token amount ($5-$10) to discourage folks from generating excessive workload for Sony's staff.

As a first attempt, how's that sound?

Re:Tempting - but no

[Zigg]

Yes, it severely restricts development - but it's still a hell of a lot more open than the Nintendo systems...

This apparently random comment confuses me. Are not the Sony and Nintendo development models, right now, equally "open"? I'm just trying to figure out why Nintendo was inserted into this statement.

Anyway, the problem with your plan is that it enables piracy. Now that Sony's given their blessing to homebrew, it becomes completely legitimate to release i.e. a game image loader that runs on fully unmodified units.

You could mitigate that somewhat by saying your $100 bought you a signature on your code-signing key that let your code run -- then we'd always know the source of said loaders. The problem there is that there will no doubt be someone's code, intentionally or no, that contains an exploitable backdoor that runs game images. And unlike the licensee's game with the overflow that can be discontinued or pulled from shelves entirely, that code will pretty much continue to be available forever.

Game consoles are closed for two reasons. Number 1 is piracy. Number 2 is the revenue stream to the console maker. Barring some incredibly cool new method of building homebrew, sanctioned methods will never those two.

It's about time.

[donleyp]

The guys at psphacks.net have some information too.

I, for one, plan to get it ASAP. I think the browser is a great addition.

I am dissapointed in Sony for working so hard to disable the hacks people have come up with. What's it to them how we use the HW we bought?

I really think Sony should consider removing the barriers to homebrew software! Does anyone have any insight into why they're so uptight about it?

Desperately wanting a better way to enter text

[jockm]

I installed it this morning. Most sites I looked at came though ok. I had trouble loading all the images from /. Overall it is very cool.

What I do want is a better way to enter text. It was never much of an issue with the PSP until now. The phone like text entry system is a little wacky. I would like a true virtual keyboard with some kind of a9 like predictive text

Region encoding

[Generic Guy]

This update also apparently helps enforce region encoding (e.g. DVD players), which of course is incredibly stupid on a handheld portable device.

Upcoming games reportedly use region locks.

Its all in how you look at it.

[Negroiso]

I think its all in the view of who you are. I am glad that most the people on this site are a little more educated than alot of PSP sites I have found. I read comments about things like this update and all you read about is, people who have 1.5 wanting to update to 2.0 and people with 1.51 complaining to the 1.5 about no updating.

If you want to update thats your choice. Sony isn't making you update (yet) and you really never actually HAVE to update. Even if updates are manditory by new games you shouldn't complain. The purpose of the system was to play Sony Playstation portable games. NOT HOMEBREW, its just an extra "hack". I think people have taken this to far and have began to thing that playing nintendo or snes9x was the reason PSP came out. How terribly untrue. I also highly doubt that Sega or Sony will produce thier own emulators for the system. We already saw how that went with Dreamcast when Sega produced the "Smash Volume Hits" the emulator that Sega made to run its own games was hacked, ripped and re-distro'ed as some one's personal creation. =\

Although I would personally PAY for a service that would let me play emulated games on the psp incase some one is listening 5-15$ a month for unlimited access to games would be worth it to me to keep up with firmware and have all the oldies.

It comes down to. . . Do you want to keep up with eventually the latest games, or stay with your old pac man portable?

The choice is yours and yours alone, so stop complaining about why people are stupid/not stupid for updating. its a choice just like whether you want to drink pepsi or not.

The JAP 2.0 firmware update does work on US PSP's and is translated into English upon update completion. So far I have not seen much coverage over it. I also am contenplating the update. Right now the Tenchi Browser satisfies me. . . though lacking a back button I have faith something will come about. Till better games get released I will just play Wipeout and SNES all day.

Thanks for a great system Sony.

Not only that

[Dark Paladin]

But all of the PSP releases are - movies.

Yay. I can spend $20 on the DVD version of the movie, and another $20 on the PSP version (unless I simply encode the movie myself with Yade/FFMPEG on OS X and copy it up to the memory stick).

Seems that Sony's more excited about the portable movie player stuff. Maybe they fear a video iPod so they're trying to flood the market with PSP releases to make the studios think that the PSP is the "format of choice" or some such. Either way, as a gamer the PSP is getting more use reading killyourfm.com than it is as a game device.

sweet

[bonk]

It's about time.

I think the psp has some serious potential to be an all purpose multimedia device. You can already play music, movies and watch your pictures on this thing.

I think it would be interesting to set up a web page and some utilities to control your home stereo/digital music player, DVR, lights and anything else you would like, intended to be controled from your psp. The wireless router would have to be configured to only accept your psp's MAC, and some other authentication would have to take place on the web page/server end (having to enter a username/password would be a real drag to seamless integration)

I'm definately interested in getting a PSP now that they have included a built in web browser (that doesn't need some goofy hack to get around). Though, like many others, I also want to wait until someone figures out how to crack/bypass the security so homebrew apps can run again. Or for some company to release a signed emulator for the psp, I'd be willing to pay for a NES or SNES or whatever emulator if it wasn't complete garbage.

Does anyone know if the digital signed executables for the PSP is intended to stop piracy of UMD games, or if it is designed to stop any homebrew development? Both?

Re:Early adoption

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

Not really.

The update is encrypted and signed. You can't modify it. //yeah, yeah, "break the encryption" but it's most likely signed by PKI and we don't have the private half.

I was thinking of getting a PSP

[acb]

but then I decided against it. Without hacks it'd be useless except as a means of consuming expensive commercial content, and Sony are doing their worst, technically and legally, to keep it locked down. As far as hackable, portable devices, the Nokia 770 looks far more useful.

OTOH, I'd be tempted to buy a PSP if Katamari Damacy was out for it (I don't live in the US or Japan and thus can't get the PS2 version), but apparently they're porting the next version to the Nintendo DS as well.

Re:Give me one more tweak

[Anonymous Coward]

it does. go to configure wifi and dont enter an SSID. it will scan and a list of detected APs will come up.

Re:It ain't just the PSP...

[2008]

Killer 7?

Recent, fairly big release (would be bigger if people were willing to buy non-sequels), very original. Answers all your complaints.

Real time firmware update war

[British]

Wow, PSP hasn't been out on the market long, and firmware updates are coming out as fast as hacks can be made for them.

To me, that is funny. The endless waltz of people releasing useful software for them(emulators), and then Sony does an upate soon after, with an incentive like a browser, etc.

Maybe I'll get a PSP when the dust settles.

Why this is important

[RoLi]

This is actually very important because millions of Playstation 3 are going to get sold and they will probably use the same (or a very similar) browser for it too.

"unfortunetly" breaks all hacks...

[KillShill]

that is exactly the reason for "slowly" introducing features since they've had all along from day 1. they want people to keep updating in order to benefit from the features that should have been there since the begining. of course the reason they do this is to prevent most people from using the good firmware, the ones that help them to reclaim ownership over the physical device which they legally bought and are entitled to do with as they please.

microsoft did this just recently... they released an update to windows media player to enable DXVA (directx video acceleration) of high definition wmv9 video. but as you can guess, they are requiring that users cripple their systems by first installing a DRM update before the DXVA patch will work. i'm sure there are many other examples but this one i recall from the top of my head.

the cpu does a lot less work with the patch installed btw. but, if anyone wants to get basically equivalent cpu usage while playing high def wmv9 9 (e.g. T2 Extreme), you can use mplayer (www.mplayerhq.hu). this is quite an amazing player but it lacks a good gui on the win32 version. it even plays high def quicktime 7 videos with a lot less cpu usage as compared to the quicktime 7 player. 1080 videos that play horribly and drops 75% of the frames in qt7, play smooth and stutter free in mplayer.

anyway, we've got to stand up to these bullies. we AREN'T GOING TO TAKE THIS DRM BULLSHIT. copyright does not entitle you to have any say over what we do with an item once it is purchased. (read that carefully if you think i'm not addressing the full spectrum of the issue). requiring a DRM-crippled patch before being allowed to use a new feature which incidentally is long overdue and promised long ago, is disgusting and reprehensible. if this business model isn't working for you, don't punish your customers or you'll soon find yourself dumpster diving.

go go Gadget GPL software!

Not exactly correct

[phunkphorce]

Other browsers than Firefox/Mozilla/Gecko identify as Mozilla 5.0... At least Safari 2.0 under OS X 10.4 reports itself as Mozilla/5.0, "like Gecko":

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.2"