Slashdot Mirror
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.
Has anyone tried out the browser yet?
I want to know how it performs, and how easy it is to use before I go ahead and cripple the modability of my system.
Thank you.
decisions... decisions...
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
It's not so much that this version breaks hacks... hacks haven't worked on 1.51 or 1.52. Sony probably did put new measures of security on this, though.
Hopefully this firmware gets hacked soon, as I'm sure there's a lot of people who'd like to get back to playing Chrono Trigger on their PSPs.
If we could actually buy the unit here in Europe...Have to wait until September, but hey, the firmware is at V2...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
if you're still sitting on your 1.5 bios psp and enjoying emulators and source ports of old games, you may want to hang on for a while before the upgrade. sure you'll get a browser, but until someone comes up with a work around for 2.0 (no hints so far) you may be stuck for a while.
but hey i'm sure somebody will figure it out eventually. hopefully before new games start forcing you to upgrade to 2.0 to play.
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.
This version apparently breaks all hacks so far too
;)
Hmmm... knowing the rapid pace of hackers versus the Slashdot editors, which will come first: the hack to get the latest firmware to work, or the dupe of this story?
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
(User agent says it is Mozilla/4.0)
Of course it does, virtually every browser's user agent says it's Mozilla/4.0. All that means is that it's not Mozilla Suite/Firefox, which report Mozilla/5.0.
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.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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?
You got any karma man? I really neeed it. Just a little hit! Come on!
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
What do you know I wrote a novel
If the browser is really the only new feature, why doesn't someone just port a decent browser to the PSP?
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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.
{ - Generic Guy - }
I love all the people here that are like "well i don't think i'll upgrade because i can use my gameboy emulator, etc, etc...so what if i cant play games". Why did you buy a bloody PSP if you didn't want to play PSP games on it? A PDA would have done all the "extra curricular" things you are doing, and would have been better at it and cost less. I agree these side things are neat add-on's to a video game system, and Sony is a bastard for taking that functionality away, but seriously there is no doubt i'd upgrade my PSP, because the thing is meant for playing games.
As no one seems to have pointed out yet, it's likely that someone will release a modified 2.0 that will give you all the new features AND let you run homebrew apps.. But if you upgrade to 2.0 now, you'll lock yourself out of the ability to run the upgrader for any hacked version. This is pretty typical of 'softmod' style hacks; being an early adpoter is not the wisest course of action.
Unless of course there is a vulnerability in 2.0 that will let you run homebrew... If you want to bank on that, be my guest.
I think this is a great solution, because it actually benefits the majority of people who don't hack their PSP, and people who already have a different browsers won't use it if they don't need to.
If only Sony would take this approach with their music bussiness and try and create better customer experiences than illegal download methods, rather than fighting them with lawyers. Hopefully this upgrade will be a good way to show Sony that superior features are a much better way of fighting the underworld than sueing them or DRMing them into hell.
Unfortunately I think that Sony's different divisions are too diserate and isolated from eachother to heed this advice from eachother.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
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.
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.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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?
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
Network Features:
* Internet Browser - Probably the biggest thing yet to come to the PSP, a web browser. The browser supports standard 4.01 HTML, but will not support Flash streaming. Although some minor bugs, you will be able to connect to any website through your wireless hotspot.
* New Network Menu - This is the new icon that will be installed on your PSP, it will act as the shortcut to the web browser.
Video Features:
* Jump Function - Jump function added (UMD Video & UMD Music)
* A-B Function - This allows you to repeat one portion of the clip.
* 4x3 size - A new size to watch videos in
* Mute - Mute function added for videos, even though a general mute function came with the original system.
* MP4 (AVC) playback - New playback format.
Music Features:
* ATRAC3plus playback - Now you can put ATRAC3plus files on your PSP.
* MP4 AAC & WAVE Support - This version will allow you to play MP4 audio (MP4's AAC format) as well as Linear PCM WAVE files.
Photo Features:
* Wallpaper Feature - Another big feature for the PSP, can you guess it? You got it, a personalized wallpaper feature.
* Photo Sharing - You can now share images with a friend using the wireless ad-hoc connection (local)
* New Formats - The PSP can now read TIFF, GIF and BMP files.
Setting Features:
* New Character SetTheme Setting
* Internet Browser Restriction Setting - Set security settings for your web browser.
* WPA Support - Don't like WEP? isn't secure enough for you? you can now access the net with WPA-PSK (TKIP.)Web Support on Keypad
Source
Sony also released a ceramic white version of the PSP.
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.
Finally, we can stop those goddamn hackers from stealing Sony's money by running a Nintendo emulator on their $250 unit combined with the $60 memory stick they bought! Stupid kids want everything for free, god bless Sony for taking back what was theirs!
Killer 7?
Recent, fairly big release (would be bigger if people were willing to buy non-sequels), very original. Answers all your complaints.
I quit!
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.
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!
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
But i can't get hold of Killer 1 to 6, so how will I know if i like it?
The best is the enemy of the good
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"
I'd say it would be pretty difficult for Sony not to break all the hacks.. Usually hacks rely on bytecode being in a certain location in memory, so for a release that is such a big upgrade, I'd say Sony didn't deliberately break the hacks... they just don't work any more.