PS3 firmware update coming to boost Blu-ray functionality
By Darren Murph 
posted October 12th 2007 4:21PM
posted October 12th 2007 4:21PM
[Via HighDefDigest]
posted October 12th 2007 4:21PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Why would you add features to something that works more-than-fine? I would work on enabling downloads in the background while watching a video and allowing music to play while changing settings. Yeah, and increasing the web browsing speed for a system with 8 processors to be a little more faster than a ~600MHz iPhone would be nice.
My PS3 already does the DLing in the background, while multitasking, not to mention I browse just as fast as my Windows XP box and Mac Box. Unsure of what you are saying. I welcome a change to 1.1.
I think he means the fact that music playback stops when you leave the Music menu. Downloading has always been a background task though. Not sure how 8 cores (not processors) would enhance browsing speeds, as the major bottleneck for that is the internet connection.
@kiwi, if your PC as the same internet browsing speed than the ps3, you either have a very slow PC or a very bad internet provider. For me, web browsing is very slow on the ps3, it's at least 5 time slower than on the pc. And they really should change the browser to make it more friendly with multiple windows and Java scripts.
And most off all, they have to remove the nag asking if we want to execute script on every single page that we try to load. This is really annoying. And also, when you have a video playing (youtube,break etc..) you can't scroll the page without affecting the video playback, it freeze and it disapears behind the with background of the page.
They reaalllly have a lot of thing to fix on the ps3 if they want me to unplug my 360.
I'm not fully sure how the background downloads work, but I know that when I play a DVD, it pauses background DVDs until I return to something that uses the XMB interface (When you press HOME, it asks you if you want to quit playback). Watching videos on the hard drive does not pause downloads.
I mean background DOWNLOADS, lol
@ Qsat
I don't think a 3GHz machine running XP and a 2.4Ghz MacBook Pro is slow buddy. It might be your internet connection.
@ Sameer
To access the XMB whilst playing music files on your PS3, just press the PS button.
I am guessing that this means an update so the PS3 doesn't choke like the San Diego Chargers whenever you try to play one of Sony's ever-so-awesome new copy protected Blu-Ray disks in it.
I'm pretty sure the PS3 has no problems playing any of Sony's copy protected discs. Where did you get that from?
It does eventually play, but will sit there for quite a while thinking about it before deciding to move on.
This is with Day After Tomorrow.
Expanded resume functionality, please! Right now it resumes only if you haven't taken the disc out or turned the PS3 off.
You've got a big hard drive. Through a 1000 disc memory on that badboy!
Seconded. I would even be happy if I could just bookmark it.
What was I thinking when I tried to spell "throw"?
Just a silly observation, interesting how Engadget now shows the 40gig PS3 as the "defacto" picture for the console. I'm a bit old school and prefer the 60gig version.
so seems they aren't making any more b/c ps3 are they also going to stop all updates for all the euro ps3 with b/c emulation out there or are the screwing over the early adopters?
Nope.
The 80gig will become the 'mainstream' PS3 eventually. This won't affect price as 80gig 2.5" SATA HD's are more commonly used than the 60gigs.
As for backwards compatability, it is ONLY THE 40GIG PS3 that won't support it. The 60 and 80 gigs will continue to support it, and firmware 2.00 is said to increase backward compatability even more.
The browser on the PS3 is quite slow, mainly because it feels the need to load everything into memory before it displays the page which is kind of annoying....it would be nice if Sony fixed it, but not a big deal for me. The HD-DVD and Blu-ray interactivity features that the movie studios are doing aren't that big a deal to me, but for sure I wont complain if Sony adds Java interactivity to the PS3.
They definitely need to make the PS3 web browser at least as awesome as the Xbox 360 web browser if they want to compete.
Screw proprietary web browsers..Just use Firefox!!! Keep all you PC like activities in Ubuntu!! Thats why they let you frigging install another OS!
Er, what Xbox 360 web browser?
The Media Center Extender work-around doesn't count.
Yeah, because we all know people buy game consoles based on how good their web browsers are.
And I say that as someone who goes around defending the PS3's blu-ray movie capability all over the place.
@ Jeff ^^
But you can't say the XBox360 has a web browser when it certainly does not!!!! LOL
XBOX360 DOES NOT HAVE A WEB BROWSER.
i'd be happy if they brought firefox to it. and the music thing soudns pretty nice too
Go PS3! :)
Funny thing...
My 60 gig PS3 has 4 USB ports on the front.
The picture only shows 2...?
What gives?
oh, I got mine on launch day.
That's because it's a pic of the 40gb PS3.
My Bad...
Thanks for the clarity!
Don't have a game console but I must say the PS3 is beautiful design. Looking at it today at PC World after playing with the xBox 360 and theirs is no comparison. Shame not more games on the stand next to it though. Full marks for the design team and by all accounts what’s under the hood is even more impressive, even my 75 year old dad said it was beautiful. Looking forward to that Kill Zone, a friend showed me the trailer never seen anything like it, he didn’t look pleased when I said I thought I’d seen the trailer on the news and it was Halo3
If I wanted to run Linux would I be able to browse and fool around at PC-like speeds?
How about making the PS3 a "real" MULTImedia center and add:
- Divx/Xvid codec support
- Skype with PS3 eye support
Add those and your customer base will drastically increase. I won't have to buy a separate multimedia center and be content with purchasing a PS3.