PSP 3.80 and PS3 2.10 firmware updates now available

You knew they were coming, now PSP 3.80 and PS3 2.10 are out and ready to dance on your Sony console. That's DivX and WMV video support with Blu-ray profile 1.1 now ready for your PS3 in addition to Internet radio and a few other goodies for your PSP. Now get to it Sony boy, you might want to call in sick to do it up right.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[thef1re @ Dec 18th 2007 1:37AM]

or you (we) just pressure OUR government to do something, i.e talk to their govt.

[Dillon @ Dec 18th 2007 1:05AM]

Why won't they just make Divx support for the PSP already!!

[Zaxour @ Dec 18th 2007 1:09AM]

Xvid works as well! This works much better for me than divx on 360, the 360 wouldn't play any of my files :(

[Kylearan @ Dec 18th 2007 1:11AM]

That's odd; my 360 plays everything I've thrown at it.

[JAmerican @ Dec 18th 2007 1:59AM]

My 360 played The Condemed Divx Encoded fully without a problem :).

[rockstar @ Dec 18th 2007 3:24AM]

That's weird, my 360 never fails me on divx/xvid movies.

But I must say, in general I'm more impressed with PS3 than 360. One of the main factor would be the quietness of PS3. 360 isn't extremely loud, but the sound of the fan is quite irritating. Yes, I can also hear the noise on PS3 but it is one of those subtle sound that you can tolerate and forgot when the movie is playing.

[DrXym @ Dec 18th 2007 4:28AM]

Some xvid files are supported, some are not. I suspect that older files are using a different format since I'm having most trouble with them. I wonder if there is a way to fix legacy xvid files to be more compatible with divx.

[MattyG @ Dec 18th 2007 5:35AM]

sorry rockstar this is not at you

shut it M$ FANboy's you had a divx update recently as did the ps3

[Temple @ Dec 18th 2007 9:58AM]

Both Xbox and PS3 won't play earlier iterations of Divx and compatibility should be similar between the two, most newer files should play fine unless you have a file with funky encoding.

reagarding the 360:
http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-video-playback-faq.aspx
16. Why don’t some of my older versions of DivX® files play?

Since we only support Mpeg-4 compatible codec implementations, we will not be able to play video files older than DivX® 5.0.

[Brian @ Dec 18th 2007 1:18AM]

I don't see why Sony didn't include divx to begin with...

[Me @ Dec 18th 2007 1:51AM]

Now all I need is some Matroska H.264 support...

[13xforever @ Dec 18th 2007 2:00AM]

Well, h264 (aka AVC) is already implementet to begin with, but Ogg & Matroska support would be really nice. And Vorbis, please.

[pika2000 @ Dec 18th 2007 2:20AM]

OK, my PS3 still doesn't recognize the .avi files in my Windows Home server. It still shows them as unsupported file. My Xbox360 can stream those .avis just fine (with 1 annoyance, mentioned below). I tried a DVD filled with divx/xvid .avi, and the PS3 seems to play the just fine. Alas, it choked on many of them (playback is paused, and cannot be continued).

So, IMO the 360 still wins in my book, for the fact it can stream .avi just fine over the network. The biggest annoyance is that it doesn't scale/zoom the video properly, hence a significant amount of the sides are cut off, very annoying since if it cut off subtitle. In short, to get a perfect device streaming your divx/xvid videos to your TV, is to simply use an HTPC.

Anybody manage to stream divx .avi on their PS3 over a network?

[AceRimmer @ Dec 20th 2007 12:09AM]

My advise is to great a Mac Mini. They're cheap, they work and are uber quite. Plus its really cool having a fully functional web browser on your large screen tv it great eg youtube.

[rockstar @ Dec 18th 2007 3:07AM]

Mine streams just fine. I don't -however- use home server. PS3 reads it directly from Vista with no issue.

I must say the only thing that really turn off is the 2GB cap, that's the only annoying thing. Other than it runs divx n xvid files perfectly. I tried HD stuff, PS3 runs it without a single hiccup.

[L. M. Lloyd @ Dec 18th 2007 5:49AM]

I am another person who has Divx streaming just fine from both an XP and a Vista machine to my PS3. Actually, the seem to play better on the PS3 than they do on my 360.

[Pouya @ Dec 18th 2007 9:32AM]

Streams very good for me as well. See my reply below for details.

[pika2000 @ Dec 18th 2007 11:44PM]

Well, apparently the PS3 cannot stream from windows Homer server, as verified by Gizmodo too. Sucks, since I have all my videos on the server. I was hoping that I could use the PS3 to replace my HTPC. *sigh What's so difficult about this? I mean, the WHS is only serving the video files, so why can't the PS3 just read the files?

[Eugenia Loli-Queru @ Dec 18th 2007 2:45AM]

Still though, no .mov support! When the internal format is the well-supported h.264/AAC pact, Sony does not support these videos when the container is .mov (right now they only support .mp4 regarding h.264). If they could add support for .mov h.264/aac then pretty much all major video formats are supported. It would be nice to view the Apple trailers in a big HDTV you see...

[Deluxe @ Dec 18th 2007 3:11AM]

Who the hell watches .mov s?

[trancer @ Dec 18th 2007 3:41AM]

people who like to watch quality videos.

[L. M. Lloyd @ Dec 18th 2007 5:46AM]

Oh yes trancer, because everyone who matters knows that somehow h.264 magically looks a million times better if you put a QuickTime wrapper around it. It is just another example of the mystic subjective power of the Apple brand. Sorry, I have to go add 10BHP to my car by putting an R-Type sticker on it now.

[L. M. Lloyd @ Dec 18th 2007 5:55AM]

Assuming Apple would even want competition for their AppleTV, I am sure they would charge Sony quite a bit of money for the privilege of using their QuickTime wrapper. Why not just change the files over to a standard wrapper if they are already encoded h.264?

[Pouya @ Dec 18th 2007 9:37AM]

The fact that the PS3 is Blu-ray profile 1.1, upscales DVDs to 720p/1080i/1080p, and supports xVid, DivX, and WMV will give any owner more than enough capability to play "quality" movies. How much higher quality can you get than Blue-ray 1080p? Moreover, the combination of Netflix and Bittorrent has enough content at a cheap enough price that it will satisfy 99.9% of the population. Very few people spend a lot of time watching .mov format over the previous options listed. In the rare instant that they do, or for a unique person who watches a lot of .mov files (like you), many are in the position to simply hook up their laptop to their TV.

[Christian @ Dec 18th 2007 3:20AM]

Does anyone know how to manually select a radio station from shoutcast with the PSP?

I found the station I liked in my pc from shoutcast.com and I don't know how to select it on the PSP's preset radio.

[dewdkorn6969 @ Dec 18th 2007 3:38AM]

Try tv versity for streaming videos over the network on ps3 just disable the transcoder in the settings and you should have no problems at all with any divx/xvid/mp4 videos... atleast for me tv versity is working great....

[trancer @ Dec 18th 2007 3:42AM]

I tried doing that as well, it seems like you can only select from those channels on the player. Player 1 seems to be my fav so far, but i really hate the "radio static" sound it plays in the beginning, and the crossfader feature is annoying as well.
but overall, streaming music has made my psp a bit more fun to play with.

[jasnmb @ Dec 18th 2007 9:15PM]

@trancer

You can disable those sound effects with the buttons at the very bottom. Hit the ? button for more info.

[Jeff @ Dec 18th 2007 4:08AM]

Urge to buy PS3...rising...can't resist...

[anantha92 @ Dec 18th 2007 5:02AM]

Same here buddy... (Unless you were being sarcastic)

[Jamesology @ Dec 18th 2007 6:36AM]

Yeah, I love Sony and all so I bought a PS3 but I kinda regretted after playing COD4. Playing that game made me really hate the PS3(still love my PSP). So I bought a 360 Elite, obviously to match my PS3. I would still wait it out if I were you guys. But remember, this is "my" opinion! Playing with the PS3's capabilities is pretty fun, for a week. Then it's all "Meh" after.

I'm just waiting for games to make my DL3 rumble. And R&C is not a game I would buy. I don't like those kind of games. They're all the same, mario like games.

[Silverfrog @ Dec 18th 2007 8:49AM]

Re: jamesology

If you don't like games, why buy a PS3? It sounds like you just enjoy first person shooters. If that's the case, PS3 isn't the best choice. It is, however, the best choice for RPGs, Tactical games, and adventure games.

[Stu @ Dec 18th 2007 2:08PM]

@Silverfrog

Because there are just so many great quality PS3 titles in those genres, right?

[Jamesology @ Dec 18th 2007 2:56PM]

You're right Solver I am into FPS, but I also loved MGS and FF series (well some). But just like Stu said sarcastically "there are so many." That is why I recommended to wait. All the games are coming out later next year.

Oh yeah GT: Prologue is out in Japan but not here in North America. I'm also waiting for that too. That's my hibernation game with 100+ laps.

I do admit I am more of a PC gamer but I still love to buy my consoles

[I'm a: Wii/DSLite/PS3/360 owner; PSP/PC Gamer]

[James Olney @ Dec 18th 2007 6:11AM]

Has anyone tried an HD divx, or xvid file yet?

[zargon @ Dec 18th 2007 8:16AM]

As long as the Profile 1.1 works properly and if the PS3 can dip below $300, I ma be ready to go neutral. Especially since most of the Blu-ray players out there are only profile 1.0 and seem to be problematic and the big kicker, no ethernet for firmware update. Which I personally feel is one of many blunders with the rushed release of Blu-ray.

Doubt the second part is going to happy any time soon...

[Silverfrog @ Dec 18th 2007 9:35AM]

You're waiting on the $300 PS3 eh? You're probably one of the many people i've seen on these message boards, complaining that $600 was too much, that when the PS3 drops to $400, you'd get one.

I swear, this is getting old already. Sorry that you get to be the one I take this out on, but seriously do you realize what the PS3 costs to manufacture? They are still taking a loss on it, so thank your lucky stars it doesn't cost $1000 and stop your complaining.

[zargon @ Dec 18th 2007 11:39AM]

@Silverfrog

$300 is my price point for a Blu-ray player, right now, the PS3 is the only worth while Blu-ray player out there, especially for what I need in a Blu-ray player. If the profile 1.1 update works as claimed and isn't issue prone, then it has the ethernet port for updates, something that is a must because I am not going to deal with burning discs to update firmware. Especially since firmware updates are a dime a dozen with HDM players.

$600 is too much for the PS3, $400 is a perfect price point if I wanted the PS3 to play games, but I don't. I just want a Blu-ray player to meet my needs and $300 is the price point I have set for me to go neutral. I have never once said that I would wait for the PS3 to drop to $400 before I get one. In fact, I never planned on getting one. However, since Blu-ray players are in such a pathetic state right now, profile 1.0, price and all the random issues I have read about, they are simply not an option right now.

I could care less how much the PS3 cost to manufacture, I for the fact do not care how much the Xbox 360, Wii, Blu-ray or HD-DVD players, HDTVs, etc... cost to manufacture. I only care about what I want and how much I am willing to pay for it. It is the companies choice to take a loss, not mine, it is not my problem. If they weren't willing to take a loss, then they wouldn't sell it for a loss. If they sold them at $1,000, less people would be willing to buy them. But the fact remains that they want to sell them and to in turn try to make money on software sales. They should be thanking their lucky stars that the consumers are willing to buy them at $600, $500 and now at $400. After all, it is us, the consumers that drive the market and the prices.

I don't know why you are getting all bent out of shape over this. Shouldn't you be happy that the marketing is driving down prices of PS3s, HDM players or all other electronics. Maybe you are just bitter that you paid $600 for a PS3 and that I don't have to?

The only thing I will be thanking my lucky stars about is that I only had to pay half of what early adopters had to pay.

[PreGHz @ Dec 18th 2007 4:16PM]

I,I,I, Me,Me,Me.

You shop at Wal-Mart, don't you.

You would rather a company go out of business than pay a little extra, knowing full well that you'd be saving a poo ton already.

If you say that they'd make most of the money back in software, yet you probably wouldn't buy they games, wouldn't that mean that you could care less about them recouping any of their losses? Because unless you buy Sony Blu-Ray movies, Sony isn't seeing a cut of any movies you buy.

[Jeebus @ Dec 18th 2007 12:57PM]

If you're not going to play games, just get a stand-alone Blu-ray player. Several from both Samsung and Sony for

[Jeebus @ Dec 18th 2007 12:58PM]

I guess Engadget can't be bothered to escape comments. Interesting.

If you're not going to play games, just get a stand-alone Blu-ray player. Several from both Samsung and Sony for less than $300.

And another week of Blu-ray completely owning HD DVD:
http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/12/14/nielsen-videoscan-high-def-market-share-for-week-ending-december/

[zargon @ Dec 18th 2007 1:33PM]

@Jeebus

You must not be able to actually read, because I addressed why I will not buy a standalone Blu-ray player right now. I will lay it out right here for you though, because they are profile 1.0, over priced and no ethernet. I will not buy a Blu-ray player until I can get profile 1.1 and ethernet (to update firmware because burning it to a CD is so 90s) for $300 or less. On top of that, all the current players all have reports of random issues, which I don't want to deal with.

Where did I mention anything about HD-DVD or Blu-ray and their respective sales numbers? Why do you feel the need to be so pathetic and petty that you just had to add the Neilsen numbers? Is it really that hard for you read and just stay on topic with out posting worthless and trolling posts?

Wake me up with you have anything worthwhile or valid to say.

[zargon @ Dec 18th 2007 5:14PM]

@PreGHz

What does shopping at Wal-mart have anything to do with the topic at hand? Is this your vein attempt to try to say I am cheap or make fun of my character? Try again... yet another pointless and petty comment.

It has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting a company to go out of business. I am unsure where you even got that from. The point is that it is called business and business is not all play nice (or fair) and hugs, business is dog eat dog. If you can't keep your head above water, c-ya later.

I picked a price that I feel something is worth to me. It is not like I am twisting the companies arm to lower the price to meet what I want to pay. If the company chooses to take a lose, that is their choice. I am sure companies like Sony have a lot of smart people that sit there and crunch numbers, formulating business strategies and what they can and can not do financially.

I be honest though, I am not going to shed a tear over multi million and especially multi billion dollar companies loosing money. They obviously did something right to make it where they are, but if they cannot do things right to stay up there, then move aside because someone is gunning to take your spot.

As far as recouping money on software sales, gaming consoles have done it for years. Selling at a lose and having the software make their money. Until recently this has just been games, but now with Sony using the PS3 to push a format they co-developed and also touting the PS3 as a media center, the rules have changed a little. I would like to assume that they would run the risk of users not buying software for the PS3. In fact, from what I have been reading, it seems there are a lot of PS3 owners just using it for movies and not for games. I guess you may be right in a sense, that I don't care of Sony recoups their looses, but... this is not my problem. If I choose to buy a PS3 and never buy a game or movie, Sony gave me that choice. I have no obligations or requirements as a PS3 owner to do anything.

With software Sony has royalties on games and movies, so they are making money off of both, no matter if it is from Sony or not. So I am not sure what you are talking about with that...

Again, what it boils down to is that I have decided that a Blu-ray player with profile 1.1 and a ethernet port is only worth $300 or less to me. No blu-ray players currently fit that bill, the PS3 is still a wait and see with the profile 1.1 update. But if the PS3 meets my critera, then that is the road I am going to take and I am not doing anything wrong by doing it. It is Sony's choice to loose money on the PS3, I just get to reap the benefits.

[Tom @ Dec 18th 2007 8:34AM]

Just bought a PS3 and this was the only annoyance (converting my divx movie collection to be able play on it) I had. And what do you know; 2 days later it's fixed - right on Sony. Maybe you'll be able to redeem yourselves further by releasing more games. There are a couple of divx files that don't play (says unsupported media - never pauses or disrupts during playback..) - but like someone said before me, those are the older format. A week earlier my friend and I were trying to transfer movies to his xbox and couldn't figure out how. I'm sure we're just a little slow, but that's got to be saying something for the interface of the PS3.

[Tom @ Dec 18th 2007 8:50AM]

And yes, I may just miss a meeting tomorrow because of this horribly timed update. While I'm back I'll reply to some of the other posts: xvid files work, and after getting RFOM and a headset to play I was kind of disappointed with my PS3 as well (it's no party game like Halo3 is) but once I realized that, everything was fine again. Then I started looking at Xbox elites to match.. or a black wii from colorware because that high velocity bowling is a joke compared to Nintendo's - what a waste of money that was. Other than that I've been very impressed with the PS3 so far.

[Rob @ Dec 18th 2007 9:16AM]

These two updates work nicely. I was able to playback DivX and WMV files without an issue. Nice indeed.

[Pouya @ Dec 18th 2007 9:32AM]

xVid and DiVX videos stream fine for me. A full film (~800MB) takes about 5 seconds to load and play and streams without a hiccup thereafter. In terms of navigating throughout the streamed movie, once you let your library load, I had no problems fast forwarding at 120X (max speed). Video quality is excellent. Before DivX support, I hooked my laptop up to the TV via S-Video cable, because I didn't want to deal with converting to MPEG4 or transcoding. So far, it seems that the video quality is as good if not better when streamed to the PS3(note, the PS3 is hooked up via HDMI). In addition, the PS3 automatically scales the video to fit your screen (you can manually set the screen size to original, normal, zoom, etc. as well). With some of the higher quality DiVX files, the average non-tech savvy person would think you are playing an upscaled DVD.

The firmware upgrade also added a nice visualization option (press the square button) when playing music. It is a very nice visualization of earth, the sun, etc. It also added audio bitmapping. Hopefully this will fix the poor tonality I was previously getting when playing music with the PS3 (very harsh sounding). I didn't have time to turn bitmapping on and listen to the music to hear a difference.

Naturally, people may have problems getting the PS3 to work as a media server, because of the diversity of our home networks (speed, interference, range, firewalls, etc.). I am actually wirelesly streaming content (pictures, music, and video) from a USB external harddrive connecting to my Thinkpad sitting on the complete opposite side of the house. I have a D-Link DIR-655 router (Draft 2.0) and I am using Windows Media Player 11 as a media server. In my experience, WMP11 is faster and more stable than Nero Home, Orb/Winamp Remote, and TVersity. Now that transcoding is not necessary, I think WMP11 is the best way to go. The main downside is that WMP11 bogs down resources on the system running as a server. In addition, my laptop, obviously, has to remain on for its content to be available.

Streaming from my HP MV2020 Media Vault (UPnP-complaint DMA NAS) would be perfect, because it won't use up my laptop's resources, I can always leave it on, and I can connect it to my home network via LAN, because unlike a laptop, its mobility is not necessary. Unfortunately, HP does not support streaming to the PS3 and Sony does not support streaming from the Media Vault. Before the firmware update, I could see the HP Media Server, and would be able to stream pictures, but generally get a bunch of DLNA errors due to its lack of interoperability. After the firmware upgrade, the PS3 cannot even find the server anymore. If HP/Sony could fix this, that would be perfect.

[Ty @ Dec 18th 2007 11:11AM]

My PS3 was scheduled to be delivered by UPS today but when I woke up to check it was rescheduled for tomorrow. I regret not just buying it at a store and paying the tax. At least all the movies I have on my hdd don't have to be converted now. But as you all know there is nothing worse than expecting something only to have it rescheduled for no good gd reason.

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 18th 2007 5:05PM]

"no good reason"

Except that this is the busiest week for shipping of the entire year....

[Andrew @ Dec 18th 2007 1:14PM]

Unfortunately, I find this update disappointing. The main use I have for divx/xvid is some anime fansubs, and very few of those seem to play on the PS3 - maybe 10%. Another 10% starts to play, then freezes after 10 seconds. A friend had a better success rate, about 50%. On the other hand, my Xbox 360 plays about 80% of them (I was honestly stunned by how easy it was to stream it from my Vista machine without any extra software and how many files worked; PS3 streaming works too by the way). None of the files I have are older than a year.

I'm glad most people here seem to be able to play most of their files after this update. But for me, 360 of all things seem to be the better solution, plus it's not much noisier than my PS3 (which ramps up its fan to full speed no matter what ).