Hot on the heels of an 80GB Korean-bound (and US, too?) PlayStation 3 comes news that Sony is planning on seriously upping the abilities of the PS3 with a forthcoming firmware update. Compared to minor changes that have occurred in the past, this one looks to be fairly substantial, so we'll cut to the chase and give you the skinny. First off, firmware v1.80 will enable "upscaling of PlayStation / PlayStation 2 games and DVD movies up to a full 1080p when viewed on a compatible HDTV set." Of course, that "up to" bit frightens us a bit, but we'll take any progress we can get. Moving on, PSP users will enjoy Remote Play on their PSP across the internet, which will allow them to "access their PS3 anywhere in the world where a broadband internet connection is available." Additionally, owners can now view multimedia stored on a DLNA-enabled media center PC "seamlessly," and there will even be an option to print images stored on the console's HDD or inserted media to a "selection of Epson printers." The best part: it's out tomorrow.

[Via PS3Fanboy]

Another PlayStation 3 firmware update, another list of issues. Unfortunately, this seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme, and while users may not have found issues with last month's refresh, the v1.7 isn't as kind. Reportedly, the latest update enables the PS3 "to play PSOne titles that are already saved on your PSP," but numerous sources are suggesting that the feature, um, doesn't work. On a lighter note, PSOne and PS2 dual shock controllers will now shake, rattle, 'n rumble when connected to your PS3, and those with PSPs sitting around can also hit up v3.4 (required for the PSP-to-PS3 playback) on their handheld machine. So, dearest readers, we'll point the question at you: is your recently update PS3 playing nice with those PSOne selections?

[Via Joystiq, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

We were never ones to stand in the way of excessive format support, and never ones to accuse Sony of such a deed, but it appears they're feeling generous this week, with the brand new range of 720 x 480, 352 x 480 and 480 x 272 playback resolutions of MPEG-4 AVA (H.264) video that can be yours with the new 3.30 firmware update. The update also improves PSone performance with a menu option to increase disk dreading speed in exchange for better load times and a little bit of instability. Finally, Sony is tossing in thumbnail support for video and RSS feeds, another welcome improvement. Not bad at all for a 0.1 update, but we're still holding out for PS3-free PSone downloads.

While this one came oh-so-close to being filed under the ongoing PS3 crime spree chronicles, the inability to pinpoint the PlayStation unit crooks nabbed as one of the highly-coveted "3" models forced us to clump this in with the smorgasbord of other (general) utterly dumb criminal acts. While it wouldn't surprise us to find that the armed burglars who ransacked a Cincinnati home were indeed after the mighty lucrative PS3, their bafflingly high level of stupidity leaves us to wonder if it wasn't a PlayStation 2 (or worse, a PSOne). The robbers reportedly bum rushed the house with their eyes on the prize, tied up the victims with a "PlayStation power cord," bolted out while laughing evilly, and then realized they needed the very cable they left behind. Similar to the crook who jacked a TV but returned for the remote, these guys apparently forgot the keys to pulling off an even marginally successful heist, but thankfully didn't harm the poor family they intruded upon. The wonders of humanity will never cease.

[Thanks, Matt M.]

Hot on the heels of the big 3.0 firmware update for the PlayStation Portable, Sony's finally let loose its pricing plans for the forthcoming PS1 game downloads, although the downloads themselves are still apparently a few weeks away (unless you're in Japan, in which case you can get your Tekken 2 fix today). When they do show up, however, you can plan on dropping between $5.99 and $10.99 for the games, with each taking up between 140MB and 550MB on your Memory Stick Duo. The biggest sticking point for many PSP users, however, is that, as previously reported, you can't just download the games directly to your PSP -- instead, you have to download them onto your PS3's hard drive first and transfer 'em to your Memory Stick Duo from there. No problem for some but, last we checked, there's a heckuva lot more people with PSPs than PS3s, and at the rate things are going, that looks like it'll be the case for a while yet.