PS3 1.8 firmware adds DVD upscaling & streaming video to PSP over internet
May 23, 2007 Carl Nelson
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Update 1: It’s Thursday afternoon in HK, and the update is live! I’ll update this page again if there’s anything cool to talk about once I play around with it a bit (I wish I had some PS2 games around)
Ever since the PS3 launched, people were wondering when or if it would ever be able to upscale DVD movies. The same thing was asked about XBOX 360, but after a year and a half, I think we can forget about it. But on Thursday, a firmware update for the PS3 will add the feature we’ve all been asking for.
In our review of the Oppo DV-981HD 1080p upscaling DVD player, we found that upscaling DVDs significantly improved image quality on movies that were treated to a high quality DVD release, but tended to exacerbate issues on problematic DVD releases. Check out the review for full details.
If the PS3 does a good job at upscaling and deinterlacing, it should extend the life of your better DVDs for a while, at least until they become available on Blu-Ray, at which point you’ll definitely want to switch.
And by the way, the 1.8 update also adds upscaling for PS and PS2 games as well! This should do the same for your collection of older games as it did for movies on DVD.
There are a few other features of the 1.8 firmware as well:
- Remote play to PSP over the internet - Stream any media saved on the PS3 to your PSP over the internet. Now this is a cool, useful feature! No longer do you have to spend an hour converting shows with PSP Media Manager onto your memory card before a trip. Instead, as long as you can connect to the internet, you will have access to any media saved on your PS3. This will require a new PSP firmware update which will be released next month.
- Streaming DLNA video - Not quite as robust as streaming over internet, but if you have a DLNA capable device (PC, DVR, TV, etc), then the PS3 will stream media to it over a home network.
- Copy game save data to memory card - Now you can take your PS and PS2 game save data, and copy it over to a memory card, or PS2 memory card if you have an adapter. I think someone in our forum was asking about this a while back.
- Printer support - Some Epson printers can be plugged into the PS3 via USB, and you can print you photos from it. Why you would want to do this, I have no idea. You’d have to assume that somehow there is a PS3 owner out there who doesn’t have a PC.
The 1.8 firmware will be available “on Thursday, May 24″ according to Sony. Not sure what time zone that is though; it’s already Thursday morning for me here in Hong Kong, and the update is nowhere to be seen…
Filed under: Video Game Hardware
Tags: Firmware Updates, HDTV, Playstation 3, PSP, Sony
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Posted on May 23rd, 2007
[...] stood out about this update was that it would allow streaming media to a PSP over the internet. I wrote about that immediately, but until the next firmware arrives for the PSP, we won’t be able to check it [...]