Sony posts PS3 firmware 2.30

Sony has kept its firmware launch promise and released version 2.30 of the PlayStation 3's system software this week. The firmware enables the PS3 to support DTS-HD Master Audio, the console's second HD audio format. The PS3 already supports Dolby’s TrueHD, a rival HD audio format. But expanding the console’s audio support to …

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice..

More welcome additions. I don't have any DTS:MA 7.1 discs yet (and only one DTS:MA 5.1 - DieHard 4.0), but will keep any eye out.

The store revemp, which is no longer a web based store, it's now build into the PS3, as a XMB application, is very slick (looks like they borrowed lots of Singstore code..), and works very quickly. The icons take a while to appear, but it does seem as thou they get cached locally, as next time, they appear instantly.

Pretty much the only thing missing right now, is in-game/cross game messaging and invites. Once that's done, it has everything the 360 has, and more.

[Steven Hewittt]

RE: AC / Nice..

"Pretty much the only thing missing right now, is in-game/cross game messaging and invites. Once that's done, it has everything the 360 has, and more."

Last I heard, you couldn't pay to download full PS2 games to your console, or download full movies in HD with surround sound.

PS3 is getting much closer, and with the blue-ray support against the 360's DVD I'd say that the PS3 is on top - however the cheapest model also costs nearly twice as much as the cheapest 360 which again puts MS's offering on top still.

Blue-Ray drive but no HD movie downloads / legacy game support, in-game messaging/invites and twice the cost of it's rival?

Think I'll stick with the 360 and look at a PS3 again in another year.

[Mike Dyne]

@ James Sherwood

[Quote]Once that's done, it has everything the 360 has, and more.[/Quote]

Barring a decent games library and a reasonable price tag...

[Anonymous Coward]

@ AC

"Pretty much the only thing missing right now, is in-game/cross game messaging and invites. Once that's done, it has everything the 360 has, and more."

You mean except a worthwhile selection games? i.e. the whole reason you'd want a console in the first place?

At the moment it's still really no more than a Bluray player with a few fancy additions.

[Matt]

@Steven

I can't comment on comparing to your 360 and I'm not trying to say the PS3 s better but:

I can play all my PS2 games (although some people seem to have problems, I can only speak as I find). I believe you can download "classic" games too.

I can download films and watch them, as well as streaming them off my server. I haven't tried full HD yet.

In terms of available games, there are now more good games than I've got free time.........

The new audio stuff is nice, but I'm not sure I'll notice the difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mpeg streaming broke since 2.20

Streaming of MPeg content where the lenght is unknown was broken back in 2.20 and 2.30 didn't fix the issue.

This is a pain for us using DLNA servers....

[Filippo]

@SH

The cheapest 360 has no downloads *at all*, because it doesn't have a HDD.

A more fair comparison would be the HDD-equipped 360 with the cheapest PS3; is the difference between those two still 100$? That's dirt cheap for BR playback, and even that difference is covered after two years of free online play vs. a Live subscription.

[Rob]

updates

the frequency of these updates does my bloody head in, every time i turn the thing on i have to spend half an hour downloading and installing updates, by which time I can't really be bothered to play anything anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox 360 is Better :-)

Xbox 360 is better media centre than the PS3. This was especially true until v2.15 fixed lots of DivX issues with the PS3.

The PS3 still lags behind the Xbox 360 in DivX compatability, and of course cannot play WMV files.

Neither Xbox or PS3 can play all region DVDs somethig any cheap DVD player can do these days.

Until Microsoft and Sony fix the software these boxes are limited as Media Centres and really only games machines:

http://www.stevewatts.com/tech/2008/dlna/

[Rob]

May be setting the cat amongst the pigeons....

So the PS3 "doesn't have a decent games library" eh?

I own a 360-elite [and] a 40Gb PS3, and as far as I can tell the only rationale behind this sort of statement is that "if most games are cross-format, then you'll want a 360 because it has exclusives too".

That assertion is flawed, as there are also PS3 exclusives like "Tekken 5: DR", "Unchartered: Drake's fortune" and "Heavenly Sword" that are absolutely banging.

So... I suggest to any serious gamer that they should buy BOTH and reap the rewards. And have a great big flat-TV and digital surround-sound installed.

In short, if you aren't willing to put a serious amount of investment into your home entertainment gear, then I can't take you seriously. You might as well be one of those 40-something whiners who keep crying out "Whatever happened to the art of conversation?" Answer: it got fragged.

[Mark]

@Rob @AC

ROB: Nobody is forcing you to take those updates. It's entirely optional. (well perhaps not this one, as it brings the new store), but certainly all the past ones have been. It merely posts a notification telling you it's there if you want it.

Of course that would then mean you have nothing to whinge about...

AC: 2.30 fixes my MP4 streaming problems. Have you tried TwonkyMedia, the 2 movies that failed to stream before without stuttering now both play fine for me.

[Filippo]

*beep*

The PS3 *can* play WMVs.

You just have to enable WMA in the system settings menu (although why this isn't the default is a mystery to me).

[Anonymous Coward]

PS3 is better then Xbox

I have both Xbox 360 as well as a PS3, guess what system i use more often.(yes it is a PS3)

In regards to better game selection, all the games that matter are on both with only a few exceptions like of Halo and GOW. I own GOW but i played them both and they are nothing special. I dont know why some people get excited when some one mentions them. There is tons of better games out there.... Assassins Creed for one...

I do like the Store on the Xbox more but i have not seen the updated store on the PS3 yet.

Oh yeah one last thing, i dislike both companies for various reasons. So they are pretty close to each other on the shittiness scale

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're comparing prices...

Don't forget the wireless bridge (54.99 at least), battery pack (11.99?) and charger(14.99) for the controllers, all of which are built into the PS3/controllers, although the wireless thing is dodgy for some games anyway (IP Fragment problems apparently). Then there's the 40 quid a year for playing online! Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to slag the 360, I'll even say "MS" without the usual symbol. I want one myself, as Rob says above, best of both worlds, there's good exclusives on both consoles. Just that when you count all the extras they're pretty similar in price, Sony are just more transparent about it.

"really only games machines" - Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

@Filippo

I have enabled WMA in the System Settings and it definitely does not play all WMVs.

Suspect like DivX there are subtle differences in the encoding of WMV (possibly WMV2) that the PS3 does not like.

Back to back with the PS3 the Xbox360 played a hell of a lot more files downloaded from BitTorrent than the PS3.

[Matt Bridge-Wilkinson]

Hmm

I have both, and I have to say I prefer the xbox as a console. I do use the ps3 more for streaming films from my pc, but for everything else the xbox, (music, games, online play) it does better.

Ps3 has poor, clunky interface which is frankly terrible and a chore to use. Very few quality titles (most of the quality titles are on the 360 and about £10-15 cheaper to boot). It even upscales normal dvds badly when compared to the 360.

Only reason I have a ps3 is it was cheap, its got the potential but sorry it doesnt have the right application of that potential just yet. For me as I got it cheap its just a cheap bluray player.

Yeah the xbox live costs (which does suck), I had it replaced under warranty and its noisy too but I actually play games on my xbox.

[fluffy]

Also @Steven

Since when can the XB360 download full PS2 games and play them?

[paul]

PS3 Is THE BETTER MEDIA CENTER / CENTER / Jimmy hendrix experience

It can work with my MythTV system - this is well known to be the best PVR solution. (taking away setup issues)

It can run native in linux OR via upnp in ps3 xmb OR flash streaming via web.

DVD upscaling + blu ray the best. 360 doesn't have blu ray - so how on earth can it be the best? The format war has already been won

It has a web browser (unlike 360) so youtube and iPlayer support. Again without youtube - how can it be the best?

My brother bought his 360 cheapo version (without HDD). It didn't have an HDMI or Component slots. NO HD without buying another adaptor. All ps3 have hdmi as std.

PS3 Now has the better audio support for the nutters with 2 much money and their 7.1 speaker setups.

xbox is 2 noisy and unreliable.

Also COD4 is better on ps3 ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Have both

But I'm using the PS3 more for a couple of reasons.

Noise - the 360 is just so intrusive, there is no comparison between the two of them when watching a movie or playing a game that doesn't have shooting. The PS3 is very rarely audible, the 360 roars. Put a HD-DVD in the 360's add-on drive and depending on the phases of the Moon the machine might just bellow for two hours so it's almost impossible to hear the dialogue.

Secondly, it's the reliability. My 360 has already been serviced once by Microsoft after the RRoD and they've replaced the inherently faulty motherboard with another one of the same model - so I suspect it'll fail again in short order. The machine's fan is already sounding rough after only a couple of weeks, so I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing went bang. If I get a choice of platforms I buy the game for PS3 because I'm pretty sure it'll be working this time next week.

[Anonymous Coward]

PS3 and DivX

"The PS3 still lags behind the Xbox 360 in DivX compatability"

Sorry to say this to the XBox 360 fanboy but :-

1) XBox 360 is NOT DivX Certified.

2) Playstation 3 has been and is Certified for DivX playback.

Ow from horse own mouth on matter.

http://www.divx.com/company/press/press_detail.php?pr_id=272

[Anonymous Coward]

@PS3 and DivX

Obviously from someone who has never used both!

I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3 so cannot be a fanboy.

Back to back testing with a variety of DivX files the PS3 came of worse.

The important thing to remember is that DivX certified devices ONLY have to play files encoded with STRICT DivX profiles. This does NOT cover all sorts of odd DivX encodings from BitTorrent.

Also PS3 does not handle Xvid as well. Which is different to DivX.

Do not believe the hype on the Internet and just parrot it. Go away and test both and then tell me which one supports the most DivX files.

[Rob]

@ mark

no, you don't HAVE to install them to use the machine, but you do if you want to sign into psn and look at the store or play online, given that loads of people on here moan about things they actually don't really know much about (ahem, iPhone) I reserve the right to have a moan about a machine I spent >£400 quid on

[Rob]

@ ac

I assume as you call that guy a 360 fanboy you don't own one, if you did you'd probably be aware that the 360 handles media a hell of a lot better than the ps3 currently does, ps3 plays ~40% of my shared videos, whereas my 360 plays a good 90% of it

[Rob]

COD 4

hate to exacerbate the ps3 vs 360 undertones but actually cod4 is better on the 360, my mate brought it over for the ps3 and I loaded mine up on the 360, after switching between the two a couple of times it was glaringly obvious that the textures on the ps3 just didn't look as good as they did on the 360, especially along the ground where the ps3 reminded me of the good old days of bilinear filtering

[PIB]

@Rob

"hate to exacerbate the ps3 vs 360 undertones "

No you don't hate it: You love it. Otherwise you wouldn't post here.

A new update for the PS3 system and look at those Xboys rush to defend their Billyboxes.

Crazy.

[miknik]

PS3 video streaming

If you use TVersity as your media server it will convert anything your ps3 can't play back on the fly and stream it to your ps3 in a format it can cope with. So whatever you download if your pc can play it then it'll work on your ps3.

[Alex]

@AC "@PS3 and DivX"

.... Sorry, incorrect.

Sitting here with Xvid, and DivX, including WMVs and the PS3 plays them all spot on. Now, they also play exactly the same on the XBOX. So, i would suggest you check your 'legit download' site for better quality film files. Or actually have them side-by-side to test, as I'm sorry, I do not believe you when I have factual proof in front of me. Name the file and I will search for it and test it.. Also, name the version of your machines so that I can check with friends if yours is different to mine.

Go on, do it.

Really doubting some of these "Factual" posts...

Pah!