Portable Gaming Revolution

Quick on the heels of the 2.01 firmware release, Sony has announced the release of their 2.5 firmware. This one seems to be much more then a simple bug fix like the 2.01 version however, as there are a pile of new features added. Currently this is a Japan only release, but you can expect a US and UK version in the coming days.

Features in the update as listed on the Sony Japan homepage:

• Revisions to strengthen security have been added.
• LocationFree Player has been added as a feature under Network.
• Auto-Select and Unicode (UTF-8) have been added as options to Encoding under View in the Internet Browser menu bar.
• Text Size and Display Mode settings of the Internet Browser can now be saved.
• The input history of online forms accessed through the Internet Browser can now be saved.
• Copyright-protected video can now be played under Video. (This applies to video data saved on Memory Stick.)
• Set via Internet has been added as an option to Date & Time Settings under Settings.
• WPA-PSK (AES) has been added as a security method under Network Settings.
• Korean input mode has been added to the on-screen keyboard.

Lets go over a few of these in greater details though.

LocationFree:

Sony had announced this a month or so ago, but I was hugely suprised to see this out and working on a PSP so quickly. If you aren’t familiar LocationFree video (look for a locationfree article coming soon), it’s a hardware/software combo announced by sony that will eventually allow you to access your audio and video content wirelessly on your PSP from anywhere in the world. For this to work you will need to purchase a LocationFree Basestation which will run you about $350 US. Once this basestation is setup, and available on your network, you will be able to stream your video content over the internet to devices that are running the LocationFree software. Sounds cool, if not a bit pricy for the features involved, but may turn out to be a great selling feature for the PSP.

Copyprotected Video

It’s still a little unclear what this will mean for us PSP users. Is Sony planning on launching a video store that will sell videos that are protected with DRM? The info available is a little bit unclear, but this is sure to be an interesting item in the near future. I personally can’t wait.