Following up on yesterday’s news about the new firmware version 2.0 for the PlayStation 3, the new PlayStation 3 firmware is apparently faulty. Users are reporting a lot of rapid system hangs and hickups after upgrading their boxes, and Sony has not made any announcements concerning a fix yet, but reportedly they are now aware of the issues.
Sony has officially released Firmware version 2.0 for the PlayStation 3 today.
This new update enables controlling the PS3 using your Remote-Play enabled PSP (PlayStation Portable) to switch it on and access content stored on the PS3, including music, movies or photos. As long as both units are connected to the Internet, you can access your PS3 from anywhere in the world.
Other newbies:
I also heard someone whisper on my screen that we will see in-game XMB support in the near future, and an anonymous blog-posting rabbit told me that DivX support might be on the horizon…
NVIDIAs new Crysis-optimized beta drivers 169.01 and 169.04 were picked apart over at Elite Bastards, who could reveal shocking results. Apparently these drivers force removal of certain water/shadow effects, increasing performance at the expense of visual quality.
One can easily deduct that NVIDIA has made this move in order to better benchmarking results for their 8xxx line of graphics cards, trying to make them stand out more vs their AMD/ATI opponents. Elite Bastards conclude that this is not an issue in the official 163.69 drivers, and adds that the difference in performance between the old and new drivers is 7 %.
Users of the new drivers who prefer not to rollback can easily circumvent this game-specific “optimization” by renaming the “crysis.exe” file to “nvidiacheats.exe”.
The new 65 nm CPU family from AMD, known as Phenom, is getting quite the rocket launch this month. With aggressive pricing, AMD is hoping to reclaim some of their recent market share losses. Three CPUs are getting launched initially - the Phenom 9500, 9600 and 9700 - clocking in at 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4 GHz, respectively. The 2.4 GHz 9700 model is expected to launch with a $288 price tag, with its two siblings following suit at $247 for the 9500 and $278 for the 9600.
With Intel pricing their low-end 65 nm and upcoming 45nm quad core CPUs at about the same level, AMD will have to compete on pricing unless performance is superior to their nemesis’ quad creations.
A 3 GHz version of Phenom is expected to be announced, but when and at what price is still unknown.
This has been a losing year for AMD, but during the first quarter of 2008 they will be launching their triple core Toliman CPU, targeted at gamers and for general desktop use with very aggressive pricing. Also, sometime next year, AMD will finally come out with their first 45 nm CPU, tentatively known as “Shanghai”.
The Mozilla team has released Firefox version 2.0.0.9. This update fixes a serious Java issue on Windows Vista where Java applets don’t work like they should after Firefox crashes. Four other bugs that were preventing add-ons from working after a successful upgrade of Firefox have also been squashed.
The official release notes for Firefox 2.0.0.9 (external link).
Download Firefox 2.0.0.9 from Firefox.com.
If you already have Firefox installed, click on ”Help” and “Check for Updates…” to upgrade immediately.
Contrary to what we’re used to with DVDs, not all Blu-Ray movies are region code protected.
There’re a lot of Blu-Ray player owners (read: PS3 owners) out there, but most don’t know what movies are region free, and many don’t even know that this is as common as about 50% of all releases!
Well, thanks to the Lies Inc Blu-Ray blog you can find out exactly what Blu-Ray titles should be safe to import for your HD viewing pleasure.
Quick reference guide to Blu-Ray Regions:
- Region A: North America, Central America, South America, Japan, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.
- Region B: Europe, Greenland, French territories, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
- Region C: India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mainland China, Pakistan, Russia, Central and South Asia.
