Written By: Bryan M. (Moneoa)
When it was announced last week at the PlayStation Meeting 2005 it caused a buzz.
Along with fixing some video playback problems and adding new functions to the unit itself the firmware would also install sony’s official browser in the eager hands of Japanese owners of the popular new handheld, giving the ability to stand in any open wi-fi hotspot and surf and download off the internet.
The date was set for July 27th and North American owners lamented the fact at Sony had been mum on any type of release date for N.A. Then something funny happened, the 27th rolled around and the many forums in the psp community were keeping thier eye on http://www.playstation.jp/psp/update/ud_03.html throughout the day.
When finally the update hit the Sony Japan website the cat was out of the bag…..
North American users who downloaded the japanese patch and ran it on their systems were suprised to find it updated their units with no ill effects. No language change overs, no button swaps (the function of x and o are swapped on JP and NA psp’s) and no negative effects on the system or running of UMD media.
With flash memory getting smaller but getting a boost in capacity the era of hand held P2P may be soon born, though maybe not ideal for dvd rips the possibilties for tv rips, movies and music is definately there.
The real facinating questions lie with how P2P would work on a system like PsP and how devs would find away around proprietary lockouts designed to keep home grown programmers from running their own software on the unit, though for the most part the breadth of the PSP community is unconcerned.
Software can be cracked and circumvented and it’s only a matter of time.
What is interesting to point out is friends can now set up psudo psp p2p between themselves.
Similar to the way Nintendo DS users can locate themselves and exchange data so too can the PsP making it possible to ad hoc network with friends and exchange data. Or conversley friends can set up sites online and post material for each other to download. (obviously trust is key with that so you would only be doing this with friends you know and trust, the URL is not known to anyone but them)
So on the user side it will be interesting to see what they some up with themselves using some imagination and creativity.
With the miniturization of web enabled devices with healthy memory capacity I have to ponder on how the Trade Groups will be able to keep up as the act will become anonymous and mobile (the need brought on by mgm vs. grokster)
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