Art has posted a new release of his Firmware Modification app for the PSP, heres whats new:

X-Flash V18f (31/12/06):
- Implemented flasher with write verify for topmenu_plugin.rco
files of all supported firmware versions.
- File flasher can only write topmenu_plugin.rco files, and only
of sizes that match 1.50, 2.71, 3.02, and topmenu_plugin.rco
file with new icons as output by kgsws's program for 3.02SE.
- Fixes to PSP Information screen,
and red screens that display some startup warnings.
- Seven Hour XMB Label Editor works with 3.02 SE if the
new icons topmenu_plugin.rco file is flashed.
The new "Network" label that was not present in 1.50 is copied
from the "Network Settings" string that is entered by the user.


X-Flash V18f (Multi Firmware Support)
************************ MULTI FIRMWARE SUPPORT

X-Flash Feature Description 1.50 2.71 SE 3.02 OE

Debranded Coldboot Intro screen YES YES YES
Debranded Gameboot Movie YES YES YES
Alternate Coldboot Sound YES YES YES
Alternate XMB Sound Effects YES YES NO
Disable Network Update Icon YES YES YES
Disable XMB Menu Wave Effect YES YES YES
Replace Monthly Backgrounds YES YES YES
Apply Name Plate Picture YES YES YES
Install Custom Font YES YES YES
XMB Menu Label Editor YES NO YES*
Custom Gameboot Movies YES YES YES
All Version Spoofer YES NO YES
Special 1337 Version Spoofer YES NO YES
Complete Firmware Dump YES YES YES
Registry Backup and Restore Tool YES YES YES
DAX Custom Firmware Modification Tools YES N/A N/A
Flash0 Backup and Restore of mp3 file YES NO NO

Download Here --> http://www.sendspace.com/file/idtjk5 ...

via pspfanboy

The Ivalice Alliance is strong: Final Fantasy Tactics makes a triumphant return in a remake, enhanced specifically for the PSP. PSPHyper has some gorgeous scans of the latest issue of Famitsu, showing off the game's new cutscenes and yes ... gameplay too. What a great way to end the year look forward to the next!

Scans at psphyper ...

via chubigans

There’s a lot of things the PS3 can do...and as we move into the next generation, there’s a lot of competition with what format looks better, which console can pump out the best visuals, and so on. While the jump from DVD to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is pretty huge for those with capable HDTVs, the jump to next-gen audio has been rather quiet.

While the debate over which format can deliver the best visuals continues, there’s one thing that’s clear: Blu-Ray has an advantage in the audio department, delivering uncompressed PCM audio that’s unlike anything I’ve heard. Today I’ll show you how to get the next-gen codecs in your living room, what you’ll need, and what to watch out for.

What is Next Gen Audio?

With the new HD formats of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray come some audio formats that are new to home theater. Here’s the breakdown of previous and future codecs:

Dolby Digital 5.1 & DTS: These are the standard codecs found on almost all DVDs. DD5.1 is common among new DVDs and games alike, and is the most widespread. DTS tracks are found on quite a few DVDs, and even a few games (GTA: Vice City for the PS2). All you need is an optical or coaxial cable to enjoy these formats, and most HD-DVDs and BD movies include a standard DD5.1 track.

DTS-HD Master Audio: This is the new DTS codec for the next gen formats. Every single Fox Blu-Ray release has a DTS-MA track...in fact, nearly all of them only have the DTS option. Now here’s the interesting thing: there is not a single product on the market today that supports DTS-MA. Even the PS3 can’t decode this codec at the moment, but the March firmware is confirmed to update the PS3 to DTS-MA specifications. Even with that in mind, you still need a reciever to decode DTS-MA, and there’s not one available right now. Heck, there’s no Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player on the market today that supports DTS-MA!

Here’s the good news: DTS-MA is simply converted to an improved DTS format read by virtually any player and receiver if the MA format isn’t supported. You’ll still hear the benefits of the DTS-MA track, but even moreso once the hardware is in place. Kudos to Fox for supporting a future proof codec that isn’t even supported on the market yet! (although all things considering, I’d still enjoy a PCM track more).

Dolby TrueHD: The standard codec found on all HD-DVDs but only a handful of Blu-Ray discs (well, just one BD title actually- Legends of Jazz). While this track is still compressed, it delivers a more robust audio experience that is a big step up from DD5.1. The HD-DVD drive for the 360 cannot support this codec due to lack of HDMI, but instead converts the format into DD5.1 that is still a step up, but not “TrueHD.” The PS3 does not support DTHD right now (it will be added via the March firmware) but instead converts the DTHD track into PCM 5.1 audio (only via HDMI). Basically both the 360 and PS3 support this codec, but not in a “true” sense for either console. Still sounds great regardless.

Uncompressed PCM 5.1: Found on a large number of Blu-Ray discs but not supported on HD-DVD, uncompressed PCM 5.1 is simply that: an uncompressed version of the film’s standard 5.1 to 7.1 soundtrack. While that doesn’t sound too exciting, believe me when I say PCM 5.1 is a joy to hear. I’ll post my own experiences in a second, but here’s what many reviewers of BD and HD-DVD discs have to say about PCM audio:

”Buena Vista continues to aggressively support uncompressed PCM soundtracks on its Blu-ray releases, and I say cheers to that. With so much talk about new audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD (which are indeed great, make no mistake), it is easy to forgot that plain ol' PCM can produce some the best sound around.”

”If you haven't heard uncompressed PCM you really don't know what you're missing. I haven't heard anything from DD, DD+, True HD or even DTSHD quite on the same level. Of course the later can currently only be based on hearing the core DTS on DTS MA tracks from Fox. And I'm not convinced that the TrueHD tracks that I've heard were the best the codec can do. Regardless, PCM has delivered the most transparent audio presentations I've ever heard even at 16bit. It's like listening directly to the master tapes. Or so I imagine.”

” Buena Vista rolls out the red carpet with an uncompressed PCM 5.1 surround track at 48kHz/16-bit. What impressed me most were the quietest moments...'Flightplan' definitely delivers some of the best atmosphere I've heard yet on a Blu-ray release.”

” I have little doubt that the uncompressed PCM 5.1 surround track on this disc easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best soundtracks I've heard on either next-gen format.”

”PCM again lives up to the hype, preserving a broad, open transparency with newfound detail and clarity that DVD just can't touch.“


While DD5.1 tracks for DVDs have been compressed to fit, PCM audio allows them to breathe. It’s like listening to an MP3 you downloaded off Limewire & then listening to the same track on the original CD. Another comparison would be listening to a movie with earmuffs on, and PCM audio taking those muffs off, allowing you to hear subtle details like the rain pitter-pattering on the windshield, the hum of an elevator as it moves upwards...if you think I’m exaggerating, believe me, I’m not. It’s incredible how much ...

via zeegzaag

With their third home console, Sony has launched their online service, the Playstation Network Platform. An attempt to match the popularity and success of Microsoft's XBOX Live, which is already four million members strong.

One thing that completely sets them apart from eachother is the price. Microsoft's XBOX Live Gold is about $50 annually, meanwhile the Playstation Network platform is FREE. It may be free, but this doesn't make it the better of the two. PNP does complete it's main objective, and this is just simply getting you online and playing your favorite Playstation 3 titles. In fact, it executes it pretty well too, I can be playing a 20 v 20 match on Resistance with no lag whatsoever. Aside from that, PNP is just missing all those little features we have come to take for granted everyday with XBOX Live. These being voice messaging, private chats and customizing your own profile. Not to mention the absence of a unified friends list. Of course, Sony is probably hacking away at these issues somewhere, but that fact that these were absent out of the box is dissapointing. The Network will once in a while go down due to an excessive amount of people on the server ( which is the cause of error 80710D23 when logging in). It may sometimes even take 5 attempts before you can actually log in, but thankfully this isn't very common.

The Playstation Store is Sony's version of the XBOX Live Marketplace. Both contain demos,game + movie trailers and arcade titles. Although, the XBOX Live Marketplace has full TV shows and Movies for rent. You can probably expect something similiar from Sony(maybe even music) , due to the fact that they own several movie studios and record labels. The Playstation Store is made more like a website, so if you do not have a USB/ Bluetooth keyboard + mouse then it might become a bit annoying navigating it with the sixaxis controller. The one thing that really sets these two apart is that the XBOX Live Marketplace uses "Microsoft Points", while the Playstation Store uses the currency of your home country. The bad thing about the Microsoft Points is that you have to buy them in small/ big packages. So if you only want to buy a gamerpicture which is 20 points( $0.25), then you must buy the smallest package of points(400 points, which winds up costing you a whole $6.25). Also, another cool feature on the Playstation Store is the ability to buy PSOne games, to then put on your PSP.

I must give Sony kudos for integrating a browser onto the PS3. This actually works pretty well, wether you want to check your yahoo email or watch Youtube videos. It defianetley reminds of the PSP's browser, and oddly enough the same " out of memory ' alerts are present(those who have the PSP know what I'm talking about). You can do all the usual here as on Internet explorer or firefox which includes saving files, bookmarks, having several tabs on at once, except that reading text on web sites is not that easy on the eyes, as it offers little in the way of anti-aliasing. I definitely suggest sticking with a USB/Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, because I can guarantee you will go mad using the Sixaxis controller to type. Overall, this a great edition to the PS3 and definately something I wish that the XBOX 360 had. Although the PS3 browser does not stack up to what can be done on Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3(which I will be installing tommorow)

The one huge plus of XBOX Live is the ability to have your very own gamercard. This includes a gamer picture,21 character motto, your rep, gamerscore, country, your "zone" and all your games played with the achievements you got in each game. An awesome feature it is, giving everyone a disinct identity.

In my opinion, the thing that makes XBOX Live so great is that I can be playing in the campaign of Gears of War and my friend "MasterPlayer 360" sends me a voice mesage asking me to play an online match in Saints Row with him. While still in my game, I push the guide button and quickly listen to the memo. I send him a private chat invite and we babble while I continue to play my game of Gears of War and he's in his match in Saints Row. Then he can join my game through clicking "Join Session in Progress" on my profile, and voila, we are playing side by side in the Gears of War campign. Then after a while he say's , "hey man, I gotta go eat some dinner", and he drops out, still leaving me in my own game by myself, nothing is lost or neither does it exit my session when he leaves.

Overall, these are two good online gaming services which get the job done by deliviring a lag free game experience and an awesome virtual store.Both services will get a case of "the hiccups" every once in a while. but as of now, my vote must go to XBOX Live. Despite it's $50 annual price tag, it definitely satisfys you with awesome customization features, the ability to download tv shows and renting of movies from the marketplace and over 100 great XBOX live titles. Granted ...

via zeegzaag

With their third home console, Sony has launched their online service, the Playstation Network Platform. An attempt to match the popularity and success of Microsoft's XBOX Live, which is already four million members strong.

One thing that completely sets them apart from eachother is the price. Microsoft's XBOX Live Gold is about $50 annually, meanwhile the Playstation Network platform is FREE. It may be free, but this doesn't make it the better of the two. PNP does complete it's main objective, and this is just simply getting you online and playing your favorite Playstation 3 titles. In fact, it executes it pretty well too, I can be playing a 20 v 20 match on Resistance with no lag whatsoever. Aside from that, PNP is just missing all those little features we have come to take for granted everyday with XBOX Live. These being voice messaging, private chats and customizing your own profile. Not to mention the absence of a unified friends list. Of course, Sony is probably hacking away at these issues somewhere, but that fact that these were absent out of the box is dissapointing. The Network will once in a while go down due to an excessive amount of people on the server ( which is the cause of error 80710D23 when logging in). It may sometimes even take 5 attempts before you can actually log in, but thankfully this isn't very common.

The Playstation Store is Sony's version of the XBOX Live Marketplace. Both contain demos,game + movie trailers and arcade titles. Although, the XBOX Live Marketplace has full TV shows and Movies for rent. You can probably expect something similiar from Sony(maybe even music) , due to the fact that they own several movie studios and record labels. The Playstation Store is made more like a website, so if you do not have a USB/ Bluetooth keyboard + mouse then it might become a bit annoying navigating it with the sixaxis controller. The one thing that really sets these two apart is that the XBOX Live Marketplace uses "Microsoft Points", while the Playstation Store uses the currency of your home country. The bad thing about the Microsoft Points is that you have to buy them in small/ big packages. So if you only want to buy a gamerpicture which is 20 points( $0.25), then you must buy the smallest package of points(400 points, which winds up costing you a whole $6.25). Also, another cool feature on the Playstation Store is the ability to buy PSOne games, to then put on your PSP.

I must give Sony kudos for integrating a browser onto the PS3. This actually works pretty well, wether you want to check your yahoo email or watch Youtube videos. It defianetley reminds of the PSP's browser, and oddly enough the same " out of memory ' alerts are present(those who have the PSP know what I'm talking about). You can do all the usual here as on Internet explorer or firefox which includes saving files, bookmarks, having several tabs on at once, except that reading text on web sites is not that easy on the eyes, as it offers little in the way of anti-aliasing. I definitely suggest sticking with a USB/Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, because I can guarantee you will go mad using the Sixaxis controller to type. Overall, this a great edition to the PS3 and definately something I wish that the XBOX 360 had. Although the PS3 browser does not stack up to what can be done on Yellow Dog Linux for the PS3(which I will be installing tommorow)

The one huge plus of XBOX Live is the ability to have your very own gamercard. This includes a gamer picture,21 character motto, your rep, gamerscore, country, your "zone" and all your games played with the achievements you got in each game. An awesome feature it is, giving everyone a disinct identity.

In my opinion, the thing that makes XBOX Live so great is that I can be playing in the campaign of Gears of War and my friend "MasterPlayer 360" sends me a voice mesage asking me to play an online match in Saints Row with him. While still in my game, I push the guide button and quickly listen to the memo. I send him a private chat invite and we babble while I continue to play my game of Gears of War and he's in his match in Saints Row. Then he can join my game through clicking "Join Session in Progress" on my profile, and voila, we are playing side by side in the Gears of War campign. Then after a while he say's , "hey man, I gotta go eat some dinner", and he drops out, still leaving me in my own game by myself, nothing is lost or neither does it exit my session when he leaves.

Overall, these are two good online gaming services which get the job done by deliviring a lag free game experience and an awesome virtual store.Both services will get a case of "the hiccups" every once in a while. but as of now, my vote must go to XBOX Live. Despite it's $50 annual price tag, it definitely satisfys you with awesome customization features, the ability to download tv shows and renting of movies from the marketplace and over 100 great XBOX live titles. Granted ...

via ps3fanboy

We're calling this a semi-fix because not everybody has their television set up like I do (in Athens, not at home... this one rocks out with HDMI and such). A while back, we did a short investigation on the YouTube video claiming PS2 games look a lot worse on the PS3 -- in my particular case, it appears to be true. Kind of. Yes, there are a lot more jaggies and oh, goodness, the text is atrocious. There is, however, light at the end of this tunnel. I'll tell you how my TV's set up to quickly repair the damaged graphics.

All right, so currently my PS3 is connected to my TV via the HDMI and those cruddy composite cables -- the yellow, white, and red. Why both? Because my TV has channels dedicated to both. When I run a PS2 game on the HDMI channel, yeah, it looks bad. So what do I do? Go to my Display Settings and swap the PS3 back onto the 480i channel -- the channel most PS2 games were probably meant to be seen in. I think that's the problem -- PS2 games didn't plan on getting their resolutions increased so drastically. Anyway... so I swap it back to 480i and re-load the PS2 game and guess what? The text is gorgeous and the graphics look fine. I think. They don't look perfect, but it's a lot better than the HDMI shows.

You guys can go ahead and test this if your TV is prepared for the journey of multiple wires. Or computer monitor, which I know a lot of you swear by (and rightly so, it seems)! Let us know if this works for you. In all seriousness, though, it doesn't bother me that much. If I can still enjoy the gameplay, I don't mind having a jaggy sword, or funny-looking handrails. Perhaps Sony will strive to fix this in the future, but for now, keep your PS2 hooked up if it gets too unbearable. ...

via thestreet

After more than a decade at the top of the video game heap, during which it sold more than 200 million consoles, Sony is set to be knocked off its firm position as King of the Hill because of its flawed PlayStation 3 strategy. This is only one of many reasons to avoid shares of the consumer-electronics conglomerate, but it's certainly the most important.

Sony's video-game business is easily its crown jewel. At its best, it has provided more than 60% of Sony's operating profit despite hovering around 10% of overall Sony revenue. Given that Sony is almost certainly going to lose market share, the company's profitability will be dragged down dramatically.

This state of affairs means Sony's historically lucrative video-game unit is very likely to lose its luster over the next few years as Microsoft and Nintendo gain market share in this segment. Plus, one must consider the generally tough state of the consumer electronics business, given how competitive businesses such as high-definition televisions have become. With that in mind, it is nearly impossible for me to come up with a bullish case for Sony. ...

The M3 & G6 Range of Flashcarts has seen a software update, heres whats new:

The most up-to-data games are supported.

More Info --> http://www.m3adapter.com/

More Info --> http://www.handheldsources.com/Download.html ...

New release from nornagon

Hi all,

World of Sand (beta 1)

I hacked this up over the last couple of days and the folks on #dsdev seemed to enjoy it, so I thought I'd link it here for your pleasure.

Note that the idea for the game isn't original; the code is mostly from a clone I made of the game by Dofi (written in Java, eugh).

The performance isn't great yet, but it's acceptable. The code will be released when I get around to dropping it on a version control system, under the GPL. There are a bunch more features I plan to add, including:



a title screen

more materials/combinations (steam, ash, snow, ideas welcome)

portrait view

a hideable toolbox instead of the arrow-key-selected icons

a way to stop/start the flow of individual sources

different brush sizes

timer and particle count on the top screen

save/load to png

Download Here --> http://2-2-dihexanol.net/worldofsand.nds ...