Kev's Development Toolbox

March 2, 2007

Major changes for PS3 with next major firmware upgrade?

There has been rumors for a while that the next major firmware upgrade for the PS3 will come shortly after the European launch of the PS3 and will include the addition of some major new features. Expected features may include:

PSOne game emulation – downloaded PSOne games for playing on the PSP’s PSOne emulator will by playable on the PS3
inclusion of a download service for music, music videos and other video programs (see previous link), possibly by including content in the PS3 Store, but maybe via some other Sony backed website or service, similar to iTunes
upscaling to 720p and 1080i for PSOne and PS2 titles, using a combination of software and a hardware upscaling chip (that has so far not been acknowledged to exist)
remote internet access to your PS3, allowing it to function as a remotely accessible media server for all your photos, mp3s etc

March 2, 2007

BBC plans to release TV shows on YouTube

The BBC have announced that they will be releasing some of their shows on the web for free via YouTube. Shows to be made available include Doctor Who, Top Gear, some comedy shows and clips from news shows.

February 28, 2007

Microsoft documents in Iowa court case document Microsoft’s original plans to kill Java

This was discussed in the Gossip section on JavaPosse’s podcast number 103, but unfortunately it looks like the website for the links they referred to has been taken down and/or password protected.

The guys in the podcast quoted from the documents that were publicly avaialable on the site, which gave an insight into Microsoft’s original goals to build a competitor to Java (J++?) that would beat Java at it’s own game by ignoring the cross-platform benefits and leveraging native platform support on Windows. J++ never caught on but may have been one stepping stone towards the development of .NET, which again borrows Java concepts (the Common Language Runtime = the Java Virtual Machine), but yet again, still has not made significant impact in the IT industry.

February 27, 2007

PS3 to launch in Europe minus hardware backward compatibility for PS2

The PS3 units sold in Japan and the US since November ’06 until present have reportedly included the PS2’s chipset to provide near 100% backward compatibility (a few rendering issues needed firmware updates but were fixed). When the PS3 launches in Europe in March, according to news articles this week, the PS3 will not include the PS2’s hardware but will instead emulate the PS2 in software. This is a smart move for Sony as a first step in reducing manufacturing costs, but of course people are worried that this means backwards compatibility will have less that 100% support compared with the original Japan and US consoles.