PS3 Firmware Update, Heavenly Sword Demo This Week

PlayStation 3 owners are getting a couple of new toys this week. The official Sony blog has announced that the US will see firmware update 1.90 within the next few days. Gamasutra has further details on the patch, which includes a number of functionality improvements: "Ability to rearrange games on the XMB, Option menu now includes 'eject disk', Press triangle to eject games/CDs/movies in the XMB, XMB backgrounds, Change the folder classification, Emoticons, Change CD output to 44.1/88.2/176.4kHz, Force 24Hz output for Blu-ray over HDMI, Change PS3 video settings in-game, 'Bit Mapping' in the 'Music Setting', Save AVCHD type animations from a Memory Stick, Change settings like upscaling while playing PS and PS2 games, Add bookmarks, Web browser security function in the browser's tool section." Indications are also that a demo for Heavenly Sword will be coming soon. Europe is getting it this Thursday, with no firm word on a US date yet.

Re:24 Hz?

[Trogre]

And it's been that way for far too long. I find pans and tilts difficult to track in theatres as they come across horribly jittery unless they're done extremely slowly.

The only way I can really enjoy sweeping pans in movies is with an interpolating TV like 100Hz ones with the Philips Natural Motion chip.

This is where both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD really missed the boat. They should be pushing film studios to change to a much more natural-looking 48fps (or 50 or 60 for TV compatibility if necessary). Or failing that interpolate the motion themselves. Hell, they already have the motion vectors from all that MPEG compression.