PSP UMD Format Cracked 392
slewfo0t writes "PS2info.com user Paradox has found a way to read the files off of the new UMD disks for the PSP. Good to know that those files aren't completely locked. "
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.
Great. So when can we start warezing games? (Score:5, Funny)
Lumines is already playable (Score:2)
Lumines is already playable on PC [frogtoss.com].
Re:Lumines is already playable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great. So when can we start warezing games? (Score:2)
Re:Great. So when can we start warezing games? (Score:2)
Re:Great. So when can we start warezing games? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great. So when can we start warezing games? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can buy every game currently available and all games that will ever come out for the PSP for a total price of $200?
$200 for every game currently released and every game to be released in the future is quite a bargain. sure you can only have 1 game on the memory stick at once, but you can have an entire library of games on your hard drive that you can copy onto the memory stick one at a time.
not that i would pirate software... no way... not me...
Actually (Score:5, Informative)
It looks like the first 3 games that were ripped were each less than 500MB [psphacks.net]. You could, in fact, get all three of those games on one 2GB memory stick. Unless there is a ton of FMV, I wouldn't guess that most PSP games are going to use anywhere close to 1.8GB. Although, we could see game studios putting junk content on the disk to up the size to try to stem pirating if it becomes possible
Re:Actually (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a few bold assumptions:
1. The developers of the PSP launch titles needed a way to easily QA many different beta builds of their games.
2. Sony, wanting to keep a tight lid on the UMD format, refused to give any developers a desktop UMD burner to burn beta builds.
3. Instead, Sony gave each developer a code-signing certificate that allowed them to sign beta builds, write them to a memory stick, and run through QA.
You know what made me jump to these conclusions?
The size of the games...
At the time the launch titles were being developed, the largest Memory Stick Duo available was 512MB, which would explain the small size of all the launch titles. Even now the 1GB memory stick duos are just barely becoming available, and are in such short supply that I'm still wondering if they have been released or not (I have one on pre-order through Amazon).
What makes this really interesting is that if the game developers knew how to write games to Memory Stick and play them for QA and testing purposes, that means the modders are going to figure out how to do it to... It's going to get real interesting when 4GB sticks are ~$50 US and plentiful and games are still only max ~1.8GB...
Re:Actually (Score:3, Informative)
~D
Re:Great. So when can we start warezing games? (Score:3, Interesting)
Me, I just want to be able to reverse-engineer and twiddle my legitimately-purchased games... disable the %$#$@ timed minigames, that sort of thing. (Not that I own a PSP -- just a PS2 -- and I consider the timed minigames in FFX2 annoying enough to prevent me from playing more than ~15 minutes in, when the first one [a race to a su
for now.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
MirrorDOT (Score:2, Informative)
Mobile Gaming (Score:3, Interesting)
Has anyone had a chance to compare the PSP with the other gaming systems out there? I'm seriously considering picking up *something* to occupy my attention on the flights I'm going to start taking over the next couple of months (somehow I've fallen into the business-travel trap).
I'd like to get a decent system. The ability to watch movies is a big draw, but obviously nothing's out in Sony's proprietary format and I imagine I'd need one hell of a memory stick to watch anything from one, and it hurts my black little soul to think seriously about rewarding Sony for their shitty proprietary memory format.
Played a little bit of Metroid on the Nintendo DS and it was okay. Not so sure I liken the approach that much -- I suspect that touchscreen would get scratched all to hell eventually like the screen on my Palm V did.
I've browsed around the web a bit but haven't been able to find a comparison or even a real decent set of reviews from anywhere I'd trust (note to most gaming websites: Yeah, we've figured out you're whores. The ads for the product on the same page as the review was a tip-off).
Opinions/Assistance? Is it even worth it, or should I just buy a nice book and charge up my iPod?
Fascinating device. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's this fascinating device, you have have heard of it. It's called a "book", and it's rather cheaper than a PSP.
Snark, snark, snark.
-grendel drago
Keep on readin' there, partner. (Score:3, Informative)
Opinions/Assistance? Is it even worth it, or should I just buy a nice book and charge up my iPod?
Re:Fascinating device. (Score:3, Interesting)
Saying the words 'cheaper' and 'book' in the same sentence is pretty funny. Have you priced books lately? Even paperbacks are like $7! Crazy.
Re:Fascinating device. (Score:3, Informative)
Gutenberg a notorious Pirate (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fascinating device. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:3, Informative)
The PSP is essentially a PDA that can play music, movies, and can play games with graphics/features somewhere between the PS1 and PS2.
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:5, Insightful)
It came with Spiderman2, I watched the opening few minutes and it looked great, but I didn't like the movie enough to watch the whole thing again. Apparently you can convert ripped DVDs to lower resolution to put on 512MB memory cards to watch, but I haven't tried.
No, it doesn't replace reading. But it's a nice diversion, and I think it well worth the prioce.
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:5, Informative)
The Nintendo DS has the most addictive games out there (Super Mario 64 DS is pretty awesome, if you like that type of game. However, I don't care for Metroid at all. It's nice enough, but it's a pretty boring game). The touch screen is a stroke of genius, because it gives you the combination of a wonderful analog "stick" (via the thumb stylus) and an ordinary touch screen/stylus combo.
Sony PSP has a wonderful and absolutely beautiful screen, no doubt, and I really like the size of it. It's got a decent MP3 player, a good photo viewer, but the speaker is not all that good. The sound output is much inferior to Nintendo DS and GBA SP, which is a bit odd. It doesn't have a lot of games released for it yet, but if you like racing games and card games/puzzles, you're in for a treat.
I wouldn't recommend either one above the other. They're both great consoles.
PSP sound (Score:2)
If you're out in public, you should be using headphones, anyway, not subjecting people to your noise, so the sound issue is probably negated that way. And if you're at home, you should probably be watching your video on your normal video equipment with decent audio. Sure, there are likely to be exceptions, but I'd expect that is the normal scenario, so I wouldn't get too worked up about it
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
I agree, though -- Sony is too evil to reward. Besides, the battery life sucks anyway...
By the way, as far as the screen scratching goes, they make those stick-on screen protectors for the Palm, and you should be able to cut them to fit on the Nintendo DS.
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
dual tiny screens on the DS vs big screen on PSP (Score:2)
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:3, Interesting)
This is just a light opinion post...
My brother bought a Nintendo DS the day it came out. I've had a lot of opportunities to play it including a flight to Switzerland and 2 round trip train rides to Boston (4 hours each way).
The battery life was pretty good and it felt really solid. However it was hard getting used to the "thumb" attachment which lets you use the touchpad for directional-control instead of the directio
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:3, Informative)
I bought a 512MB GBA Flash Advance cartridge from http://www.easybuy2000.com/ [easybuy2000.com] so I can load the emulators from http://www.zophar.net/consoles/gameboy.html [zophar.net] and play classic gaming on the go. The 512MB card holds every NES game I own, plus a few of my GBA cartridges. This makes it very easy to travel, its an all in one unit. No loose games to loose.
I couple that with a PDA screen protector o
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
There is a 3rd-party add-on for Game Boy Advance that allows you to store and play movies. You encode the movies in the player's format yourself, so you don't have to worry about only getting to watch the few movies that come out in Sony's format. Just rip your Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVDs and watch them on the GBA.
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
If you really need something now t
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:2)
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:5, Informative)
I've got the PSP and I have friends with the DS, so I'll chime in.
The DS came off pretty lackluster to me, with cutesy games that require you to scribble. My friends who own the DS raved about games like Yoshi's Touch & Go, which requires you to draw clouds around baby Mario to keep him safe, and draw clouds for Yoshi to walk on. If you're into game franchises from your youth (like the Mario games, Kirby, Metroid, Zelda, etc.), the DS is the way to go. Not only will you get the (goofy!) new titles, you can play all the GBA carts of games in these series.
The PSP, since it doesn't get grandfathered into all the old-school games / franchises, seems a little less awesome at the onset. However, I can assure you that it makes up for its current lack of games and higher price with absolutely stunning visuals. Practical performance of the PSP is roughly the same as a Dreamcast right now -- Imagine the same quality of rendering, but at abount half the pixel count (480×278 vs. 640×480) on a VERY, VERY sharp display. Performance should improve as the system matures. In contrast, the DS's visuals are not even as good as a Nintendo 64 (think closer to original PlayStation). It can't even render 3D to both of its screens at one time!! (Technically, it can, but it can only do so at 15FPS, or by using a software renderer for the 2nd screen)
On to the games... While the PSP is in dire need of some platform games and RPG's in the states, it does have several winners. Wipeout Pure is stunning. Lumines can be more addictive than crack. Grand Theft Auto, while not my thing, is on its way. There are even several FPS's slated for later release that look good. If you can read Japanese, several good RPG's are available, including an old fave of mine, "Tales of Eternia". US releases of the RPG's may or may not happen, but are probably at least 6 months away. There is a FFVII-related RPG due to come out, though.
Almost approaching RPG status, Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade was kind of the loser of the games I've bought so far. It seems forced, cheesy, and the gameplay is good but nothing to write home about. It's playable, but I get annoyed at the grotesque pictures that show during the long, long load times. Which brings me to another issue.
Having the games on UMD means that you'll actually have to wait for things to load on the PSP, depending on the game. Tales of Eternia doesn't have any noticable load times, so from a purely technical standpoint, we know it can be done. Lumines doesn't seem to need that much data, and also doesn't lag. But, games with huge maps (Wipeout Pure) have long load times for new levels, and Untold Legends has actually frozen for 3-5 seconds to await UMD data during gameplay.
Pluses and minuses tallied, the PSP was a clear choice for me. Being able to sleep the system with a paused game and resume hours or even days later is hugely convenient. I bought a 512MB memory stick ($70 or so online), and it will hold a full-length feature film, or 3 medium-high quality 1-hour TV shows. You can find lots of software packages to sync up and convert movies, music, photos, etc. I use NullRiver's PSPWare, and it has made the PSP my favorite movie player (4.3" screen @ 1ft ~= 43" screen @ 10ft, in my perception, and it doesn't heat up like a laptop does). Drag 'n Drop a DivX Movie or a ripped VOB, wait an hour or so, viola!
Bottom line: The PSP does have a more mature, more polished feel. While I'm sure some games will eventually be as juvenile as the ones on the Nintendo DS, the technical merits of the PSP make it more capable of engaging games, and the ability to sleep the system mid-game makes it more convenient overall. With a few good RPG's, Sidescrollers, and a platform game or two (ala Ratchet & Clank, or Jak & Dexter) it would hop, skip, and jump all over the DS.
Jasin NataelRe:Mobile Gaming (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mobile Gaming (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not the distinction I'm drawing. A game that requires you to whip through hairpin turns in an airship, or fight through a dungeon of monsters and solve difficult puzzles just seems a little more mature than one where you are required to draw basic shapes around a falling baby, or pull boogers out of someone's nose with a stylus. The kind of games I've seen on DS are not just basic, they're pedestrian and gimmicky, and most lack the substance required to compensate.
I agree that most "mature" games
hmm (Score:4, Funny)
More about UMD disks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More about UMD disks (Score:5, Funny)
Funny how it is called "universal"
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Re:More about UMD disks (Score:2)
A bit obscure I guess.
Re:More about UMD disks (Score:4, Funny)
Every PSP can read it, how much more universal can you get?
Cool, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
This is early days, for sure, but I wonder if it will be possible to play UMD extracted games from a memory chip in the future (whenever 2GB chips are released...). Would be a bugger to copy 1+ GB to a memory chip, I guess, not to speak of the memory chip being so expensive in the first place.
Re:Cool, I guess (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cool, I guess (Score:2)
Read the thread (Score:5, Interesting)
UMD is _not_ same as mini-CD or mini-DVD! (Score:4, Informative)
So when are we going to get a Linux port? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So when are we going to get a Linux port? (Score:2)
Re:So when are we going to get a Linux port? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So when are we going to get a Linux port? (Score:2)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
As to why they don't make it open source, they really have no reason to. Why should they care if people can't make ISO copies without having to reverse engineer the hardware?
The worst assignment. (Score:4, Funny)
You: "Dammit."
Three months later, read about how you miserably failed on
Got list? (Score:3, Interesting)
- PSP UMB [engadget.com]
- N Gage [interesting-people.org]
- DVD [videohelp.com]
- Audio CD [cdfreaks.com]
- DVD Audio [cnn.com]
all have been visited by hackers
yay!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yay!!! (Score:2)
It's only a matter of time before someone creates a utility to burn UMD disks with your existing CD burner. Now to just go about getting those blank UMDs...
Uh, ISO 9660 not ISO 9669 (Score:2, Informative)
Viva la 1980s (Score:2, Interesting)
By that, I mean the idea that you should only be able to do things with your device that licensed developers have been blessed enough to be allowed to do. If you want to make your own games or software, pony up a few Gs and sign an NDA for a 'development kit'.
Minidisc, Memory Stick, UMD, Sony just doesn't get it. Why go through all the trouble to put such promising power in the palms of your hands, only to lock up its capabilities in proprietary media formats, i
Re:Viva la 1980s (Score:5, Informative)
Actually... (Score:2, Interesting)
Although the appearance of blank media is likely, it would be much more expensive to produce and sold at a higher price than a standard one, hence diminishing its appeal.
Sony might have something here.
PSO + Network Adapter = GC piracy. (Score:2, Informative)
Hate to say it but you haven't been looking very hard at all.
Phantasy Star Online and the network adapter blew the GC wide open for cracking.
They Posted the ISOs? *shakes head* (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me be clear: I am no fan of the current copyright regime, since it's at loggerheads with the fundamental nature of computers. The DMCA is an especially execrable piece of... legislation. But by publishing the ISOs to games, the people behind this reverse-engineering effort are almost immediately discrediting the value of their good work. Sony will calmly stand before a judge and say, "See? There's no academic or social or Fair Use argument here. Upon successfully bypassing our security regime, the very first thing these criminals did was copy and publish the games. We therefore ask for a permanent injunction."
Posting the ISOs was completely unnecessary. Now that the discs are (apparently) readable, anybody interested in reverse-engineering the games themselves could just as easily bought their own copy and worked from that.
I expect this to end poorly...
Schwab
Re:They Posted the ISOs? *shakes head* (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, that was their (sole) intent all along. Pretending that these people don't exist, or are few and far between, isn't going to make it so.
Re:They Posted the ISOs? *shakes head* (Score:5, Informative)
So it's not hard to understand why they released the actual games.
They can already boot homebrew code from memstick (Score:3, Interesting)
Elf to PBP convertor v0.3 - homebrew now possible!
Internal Reality have released Elf to PBP convertor which is a program that allows you to convert a ELF file compiled for the PSP and convert it into a PBP file which is runnable on a PSP via the memory stick. This means that homebrew is now possible but there is one limitation to this which is you will need a Japanese v1.00 firmware to run the converted file, a v1.50 Japanese PSP or US PSP (any version) will not work.
If you are a developer and are lucky enough to have a v1.00 Japanese PSP then visit the homepage at http://www.internalreality.com/ [internalreality.com] for more information. You can discuss this news on the forum post here started by gbafan.
http://emuholic.emuboards.com/modules.php?name=Ne
Just curious and wondering: (Score:2)
Or am I missing something?
cheers!
RS
Special hardware can only go so far (Score:3, Informative)
It's like the Dreamcast's GD-ROMs. Sure you couldn't just go and use a regular CD-ROM drive to read the high density area, but that doesn't stop anyone from writing an (unlicensed) program for the Dreamcast that uses the system's CD reader to read and copy that information.
A bit of a rant on UMD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Here they have a device which for most users will ancillary to their home or laptop DVD player. So people would buy these things as travelling movies.
I assumed the movies would be in the $8-14 dollar range.
Nope. Full price, and in most cases *more* than the DVD.
Now, I'm not a marketing expert, but if I were sony, I'd drop the price to $8 for UMD movies, I'd throw them into the box along with the DVD ("Buy the DVD and get the UMD for free!!!"). Get the format established.
Nobody will buy UMD's at $23, yet that's the price. And if nobody will buy them, Sony can't get the format established. Which means nobody will commit to the format.
I guess they're just too smart for me over at Sony marketing.
Re:A bit of a rant on UMD's (Score:4, Interesting)
A typical full-length movie with H.264 video encoding and stereo sound will fit on a 512MB CompactFlash-type card easily. Using plain old ROM in them instead of Flash memory would bring the sale price down, and be cheaper to manufacture.
Too late now, I guess.
Re:A bit of a rant on UMD's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A bit of a rant on UMD's (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that they are too stiffly priced. Some UMD movies are decently priced but even those should be cheaper.
To me, the convenience of portability doesn't balance out the lower resolution (little better than VCD), fewer features and the complete inability to display them on a screen other than a PSP's is pretty limiting.
UMD movies (Score:3, Interesting)
Most DVDs here retail for about $20 or slightly more. It would be foolhardy to market the UMD versions of these movies for more than the DVD version, considering that DVD gives you extra bonus features as well as higher resolution. (This, despite Sony's claim on the UMD mo
Great! (Score:2, Insightful)
But really, can we decide on one format, instead of pumping out a new format for every single device?
So how long until (Score:2)
Re:Oh good! (Score:2)
Granted I abandoned religion years ago... I don't remember such a line in the Bible, the Quran, Torrah, Book of Mormon or any other for that matter... any chance you could point me to that passage?
duh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:duh (Score:2)
Re:Oh good! (Score:2)
I think it comes from the fact that the LORD wants followers to share. Read More... [slashdot.org]
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Yeah, but it also has those memory sticks, which you can write to. And now that they've figured out how to get the games *off* the UMDs, they can put them on the memory sticks. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how (modchip?) to boot games off the memory stick.
Of course the memory sticks are way more expensive than the games and Sony probably makes more money off of them than the games, but that's neither here nor there.
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Personally, having to buy my fav movies AGAIN so i can watch them on the PsP? Sony must be smoking crack.
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
But if you can fit one game on to one memory stick, and also have a computer to save a collection of games to, you can always rewrite (quite a few times) to the memory stick. Then you are only limited in the number of games you can play on a single trip away from your computer.
Re:Still can't download games (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Are you talking about standard 3" miniCD/miniDVDs? Those are fairly widely available, no? Or are the PSP disks different?
-Em
Re:Still can't download games (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still can't download games (Score:2)
Remember that (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, it certainly won't be legal to do so.
Re:Emus! (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like nonsense to me. I don't see why Sony would see any harm in playing around with the included web browser. Kiddies who go around creating portals for it and touting as a "hack" need to settle down.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:3, Insightful)
That was totally unnecessary, and moves from hacking into piracy. Ethical arguments about piracy aside, it would have been cooler to let the first script kiddie who figures out your crack upload warez.
Re:Not useful for piracy (Score:4, Informative)
1. Crack the PSP's bootloader.
2. Port Linux to the PSP.
3. Write a PSP execution enviroment for Linux.
4. Use a loopback device to mount the image file as a virtual drive.