PS3 owners eligible for cash refund after ‘Other OS’ removal?

Admit it, most of you don’t use the “Other OS” option on your PS3, do you? That’s ok, we don’t either, at least not regularly. Nevertheless, it’s irksome, nay, vexing that Sony had the audacity to pull it; that feature was part of the deal bargained when we purchased the unit after all. Forum moderator, “lapetus,” over at NeoGAF decided to take on the man by invoking European directive 1999/44/EC, a consumer protection law that requires goods to be “fit for the purpose which the consumer requires them and which was made known to the seller at the time of purchase.” That little tactic earned lapetus a refund of £84.00 from Amazon without physically returning the console even though his (?) PS3 was well out of warranty. Oh just you never mind that Sony’s user agreement claims the ability to revise settings and features without limitation to, “prevent access to unauthorized or pirated content, or use of unauthorized hardware or software in connection with the PS3 system.” In other words, request your refund before installing Geohot’s hacked 3.21 firmware.

PS3 owners eligible for cash refund after ‘Other OS’ removal? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PS3 firmware 3.21 locking out more than just other operating systems?

Sony already irked a few people by removing the “install other OS” with its PS3 firmware 3.21 update, and it looks like it may have also inadvertently drawn the ire of quite a few other users. Judging from reports on the official PlayStation forums, a sizable number of PS3 users have run into an array of different problems after installing the update, which range from folks not being able to log into PSN or load a disc after the update, to users not being able to turn on their PS3 at all — some have even reported freezing during the update process. Of course, there’s also lots of users that have updated without any issues whatsoever, and the problems don’t seem to have yet drawn an official response from Sony. Let us know how things worked out for you in the comments below.

[Thanks, MeowMix]

PS3 firmware 3.21 locking out more than just other operating systems? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PS3 meets Hori LCD dock, good things happen

Hori is a company that’s no stranger to strapping LCDs to consoles and calling them portable, but for some reason we’re quite smitten with its latest monitor docking station. The HP3-87 doesn’t stray too far from the formula — it adds an 11.6-inch screen to a wraparound structure for your PS3, with stereo speakers, two headphone jacks, and composite or component input options. With a resolution of 1,366 x 768, it’s well suited to handling the 16:9 signal coming out of the do-everything console, although its 500:1 contrast ratio, 7ms response time, and 200 nits of brightness are perhaps a tiny step behind the times. On the other hand, it’s compatible with the Japan-only Torne DTV adapter and it’s officially licensed by Sony itself, so it can’t be too bad, right? All you Tokyo-ites will have until May 27 to decide, when the HP3-87 goes on sale for ¥26,040 ($276). International release plans are not yet disclosed, but if you really need the portability, you could always grab a PS3 laptop from your local online auction house. Which option will be more useful (less useless?) we leave up to you to decide.

PS3 meets Hori LCD dock, good things happen originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PS3 firmware 3.21 is out: say goodbye to ‘install other OS’

Just a tad ahead of schedules — perhaps as a macabre assurance this isn’t some April 1st joke — firmware 3.21 for the PS3 is now being seeded to anyone who tries to log onto the PlayStation Network. As far as we can tell, all the update seems to do is remove the “install other OS” option and kill access to anyone who does have another platform dual-booted. Just a friendly reminder, if you fall into that category, be sure to either backup your partition or wait for Geohot to find a workaround.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

PS3 firmware 3.21 is out: say goodbye to ‘install other OS’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Geohot advises against updating PS3, will find ‘safe way’ around losing OS support

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a PlayStation 3 firmware update coming this Thursday that’d knock out the “install other OS” option and remove any currently-installed non-PS3 platform. Our guess is it’s not going to affect the majority of owners, but the diehard users are certainly up in arms, and no one really likes losing a feature, even if it’s rarely used. Leave it to Geohot, then, to right the wrong. Arguably the reason for Sony’s reversal (see: PS3 exploit), the famed hacker has published not only a letter of sorrow at the company (unsurprising), but also a call for users not to update. Instead, he claims he will “look into a safe way of updating to retain OtherOS support” and issued a tech-savvy threat about “touching the CFW,” much to the company’s chagrin (trust us, you don’t even want to know what he’s talking about here — far too scary). We wouldn’t normally say a war’s brewing, but ol’ George Hotz has proven himself more than capable at starting something fierce.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Geohot advises against updating PS3, will find ‘safe way’ around losing OS support originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PlayStation Move bonus round: Move Party hands-on and interview with Anton Mikhailov

Alright, so you’ve seen the PlayStation Move insanity from the Engadget Show, but we’ve got a little extra treat for you. After the show we were able to play through a game of Move Party with Sony’s own Anton Mikhailov, who actually coded a lot of the tech demos we saw during the show (some of them the night before!). After getting thrashed by him in mini game competition we were able to have a quick chat with Anton where we expressed our undying love for what he does for a living, learned the difficulties (but potential gold mine) of hacking the controller for use with a PC, and found out what sort of games he’d like to see built with this technology he’s had a hand in creating. It’s not to be missed; check out both videos after the break.

Big thanks to the guys at
Gadling’s Travel Talk for the video work!

Continue reading PlayStation Move bonus round: Move Party hands-on and interview with Anton Mikhailov

PlayStation Move bonus round: Move Party hands-on and interview with Anton Mikhailov originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Engadget Show live with Nicholas Negroponte, PlayStation Move, and Joystiq’s Chris Grant

Keep your eyes tuned to this post — because at 5:00 PM ET, we’ll be starting The Engadget Show live, with Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab and OLPC Project, Dr. Richard Marks showing off Sony’s PlayStation Move, commentary from Joystiq editor Chris Grant, plus much, much, more! You seriously don’t want to miss it!

Update:
The live show is over, but don’t fret. We’ve got the full version coming soon (within a day) for download via iTunes, Zune Marketplace, and RSS feed, or you can watch the stream right here. Stay tuned, the post will be soon!

Continue reading The Engadget Show live with Nicholas Negroponte, PlayStation Move, and Joystiq’s Chris Grant

The Engadget Show live with Nicholas Negroponte, PlayStation Move, and Joystiq’s Chris Grant originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PlayStation Move controller lag detected, analyzed

PlayStation Move controller lag detected, analyzed, dismissedWhen Sony unveiled its PlayStation Move (nee Arc) controller at the GDC last week, it came along with some impressive promises: it would only cost developers 2MB of system memory (out of 256MB on offer) and it would respond to user inputs within a single frame of animation. Our own experiences with the thing felt a bit more laggy, and now Eurogamer is echoing those impressions and putting a bit of science behind them courtesy of a 60fps Kodak Zi6 camcorder. By filming the controllers and their on-screen representation, the site’s tireless statisticians calculated an actual lag (including that of the display) of 113ms — closer to 10 6.78 frames if a game is running at 60fps. Naturally much of this is thanks to the rendering of the result and not just the Move, but according to a 2008 GamaSutra test we found (linked as “More Coverage” below), the controller lag from the standard PS3 controller varies widely from game to game, with GTA IV measured at 166ms — almost 50 percent higher than seen by the Move. So, while we can’t draw too many conclusions about this single-game test from GDC, we can give a little advice: get back to beating up some underworldian goons as Kratos and don’t worry about it.

PlayStation Move controller lag detected, analyzed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PlayStation Move ad pulls no motion-controlled punches against Wii, Project Natal

Sony’s VP of Realistic Movements Kevin Butler (boy, does that guy have a large business card) is at it again, this time in a video ad for the PlayStation Move. He’s back from the future to thank us all for the success of the motion control device, and make a few jabs towards Nintendo and Microsoft for their efforts. Here’s a few choice quotes.

  • “Because real boxers don’t hit like this [flails arms exasperatingly]”
  • “It’s also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters, platformers, well, anything that doesn’t involve catching a big red ball.”
  • “C’mon, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun. What is this, third grade? Pew, pew, pew.”

Check out the futuristic — or now-eristic, rather — commercial after the break. And if you ask, sorry, we still wouldn’t bet on Kansas City in six.

Continue reading PlayStation Move ad pulls no motion-controlled punches against Wii, Project Natal

PlayStation Move ad pulls no motion-controlled punches against Wii, Project Natal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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81 Places I’d Love to See the PlayStation Move [PhotoshopContest]

Who knew that the PS Move would be so fun to stick into out-of-context situations? Because man, the results of this week’s Photoshop Contest are some of the best ever.

First Place—Patrick Barlow
Second Place—Kevin Bannon
Third Place—Kirk Dunne