Peer-to-Peer downloading on PS3?

At the moment, people downloading videos, games and other content from the PlayStation Store do so using a direct connection to the servers at Sony. Ultimately, this means downloads can be on the slow side and can take an awful long time to complete (and that’s before the installation).

However, some news inside Gran Turismo 5 Prologue reveals that this might be about to change.

The other day, GT5 Prologue received a hefty update which improved online play, added new music and backgrounds for the menu screens, fiddled with the handling model a little, sped up download times for updates and launched the video-on-demand Gran Turismo TV service.

GTTV bundles together automotive documentaries on the world of cars (featuring insights into development of cars and tours of factories, etc) as well as motorsport from Japan and episodes of TV shows such as the Japanese motoring show Best Motoring and the UK programme Top Gear. Some content is free, but the commercial content retails for 69p/99¢ for a 2 week rental period.

Currently, the downloads are performed with a direct link to Sony’s PlayStation Network servers, meaning videos are downloaded using a direct HTTP connection. This means that downloads are nippy when nobody else is using them, but otherwise they chug along at a pedestrian pace. After the recent update download speeds have been improved (and background downloading is supported from inside the game as you play; GT5P is one of the first games to support this feature) but Sony and Polyphony plan to take this a step further, as far as I can see.

Read the whole article @ Sarcastic Gamer

Get a Free PS3! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the hassles of earning enough to pay for it for you can get it the simple way .... straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free PS3!

Blu-ray in the PS3 - When Is Sony's Credit Due?

When you go against the grain because you feel you’re right, it can be an amazing feeling when everyone acknowledges your foresight and perseverance. To have a plan and stick to it even in the fact of likely failure can be considered confidence or foolhardiness; with the distinction being made once the final outcome has been determined. We seem to be one step closer to such a distinction with respect to the Playstation 3.

One major multi-pronged criticism of the Playstation 3 has been it’s forced inclusion of Blu-ray technology. I use the term “Blu-ray technology” because I think it’s very important to distinguish the Xbox 360’s optional support of HD-DVD movie playback from the Playstation 3’s mandatory support of both Blu-ray movie playback and BD-ROM storage for games.

The inclusion of Blu-ray on the Playstation 3 was responsible (in part) for: a higher price, slower disc reading speeds than DVD, limited availability early on due to a shortage of blue laser diodes, and causing the standalone Blu-ray player market to reach the market artificially late by hogging all the limited availability blue laser diodes in the first months after launch for Sony’s flagship Blu-ray player, the Playstation 3. When you add in the fact that early Blu-ray movies (still encoded in MPEG-2) looked worse than their VC-1 encoded HD-DVD counterparts and that the Blu-ray spec was outmatched feature-wise to HD-DVD, it would seem to have beeen easy money betting against Blu-ray.

Read the whole article @ Sarcastic Gamer

Get a Free Playstation 3! Yes, that is correct! Stay away from the hassles of waiting in long lineups for you can get it the simple way .... straight to your doorstep! Free! Interested? Then find out how to get a Free PS3!