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Archive for category Gaming

Jailbreak PS3 v3.55 (PlayStation 3)

Jan 9

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment


In September there was a major advance in terms of “exploiting” the PlayStation 3. Up until then, hacking the PS3 seemed near impossible. There were of course some who claimed they had compromised the popular gaming system, but nothing was ever released. That was of course until GeoHot announced in September that he had Jailbroken the PS3.

A few days ago, GeoHot released a video of a Jailbroken PS3 running a homebrew application. Today, the guide on how to Jailbreak your PS3 is here:

Jailbreak your PS3 (v3.55)

What you Need:
  1. USB Stick / Drive
  2. Jailbreak File

Jailbreaking PS3:

  1. Download the Jailbreak File
  2. Create a ‘PS3′ folder on the USB Stick
  3. Create another folder inside the ‘PS3′ Folder called ‘UPDATE’
  4. Unzip the  ‘Jailbreak.zip’
  5. Copy the PS3UPDAT.PUP to the UPDATE directory that you just created on the USB stick
  6. Plug USB in PS3 and go to your PS3 System Settings
  7. Choose System Update and Update via Storage Device
  8. IT will ask for v3.55 Update press OK
  9. Install the Jailbreak Update.
  10. After less than a minute your PS3 will Update then shut down
  11. Power up your PS3 by clicking the power on your PS3 (do not start with PS3 Controller)
  12. Your PS3 should now be fully Jailbroken
Testing
  1. Copy http://geohot.com/test.pkg into the root of your USB stick
  2. Connect your USB to your PS3
  3. Navigate to the Game Tab
  4. Choose Install Package Files
  5. Select Test.pkg
  6. This is a splash screen test which proves your PS3 can now run Homebrew.

Here’s a video of it in action:

I’d expect to see a major firmware update by Sony in the next day or so as they seem to act on any potential security holes like this pretty quickly!

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New PlayStation Motion Controller Demo

Jun 3

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment

When Nintendo released the most innovative controller the gaming world had ever seen back in 2006, Sony said that motion controllers were just a fad.

Obviously due to the phenomenal success of the Nintendo Wii, Sony have decided to released a prototype of their next generation motion controller, aptly named the PlayStation Motion Controller. The PlayStation Motion Controller is due to be released as a peripheral to the PS3 and isn’t planned solely to be released with a new console. It’s due to be released in 2010. Here’s the demo video of the controller in action.

Of course, Nintendo are due to release an add on for their Wii controller that will make it more sensitive later this month.

In the meantime, Microsoft who also claimed the Nintendo Wii was a fad, have been working hard on the so called “Project Natal” controller for the XBOX 360.

So far it looks “way out there”, maybe they are just using it to sow up all the patents before someone else does!

Here’s their demo video for Project Natal:

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Download and Install Themes to your PS3

Jan 30

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming

Sony PlayStation 3. Many electronic goods are ...
Image via Wikipedia

Another nice cool feature of the PS3 is the ability to customise the look os the user interface with theming.

However, the annoyting part is that downloading these themes from either the PS3 Store or other websites can take quite sometime as a lot of them are in the region of 70MBs or more. It doesn’t allow the option of downloading these themes in the backgroud.

So what can you do you ask?

Well if you have an external usb HDD, you could install them from here.

Firstly go to your favourtie PS3 theme websites and download them to your hard drive. Here are a few to get started:

www.ps3-themes.com
www.allps3themes.com
www.psu.com

In order for your PS3 to recognise these files when you have connected your hard drive, you will need to set up a particular directory structure on your external hard drive. Here’s what you need to do.

Create a folder called “PS3″, within this folder create another called “THEME”. Copy your downloaded files to these folders and connect your drive to your playstation.

From within the playstation3, go to System Settings and choose Theme Settings from the menu. In here, choose install. You should see your connected USB hard drive. Choose the theme you want to install and voila!

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Connecting an external hard drive to the PS3 (PlayStation 3)

Jan 8

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment

PlayStation 3 (20GB)
Image by Nick Slide via Flickr

Ever since I got my hands on the PS3 at Christmas, I’ve been spending most of my spare time trying to set it up as my main media centre at home. Being able to use my PS3 as a blu-ray player, a DVD player and of course being access to all my digital media without having to connect my PC to it, was the ideal situation. The idea would be that I’d just connect up my external USB hard drive and go for it. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be as straight forward as I had hoped.

One of the most inconvenient issues with the PS3 is the lack of support for other disc formats. When connecting an external hard drive, it can only be formatted as FAT32. So what you might say? Well it’s absolutely pointless – that’s what.

FAT32 doesn’t support files over 4 GB, so you can’t put files larger than that on the drive and access it through the PlayStation. So let’s say you have ripped your favourite Blu-ray disc to your external hard drive (for backup of course), you won’t be able to store it on an external device as the file size is likely to be a good bit greater than 4 GB. That means each time you want to watch a Blue-ray movie, you will have to get up out of your chair and insert the disc…. how inconvenient.

There is of course the option of streaming the files with TVersity as mentioned in a previous post, but since I haven’t got a spare computer, I have to turn on my laptop each time, what I’d really like is just to be able to switch on the PS3 that has the USB drive attached and do nothing else.

And before anyone else tries to tell me that the PS3 supports ext2 and ext3, yes it does, but only on the internal hard drive. It doesn’t work with the External one as I’ve tried many things for this.

So anyway, let’s say you do want to connect your external USB hard drive to your PS3, here’s what you do….

  1. Ensure your hard drive is formatted to FAT32. If you have a large hard drive, you won’t be able to use Windows to format it, so use this program : http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm
  2. Create folders similar to the PS3 system on the USB hard drive e.g.;
    “Picture” (not Photo), “Music”, “Video” and “Game”
  3. Connect your USB drive to the PlayStation and voila!

I hope this saves someone the time I wasted trying many different options!

To Sony – it’s time you started supporting ext3 or NTFS formatted external hard drives on the PlayStation 3.

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Stream music, videos, YouTube and pictures to your PS3 with TVersity

Dec 31

Posted by Tom Doyle in Gaming, Technology & Home Entertainment

Official logo of the PlayStation Network
Image via Wikipedia

This year, my ultimate Christmas present was a Blu-ray player. However, with the average price of a decent Blu-Ray player being around €300, I thought it might as well get a bit more bang for my book and go for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) which cost only €360 (from play.com).

I had loads of plans on what I’d do with it when I got it. I really wanted the new PS3 to become my media centre, where I could utilise all of the many media files I have on my computer. My first plan of attack was to do the most nerdy thing and install Linux on the PlayStation. After I did this, I realised that it was a pretty poor way of doing things as it runs quite slow.

What I really needed was something simple that could play all the files I have on my computer. After much searching I found a great little program called TVersity.

TVersity is a free program that acts as a media server and can be easily accessed from your PlayStation 3. The beauty of this software package is that if the file you want to play from your computer is not supported by the PS3 natively, TVersity will convert and stream it to the PlayStation in a supported format. I tested streaming an 8gb MKV file over my local wireless network and it worked seamlessly.

Not only can you stream your local files, you can also set up RSS feeds such as YouTube for example, and access them from your PlayStation with ease.

If you, like me, needs something to get use out of their HD TV, download TVersity, hook it up with your PlayStation and enjoy the fun!

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