gimmie. Is it sad that I've never watched any of my full series downloads of Dexter and Battlestar Galactica in anticipation that this would happen?

Cue the Microsoft Fanboy rants now!

what does that mean for all all my legal DIVX movies that may be 3.11 or earlier? gosh... oh well... about time

FINALLY PS3 team does something right...now how many games will be screwed up because of the firmware update? and a 2GB limit on files? can anyone confirm if there is a limit on the 360? I hope this means things are looking up for the PS3, I have been wanting an excuse to buy one and every time I get almost ready they go and screw something up and I have to retaliate to bashing the "potential" the system has. On another note...isn't there a 2.0 profile? how is 1.1 the "Final" standard?

yay!

Cue the guys that cue the format war guys now!

ahhh added no xvid support yet since my last post...well that sucks. I guess this will be a banner year for video converter programs.

Start format war rant/
Picture in Picture. My $99 HD-DVD player had that from the get go.
Blu-Ray 2.0 will require internet connectivity - yet another feature that HD-DVD has madated since the beginning.
How will early BR adopters feel when they learn that they can not access the special features on their new discs? Will they blame the hardware or the software?
/End Rant

The 360 limit on files is 4gb, but I think it's actually higher for WMV. The lack of support for XviD is surprising - I thought XviD produced the same output as DivX (MPEG-4 ASP)?

Still, that's a really nice firmware update.

This is an awesome update, could you guys go ahead and tell me if I won the Paint yourself blue PS3 contest so I can know whether or not to get excited?

wtf is up with this 2 GB limit?

@rexplex: I'd think they might feel about the same as those HD-DVD early adopters (I jumped in on both formats from the get-go) will feel when they find out their HD-DVD player doesn't playback those 51Gb discs. :)

What's the point of Divx w/o Xvid...Now I'll have to bring out the philip divx player(going through closet searching & grunting)

I hope the PS3 development idiots explain this crap. The 2GB limit and lack of xvid is outrageous.

Sony's talking all sorts of new features and reving up their marketing machine but they can't even get simple stuff like this implimented.

Common. Seriously.

The XBOX implementation of DIVX was executed almost perfectly. Honestly, I expected a lot more from Sony. This almost makes me wonder if they are planning to release their own proprietary variation of hard drive based video. Obviously they don't wasn't to encourage the copying of BR discs hence the file size limit.

360 Doesnt recognize NTFS external hard drives, only FAT32. The biggest any file can be on a FAT32 partition is 4GB.

You can get around the limitation 2 ways.

1. Format your external hard drive in HFS+ format using a program like MacDrive.(HFS+ is the Mac file format and there is no 4GB limitation on files)

2.Stream it from a shared folder which has Windows Media Player 11 installed.

Hopefully PS3 might be able to read files > 2GB off a HFS+ external hard drive?

@meekzzz:

from my research it will not read them from external sources...but until we upgrade and test no one can be sure.

Yeah, div x without x-vid, although nice, is just a bit pointless.

Hopefully that will be fixed later though.

@prodigal_son: It seems that there are a lot of features of the PS3 that will "hopefully be fixed later."

Isn't Sony some sort of electronics superpower? Can't they just hire a bunch of developers and some good project managers to get all this "fixed later" crap done?

It's not only disappointing, its frustrating as hell.

@AGROS: legal divx movies. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. good one!

im more interested in the blu ray update than the divx support, actually. i've already got a jillion other ways to play divx/xvid (including the 360).

@firesign: This only adds PIP not web content since web content is BD 2.0 correct?

I hope this fixes the Gran Turismo 4 issue with the 80GB version... I really miss that game. Since 2.00, GT4 has been inoperable : (

Just played me up some over 2GB DIVX movies on the 360 last night. I will try the PS3 tonight to see what happens.
@rexplex: hd-dvd for the win

@rexplex: Uhhhh... You know the PS3 CAN access the internet right? Which is what this article is about...

And for everyone else bitching about the 2gb limit.. Do any of you actually put files that large on your systems? If so, why? It took me 10 minutes to setup TvVersity on my computer, as a media server, and had me streaming whatever file format I wanted straight to the PS3 (it actually converts it on the fly). You can watch whatever you want despite file format.

@usaplanb: Lets hope 5 is better that that lame demo you download.
In the mean time I will suggest PGR4 and Forza 2 for the 360 both are excellent. And the graphics on PGR4 will blow your mind. Both have been available for some time and you can play them today.
Just bitching so Sony gets off their ass and does something.

@Neight: good point. I didn't even think about putting movies one the boxes. I stream for a HP windows home server. Witch I will add is another awesome product from Microsoft. Did I just say that? Now I sound like a fanboy. Trust me I'm not, I take things for what they are. No FUD just my real world opinions on products I have actually used.

The 2 GB limit is because DivX files are just AVI files, and AVI files don't support > 2 GB files as the index fits in 32 bits.

_If_ the XBox supports bigger DivX files, those would actually be ODML files that not every AVI handling player might be able to read.

This doesn't mean you can't have huge files, it just means you won't be able to play them with this particular player. Use VirtualDub or mencoder to split it...

@Neight:
BD profile 2.0 adds Internet enabled features...this will only bring them up to BD 1.1...so NO Internet enabled features on BD 2.0 discs.

HD-DVD - serving cheap walmart bastards

Not everything I wanted but I'll take it. Lets hope they keep the updates comming as often as they can. This can only get better.

Remember the ps3 is becoming divx 'certified' not enabled so they are probably going to add xvid at a later time.

what! no XviD? all my shows are in XviD, shame on you sony.... why cant it just add ALL codecs... how hard can that be?

maybe xvid will the Sony's special present for all of us in the USofA. I'll keep my finger cross.

Good news on BluRay 1.1 but a 2GB file limit and No XviD is a major disappointment. 90% of my DivX stuff is XviD. Xbox wins here.

I was really hoping for a firmware update to pass DTS-MA and DoblyTrueHD for that matter, via bitstream to my receiver. I really think that would put an end to the BluRay vs. HDDVD war. Then again, I am Legend going exlusively to BluRay or HD DVD might help do that as well.

I very much doubt that XviDs will play fine regardless of what the source says. At worst case, you'll just have to change the FourCC tag to fool the player into believing that it's a DivX file.

If this is the case, the UPnP media servers will be able to fake the information so that the files are just read as DivX without issue.

Damn my grammar. My first sentence is supposed to imply that I think XviD files will playback fine.

OK, so that page is down, but this one is still up.

However, there's no mention of Xvid anywhere, positive or negative. AFAICT, only Giz and Kotaku are claiming that Xvid won't be supported - but why? Based on "hearsay"?

Oh well, tomorrow we'll find out. Maybe.

@Daz_Genetic: Well that didn't happen now did it?

Rexplex:
Start format war rant/
Your $99 HD-DVD player didn't have 1080p from the get-go.
How will early HD-DVD adopters feel when they learn that they can not play 1080p on ANY discs?
/End Rant

can someone explain why it is so hard to have earlier divx encodes? 360 had a similar limit, and i don't understand why the software can't be written to handle it all. also, i really hope they add xvid. still progress is progess.

I have downloaded and installed v2.10 and can confirm the PS3 does in fact play both DivX and Xvid files.

Since both are only MPEG-4 ASP files, they are both recognised by the PS3 as DivX. As you will know, DivX and Xvid are only the codecs that are used to create MPEG-4 ASP files...

You can all rest easy.

Anyone tried a file larger than 2gb say a wmv hd or divx hd to see if it works

@devonuto: Some Xvid files work and some don't. So yeah.. still needs proper Xvid support.

I downloaded and installed 2.10 and now cant play any of my playstation 2 games. I was so happy about being able to play my DivX movies thrue my playstation 3. But when a friend called and wanted to play 2k8 the screen was just black and couldnt do anything until I restarted from the back. I am now putting the system on from scratch and it takes three hours to do hope people have better luck.

@Rexplex

"Blu-Ray 2.0 will require internet connectivity - yet another feature that HD-DVD has madated since the beginning."

Then why doesn't the 360 HD DVD player support it?