Sony of America has announced that its latest PSP handheld system upgrade has been
made available online, patching the PlayStation Portable's operating system to version 2.0, patching a number of 'security holes' which allowed unauthorizing executables to be run, and officially opening up Internet browsing for PSP owners.
Apart from the major upgrade of the ability to use a built-in Web browser on the PSP using wireless access points, a feature that was only previously available by 'hacking' in-game browsers for other games or downloading the Japanese version of the 2.0 upgrade, the PSP upgrade also includes a number of extra features.
In particular, PSP owners can now send and receive images wireless using the PSP's 'ad-hoc' mode, and also set any currently displayed image as wallpaper for the handheld - TIFF, GIF, PNG and BMP have been added as viewable image formats. Additional video formats have also been added, including MP4 (AVC), and a 4:3 screen mode has been added for Memory Stick-displayed media.
Finally, audio tweaks for the upgrade include the ability to transfer Sony's proprietary ATRAC3 plus music format to a Memory Stick PRO Duo, and importantly, the unprotected version of the iTunes-compatible AAC format has been added to the compatibility list, as well as the WAV format.
