Official Sony freebies

You might be surprised to see what free goodness has the Sony brand stamped on it. From official movie clips to game demos, there’s a lot out there that they won’t charge you a penny for.

Playstation.Com Shop � Ape Escape and Killzone demos, WipEout Pure music downloads and a whole host of other freebies await in Sony’s main downloads base.

Sony Pictures � The home of Sony’s silver screen endeavours has plenty of PSP-formatted clips and wallpapers from a great lineup of films.

PSP Connect � A huge collection of films syndicated and formatted from all over the web � comedy, horror, animations and more.

Free films, music, TV and radio

Not everything has the Sony seal of approval, of course, and the PSP plays host to a number of great websites that give your PSP some sound and vision for free.

Atom Films � Free film downloads that are a little different to what you might find on Sony Pictures. Mini-documentaries and art-like montages are just a few of the movies available to download.

PSP Playlist � A movie archive of lighter, shorter clips, as well as some game and movie trailers you might not see elsewhere.

Heavy � A YouTube-like mix of strange films, popular clips and bizarre videos of cats. Some sponsored channels fill the site with some regular features, too.

FeedYourPSP � A magazine designed especially for the PSP, with interviews, short films and other extras available to download directly from their site.

BBC Online � Still experimenting with online content, the BBC have some shows offered as podcasts including regular newscasts, Radio 4’s The Now Show and many of Radio 1’s music programming.

Virgin Radio � Virgin Xtreme pushed a number of unsigned bands in their podcast, The Edge, which you can access online, but the podcast is set to return soon too.

Gratis graphic novels and e-books

The portable, digital nature of the PSP means that you can pack a lot of images and text onto a little stick and cart it around with you. Already many budding artists and authors are converting their work and making it available for free.

NYC2123 � One of the earliest comics the came to the PSP, the dark sci-fi plot and strong visual styling of NYC2123 are spread across six issues, all free and all PSP-sized.

Komikwerk � A collection of six comics, all with different plots and artists. The comics are syndicated from the main site’s collection.

Ctrl-Alt-Del � One of the web’s bigger comics born out of the gaming scene has been especially formatted for the tinier screens, with frequent updates and more freebies from the comic on the main site.

PSP Image Sequencer � If you want to add your name to the list of PSP Comic publishers, this handy application will help get images to display and package properly on the console.

Have it for nothing homebrew

To really squeeze the most out of the PSP without paying for it, you’ll need to get into homebrew, and open up your PSP so you can run home-coded applications on it. Some Pocket Gamers will already have got into the DS Homebrew scene, and PSP homebrew is just� as rich and varied.

The downside is you need to mess about with your firmware to run homebrew, which is not to be done lightly and can impede your ability to play new games. The good bit? Most homebrew coders offer up their efforts for nothing.

WorldView � A Google Earth-like map browser, whose beta PSP version is now available online.

iPSP � Superb media management software for both Mac and Windows platforms, which help organise and update media on your PSP, as well as making running homebrew applications even easier.

ZX-81 � A prolific coder who’s written everything from a scientific calculator to a game of Mancala.

YAHP � Yet Another Homebrew Pack includes a huge collection of emulators, from full platforms such as the SNES down to individual games like Doom.

PSP Rhythm � “A complete music workstation in the palm of your hand” � a neat music-creation package with an impressive collection of features.

Webserve � Quick and easy filesharing between PSPs or your PC. There’s no security on the connection in the current build, but it’s an easy way to manage your PC with your PSP.

PSPRadio � With a dedicated team coding and supporting it, PSPRadio is well-updated and continues to support a great range of web-based radio.

SimpleAmp � Streamlined and stable music playing and management on the PSP.

Java4PSP � A co-operative project set on bringing the Java Micro Edition platform in its entirety to the PSP.

The pop culture sensation is headed to handhelds, but three years after the movie’s release.
Crave Entertainment today announced that they’ll be bringing Napolean Dynamite to handhelds (three years after the movies release). The title till debut on the Nintendo DS and PSP sometime later this year.

The game promises to bring all the idiosyncratic moments from the movie. Napolean Dynamite will feature characters such as Kip, Uncle Rico, Pedreo, Tina the llama, and of course, Napolean himself.

Napoleon Dynamite is one of the great cult classics of the past decade, said Mark Burke, senior vice president of product planning and business development at Crave Entertainment. Its one of those films that has great memorable lines and characters, and we expect that fans of the movie will really like the game.

Well just have to wait and see if Napolean Dynamite is still a commercially viable title when it�s released later this year.

The Noobz team, Team C+D, and Dark_Alex are well known names amongst PSP fans. They are the leaders of the homebrew community in many ways. They are the ones that make downgrading possible, and emulation available. These guys are the gods of cracking Sony’s code and the masters of homebrew programming. The BBC recently had a chance to sit down with these superstars in a tell-all interview. It’s really interesting to read their stories and opinions on piracy. Check it out.

Computer hackers have scored a victory in their battle against Sony and the way the company controls its PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld games console.
Sony sells its PSP with built-in software, known as firmware, which controls how the console operates.

The firmware locks many of the PSP’s capabilities, preventing enthusiasts from writing their own programs, known as homebrew, and running them on the machine.

It also disables its ability to play some films which are not bought on special Sony PSP disks.

But last month three hacker teams - Noobz, Team C+D, and a group led by PSP hacker Dark Alex - co-ordinating their efforts over the internet, found a flaw in the most recently released version of the firmware - version 3.03.

Using this flaw they devised a way to unlock all PSPs, regardless of their age or the firmware running on it.

This development has been a cause for celebration in the PSP homebrew community, but caused alarm at Sony because unlocked PSPs can be used to play pirated PSP games.

“The problem experienced here is not with homebrew applications, but with hackers who pirate commercial titles,” a Sony spokesperson said.

“Sony have never been in touch with me, so I am confident that what we are doing is legal” - Fanjita (David Court), PSP Hacker. “Piracy is illegal and we strongly oppose any acts which either aide or profit from it.”

But the hackers say piracy is not what motivates their teams to unlock the PSP.

“My aim is to enable as many people as possible to run homebrew programs,” said Fanjita, a member of the Noobz team. He added: “Everyone has the right to do what they want with their own hardware. Piracy does upset me, and because what we are doing opens the way to piracy it’s harder to justify it morally.

“But our stance on piracy is clear, and we hope to be role models. Sony have never been in touch with me, so I am confident that what we are doing is legal.”

Hackers unveiled

Fanjita - real name David Court - is very different from the popular hacker stereotype of the socially inept teenaged geek working all night in his bedroom.

A married man of 34, he is an accomplished professional programmer who writes server software for large telecommunications companies for a living. He spends an hour or two a night hacking PSP software in his Edinburgh home, and is also a martial arts enthusiast.

Dark Alex fits much more comfortably into the hacker mould.

A student from Spain, his hacker moniker derives from his real name, Alejandro, and a liking for all things gothic, he says. His interests are Japanese Manga comics and cats, but PSP hacking is his main hobby.

“I think it is up to users to make the correct decisions about how to use my software.” - Dark Alex, PSP Hacker. “It takes up a good part of my spare time, more or less what some other people may spend watching TV,” he said.

“I mainly do it because it is fun to research the internals of the operating system of a machine made by a big company. I am also against DRM (digital rights management - a type of electronic copy protection) in any of its forms, and against restrictions that make a device unable to show its true potential.”

Not just pirates

Dark Alex said that although his work makes piracy easier because it enabled PSP owners to play copied games, this was not his responsibility.

“I think it is up to users to make the correct decisions about how to use my software,” he said. “I believe in the presumption of innocence, unlike the media companies.”

There were many quite legitimate reasons why you might want to copy a game you own from its original disk, Dark Alex said.

“You can transport a number of games on a single memory stick, which is very convenient, and the games actually load faster. And most important for me, these games can actually be modified, allowing users to customise their games,” he said.

“I’ve seen great things done in this area, like people changing the music of games, or making full translations into their own language.”

Breaking the code

Whenever Sony releases a new version of its PSP firmware, the three hacker teams compete to see who can decode and examine it first.

They then collaborate to see if they can find any way of unlocking it.

This task has been made harder in recent months as Sony has introduced a new and more secure motherboard in the latest PSPs, and because Sony’s firmware has become increasingly sophisticated in response to the hackers’ efforts.

“When each new version of the PSP firmware comes out we can see that Sony are putting in countermeasures against the things we have been doing,” Court said.

In this case it turned out that a well known mistake in the way a PSP game called Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories was written provided the hackers with a suitable “exploit”.

By loading the game it was possible to get access to a restricted part of the firmware called the kernel, and an oversight on the part of Sony’s firmware writers then allowed the hackers to run a special program of their own devising.

An upgraded ‘downgrade’

This “downgraded” the PSP to an earlier version of the firmware which allows homebrew to be used.

PSP FIRMWARE HISTORY
2.00 Added a web browser, 4:3 video playback, MP4/AAC playback, and photo transfer support
2.50 Added Locationfree streaming, copyright-protected video playback, and WPA wi-fi security
2.60 Added RSS support and WMA playback
2.70 Added support for Adobe Flash in the web browser
3.00 Added Playstation network/Playstation 3 support and camera support

The drawback of this early firmware is that it won’t run the latest games, but this problem was quickly overcome by Dark Alex, who wrote his own firmware, called Dark Alex’s Open Edition, with the help of a fellow hacker known as Booster.

With this firmware installed, the PSP is completely unlocked, but also has all the features of the latest firmware.

Within days of the release of the Noobz team’s downgrader and Dark Alex’s Open Edition firmware, Sony updated its firmware, fixing the flaw which makes unlocking possible.

Anyone buying a new PSP with this firmware installed will be therefore be unable to unlock their console - at least until Noobz, Team C+D and Dark Alex and his crew find another exploit and the whole cat-and-mouse game played by Sony and the hacker teams repeats itself.

via BBC.co.uk