Next month marks the launch of LocationFreeTV service in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This will allow PSP users to receive television programs transmitted from the home and across the web. You can now play your own stored media streamed over a network from a LocationFree base station to anywhere in the world where you have network access.

The LPTV support is included in the recently announced PSP 2.70 firmware. The upgrade, which is scheduled to be posted on the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe website on May 25, also adds podcast and RSS support, and the ability to handle AAC and WMA music files.

Sony's LF-PK1, the unit which streams TV, DVD and other content from AV devices out onto the Web will be made available to consumers in Europe. The unit comes with software for the PSP and PCs. Mac users need not feel left behind because Sony's licensed the technology to software developer Kaga to port the code to Mac OS X. The software is also expected to be ported to Windows Mobile and other mobile device operating systems.

Sony announced in January that it will offer a software development kit to allow programmers to create LFTV-compatible applications on a variety of platforms.

The LF-PK1 is already available in the US for $350 (£196/281 Euro), but Sony has yet to announce the official price of the unit in Europe.