For today! We just got word from badrix that the Playstation Portable 3.00 Firmware Manual has been posted up on Sony's site. The manual details some of the mundane details for your typical firmware update, however there are a few hot topics in there which demand attention. I'll tell you right off that there was no information in their updated manual regarding the PSP supporting homebrew with firmware 3.00, and this was a rather large disappointment. On the other hand, the few additions that were made were helpful, one might even say overdue, but these added pleasures were still bitter sweet.

Remote Play - Remote play is a new feature in Firmware 3.00 that allows you to remotely control your PlayStation 3 from your PSP. This also includes the display of PS3 content on the PSP. "You can display a PLAYSTATION®3 system screen on a PSP™ system and play content that is on the PS3™ system. To use this feature, you must adjust the necessary settings on the PSP™ system and the PS3™ system." Using this new mode of playback, one can control the Photo, Music, Video, and Internet Browser features of the PlayStation 3 from a remote location via their Playstation Portable.

Video Compatibility - In this updated version of the Playstation Portable firmware, you are also able to play a few new video formats. The Motion JPEG format (M-JPEG), is an "informal name for multimedia formats where each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is separately compressed as a JPEG image" (Wikipedia). The PlayStation Portable plays both the Linear PCM and the μ-Law versions of the Motion JPEG video format. In addition, you will now be able to access the Camera (functionality) from the photo option menus, for quicker easier access when taking photos or video. Another nifty function is the ability to finally turn off Auto Play for inserted UMD Discs via UMD Auto Boot. (Thanks zerojay)

PlayStation Games - Here's the big tip you've been waiting for. Finally, Sony is going to drop their highly anticipated PlayStation One emulator onto the PSP. From the manual however, there seems to be a unavoidable catch. If you don't have a PS3, your not going to be enjoying PlayStation One games emulating on Sony's PlayStation One emulator for PSP anytime soon. From the manual it states that you must connect to the Playstation Online store with your PSP connected to the PlayStation 3 in order to download and play the games. In addition, they mention that you can in fact share the games, but you must activate the other system in the Friends menu as a PS3 Network Account.

Now to top it all off right before posting this, I came across a tip submitted by Jordan. Which led me to a post made by 0okm and from the looks of things, it would appear the PlayStation Portable 3.00 Firmware will be out soon - as soon as Today! just a few days, on November 22 to be exact, according to Sony Asia's Managing Director Tetsuhiko Yasuda. Remember, Sony didn't mention anything about homebrew this time around either, so make sure you are aware that the current methods for playing unofficial games will probably not work. No matter the consequences it would appear that if your looking to get into some PlayStation One gaming on the PSP, for now, you know what you gotta do...

Update: Just got wind that PSP 3.00 Firmware is out now! We have obtained the file and are uploading it as you read. If you were thinking about updating, check your network settings, reports have come in it is up and ready via network update as well. With the Japanese 3.00 firmware update finally out on the net, we can only assume it will appear in stores on the shelf very soon as well.

Download: [ PSP 3.00 Firmware Update (jpn) ]

When PSP-Vault tooled with the video functions of Sony's Firmware 2.80 for the PSP, finding that its video playbacks were limited to a rather smallish 320x240 pix rather than the 480x272 the screen can handle, they missed out on something. zmcnulty found out just recently that 2.80 CAN play 480x272 vids without the need of homebrew. If the vid was encoded in Motion JPEG, that is.

Motion JPEG is a video made up of a flipbook of JPEG stills - literally. Many digicams still use Motion JPEG as their video capture format since, well, the camera's set to cap JPEG stills anyway. There is a big disadvantage to using Motion JPEG formats, however: they're huge. By way of example, zmcnulty converted a 40-second, 2MB XviD file into Motion JPEG, and it ended up taking 20MB. Guess we'll be needing more Memory Sticks...

And there's one other thing zmcnulty's wondering about: Why didn't Sony publicize this? He says,

That's an excellent question, and one I'm struggling with myself. Perhaps the same reason many speculate they have disabled the playback of 480 x 272 video in MPEG-4 or AVC/H.264: they don't want to hurt sales of UMD-Video.

Of course, there are reasons why some people won't update to 2.80+...