Contrary to some earlier rumors, which have set the release date for the long awaited Playstation 3 firmware update to April 8, Sony has decided to release the 2.20 version through its software update system. This pleasant surprise for PS3 owners means that their gaming machines will now support Blu-ray Disc (BD) Profile 2.0 capabilities, turning the game console into the world's first Blu-ray player to support the new format enhancements.

Thanks to the BD-Live, PS3 owners are now be able to experience interactive features when playing enabled Blu-ray discs, such as downloadable video content, ringtones, games, and more. Besides BD-Live, the new update labeled as 2.20 added other new features such as the ability to copy photo and music playlists from PS3 to PSP.

There were also rumors that the update would allow to copy Blu-ray movie to the Sony PSP, which, quite expectedly, are false.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing April 8 two movie titles that will include exclusive downloadable content through BD-Live. The titles are Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and The 6th Day.

Sony turned to Microsoft for a possible Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360, reports said earlier this month. Everyone is curious to know how this collaboration would materialize in terms of prices, as Sony has kept a pretty high price tag on its Blu-ray players so far.

In late February, Sony announced two new BD-Live (Profile v2.0) ready Blu-ray players, priced at $400 and $500. The BDP-S350, which will ship sometime in the summer for $400, will feature 1080p24/60 output via HDMI, one Ethernet port and decoding of 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD.

The question here is why in the world would anybody buy the BDP-S350, which has the same features as the Blu-ray-packing PlayStation 3? The only thing lacking in the PS3 is a bitstream audio output, but you can compromise if you think you get a powerful gaming console for free.

Here's a list of some of the new features that are included in the PS3 2.20 system software update:

- "Resume play" will enable PS3 system to start playing a Blu-ray disc and DVD at the point it was stopped, even if the disc had been removed.
- "Audio Output Device" will be a new Remote Play setting, enabling PSP to serve as a remote control for music played through PS3.
- PS3 system's Internet browser will be enhanced: Video files directly linked from a Web page will be able to be streamed, and the browser's view speed will be improved; in addition, [Save Target] has been added as an option under file which lets you save a file that is linked to a web page to your PS3 hard drive or storage media.
- DivX and WMV format videos that are larger than 2GB will be playable.
- "Mosquito Noise Reduction" will be added as an AV setting in the control panel of the DVD/BD player for improved movie playback.