Run 3.x firmware while retaining 1.5 homebrew

It's been a while since I've played with my PSP. Recently I got my hands on the Sony Location Free Base station and decided to try out the LF Player on the PSP. To do this I needed to upgrade my PSP's firmware, but I did not want to lose my homebrew, otherwise all of my LUA apps, and other software would stop working. I've decided to figure out how to use DevHook to emulate a new firmware, and while I was expecting a long and complicated process, it was actually really simple to do on my PSP.

This is due to the hard work of a lot of developers, and I applaud their efforts for making it to this point. A user on PSPUpdates has posted a simple tutorial detailing the process. What it does is pretty slick... You need to download 3 things. The normal PSP Update PBP, DevHook, and a script that will extract the update file and make it usable in DevHook. In less than 5 minutes I was running an emulated PSP Firmware 3.01.

I was able to get the locationfree base station streaming to the PSP after manually linking the two using Sony's Setup mode button. When the base station is streaming to the PSP, the LF LCDTV just goes black. No message is displayed to let you know what's happening and why the video signal has been lost. Apparently you can only stream to one device at a time. Pretty Lame.

The video quality to the PSP wasn't great, watchable, but not for a long period of time. The sound wasn't very good, but I think that was because the sound on my cable box was too low. I cranked the PSP to it's max volume and it was not loud and sounded very tinny.

Bottom line, the LCDTV + Sony base station works great, but the PSP player is not very useful, and the 1 stream limit needs to be increased, I'm not sure if slingbox has the same limitations, but I think I'm going to give that a shot next.

Also, you may want to take a look at PMP, which will allow you to stream media from your PC to your PSP. It works quite well, and the video quality is not bad. They have just released version 1.02 which includes even more GUI improvements and lots more. This is a much better streaming solution for your media.

Download PMP - the PSP Media Streamer/Player Solution here