Andre Yoskowitz
15 Sep 2009 16:17
Ben Creasey, VidZone's head of production, has announced the update of the service, and the inclusion of a good number of improvements.
The full list of improvements, via the Europe PSN blog:
Pre-roll advertising will be shown no more than once every 15 minutes – No more adverts after every video, guaranteed!
16:9 support, true full screen display – This means that if the video is shot in widescreen, it will display in its full widescreen glory on your TV.
Virtual Keyboard is now supported in Search – Use your external or the standard PlayStation virtual keyboard to type instead of scrolling through each letter.
VidZone Search is faster and improved – Faster searching and you are now able to search for special characters (ie you can now search for P!nk etc)
Start up time is reduced – No more waiting about to get partying!
Audio volume on music videos can now be normalized – Each video will play at the same volume meaning no more volume control surfing
PlayStation Network presence now shows the music video being watched in VidZone on the XMB™ friends list – Your friends will now know what you are watching so no more secret Celine Dion video viewing sessions!
Support for PlayStation Store purchases in Download menu – Videos will link to equivelant RockBand track in the PlayStation Store with more game/product links coming soon.
Default settings are now saved – If you have turned the clicker off, it will remember it for the next time you open VidZone.
Cache has been increased – VidZone will store more of your last viewed videos on the PlayStation’s hard drive so you don’t have to stream so much data.
Help screens are available in Settings menu – Having issues? Try the new help screens to answer your questions
Settings menu has been reordered – More logical ordering of the setting menu.
VidZone was released for European PS3 users in June 2009, and has been increasing in popularity since launch.