Whilst Sony's last patch for the may have been purely of the anti-hacking variety, the new 2.50 upgrade adds new functionality to the system, and was launched in yesterday. The new patch adds a location free TV player to the system, a device which enables a new peripheral just launched in Japan. The location free TV base station can share TV signals wirelessly with any nearby PSP, and costs just over 32,000 Yen currently (about 290 USD, give or take). The player installed by the update works anywhere within the range of the base station, though there is no news as yet on whether the new peripheral will be made available anywhere else besides Japan.

Because we don't know if the Free TV station is even being released in or North America it is currently unclear if this will be included in downloadable 2.50 patches in these areas, nor is it clear when the upgrade will be available beyond Japan. As well as new security settings, support for Unicode text is added by the new release as well as the option to save display and text settings. You'll now also be able to save form entries made via the browser, and there's even support for copyrighted files saved to the memory stick.

Currently, the 2.50 upgrade is an optional download, but future PSP titles will require the patch to run, and will be a mandatory update on UMD's released in the future. More as we get it.

By Luke Guttridge