PS4 Firmware 2.00 - Quick Review

It took a while until I found some spare time to check firmware 2.00 for the PlayStation4, but it was worth it!

First I'll show you two funny screenshots from my PS4:

I told you the TitleID research is important, didn't I?

NPXS20993

So yes, I could finally access the ★Debug Settings on a retail console. But no, we can not use it :)
Sony learned their lesson and removed the back-end so this is not very useful for us.
Maybe there is a way to unlock it's full potential, but I could not find it, yet.

Here I explained how to start applications by it's TitleID on PS4. This kind of information is very important and I would like to encourage everyone to try it and add your results to the public list of PS4 TitleID's.


Next on my list was to check WebKit. Sure, the stand-alone Internet Browsers WebKit was updated, but what about other applications and games?

Any application listed under the "TV & Video" menu uses a quite old WebKit.
To be more specific:

Mozilla/5.0 (PlayStation 4) AppleWebKit/531.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) SCEE/1.0 Nuanti/2.0

Worth a try for those who want 2.00 :)


Last but not least I made a ridiculous discovery. This one has to do with a memory leak which led me to super interesting data. So far I got around 15MB of compressed but clear-text script data. If you wonder if this is a lot, YES IT IS! In a readable layout this is more than 250.000 lines of code.

Currently I shared this with a hand full of trusted developers to help me mastering this amount. Once we are through it we'll post about it, so stay tuned!


Please remember this was only a quick review which took like 2 hours, surely there's still a lot to find on this firmware :)


- SKFU

Tutorial: PS4 Remote Play via ANY Android Device

Normally I do not post about work of other people but since this comes from outside of the normal PlayStation scene I think it's worth to talk about.

Remote Play Button (step 9)

1. In case you have it installed, uninstall the PlayStation®App from your device
2. Download this .apk file
1. Move the file to "/System/App/"
2. Change the permission of the .apk to RW-R-R
3. Download this .dex file
1. Move the file to "/Data/Dalvik-Cache/"
2. Change its permissions to RW-R-R
4. Download these two XML files: 
1. com.playstation.playstationcertified.xml
2. com.playstation.remoteplayident.xml
3. Move the files to "/System/etc/permissions/"
4. Change their permissions to RW-R-R
5. Download these two JAR files:
1. com.playstation.playstationcertified.jar
2. com.playstation.remoteplayident.jar
3. Move the files to "/System/Framework/"
4. Change their permissions to RW-R-R
6. Reboot your phone/tablet
7. Start the PlayStore, download and install the PlayStation®App
8. Install the .apk file you downloaded at step 2
9. Start the PlayStation®App and click the remote play button
10. Play remotely!

Credits go to everyone involved from xda-developers.com + especially Wesley32 for the original tutorial!

Maybe someone gets it to work with BlueStacks for PC easy compatibility ? :)

- SKFU

DRIVECLUB may brick your PS4 Blu-Ray Drive?!

Driveclub is currently facing a lot of problems including a few delays, server-side problems and more. Today a friend from Hong Kong told me about a major bug which he faced due the release day of Driveclub.

Since he is PS+ subscriber, he has access to the free PS+ version of Driveclub. He added it to his download list, waiting for the next time he'd be online.

Meanwhile he also purchased the disc version of Driveclub. Full of "GREATNESS AWAITS" thoughts, he turned on his PS4 and went online.

As the Driveclub PS+ version was already in his download list, it began to download. While the game was downloading, he wanted to use his disc version and pushed it inside the PlayStation 4's Blu-Ray drive. 

It seems that no one actually ever tested if a user would do that. The disc drive of my friend stopped working right away. Ejecting and inserting works fine, but the PS4 won't read any disc anymore.

We guess that this happened because the disc version and the PS+ version share the same TitleID and that having the same one mounted twice is impossible to handle for the PS4. Inserting any disc simply results in a popup, showing that the game is already inserted.

Rebooting the system or anything safe-mode like did not help. Currently his PS4 sits in a service center waiting for a solution. 

- SKFU

PSV 3.30 Statement

I've just read Wololo's recent article about how the actual 3.30 firmware for SONY's PlayStation VITA changed a lot of things in the scene. Please read it before this post, as I won't sum up everything again here.

Many patches prevent current hacks and exploits to be used on firmware 3.30.
But the question is: "Do we really need 3.30?"

If you waited your whole life for theme-support on the PSV, then you probably do need it. But that's not the case for the majority in my view. The scene should now finally focus on one firmware which is 3.18.

WebKit, PKG Installer and PSP Emu exploits on this firmware give us all opportunities required to develop a decent homebrew-enabled and native hackable system. Updating the operating system can be targeted at a later time, just like it was done for the PS3.

It's kind of useless to play SONY's cat and mouse game and re-develop PSP emulator exploits for every firmware just to wait for the next patch again.

And for those who still care about 3.30 - Yes, I can confirm the PKG Installer is still working on it.
An even more interesting information for you might be that there is a way to install PKG files without even touching the PKG Installer application :)


Good luck and stay focused,

- SKFU