VidZone has been a massive success. The music video streaming service for the PS3 has seen over a million downloads since launch in June of this year. However, as much as we all enjoy the service, there have been a few niggling issues. Well now, with version 1.04 (which went live this morning), VidZone has been massively improved.
First up, a glitch whereby some users had to sit through too many adverts has been solved. Now that that has been fixed, we can concentrate on the improvements.
As soon as you launch the application, it is now much quicker to start. In the past, it could have taken up to a couple of minutes to launch, but when I went on it today it took around 30 seconds. My other main bugbear with VidZone was its prehistoric search function. There may be over 10,000 music videos on there, but trying to find anything was a bit of a nightmare. Before the update it took forever to scroll through the various artists and then once you had looked within an artist, it would take you right back to the top of the list again. However, this is no longer an issue and it is much quicker and smoother.
The on screen keyboard is now also supported when searching. A really nice feature that has been added is that the name of the music video you are watching now appears under your PSN ID in the friends list so that everyone can see your questionable music taste. Dane Bowers: Another Lover, really?
There are also a few minor changes, such as help screens to guide you through the service (they are in the settings menu), the Sony Blu-ray remote is now supported, a reorganized settings menu and a dynamic sound normaliser to keep all videos at the same volume level. Also, any videos that are recorded in 16:9 now support full screen display. The patch itself weighs in at a featherweight 11mb too. All in all a great update and with these latest improvements, a spate of exclusive videos and a mention in Sony’s latest PS3 TV adverts, VidZone seems to be going from strength to strength.
As always, TSA will keep you posted with all the latest developments, in the mean time, go download the patch.