By now you will, no doubt, be caught up with everything that Sony announced to be dropping into your PS4 systems with the 1.70 firmware update that hit today. You know, things like HDCP off, Share Factory, USB export, pre-downloads, etc, etc. There are a whole host of little features that Sony snuck into the update that make the operating system miles better.
- Firstly, the virtual keyboard has a couple of new tweaks. You can now enter characters by swiping and clicking on the touchpad. Also, pressing L2 and Triangle takes you to a symbols screen, making entering that complicated password easier.
- Turning a Dualshock 4 back on after it falls asleep no longer greets you with an annoying login screen. Finally!
- The ‘What’s New’ section now has a date and timestamp, turning it into a just functional social stream.
- Screenshots and video clips will not be saved when you select Broadcast Gameplay in the menu for the Share feature. To save screenshots, select Upload Screenshot or press the Triangle button. To save video clips, select Upload Video Clip or press the Square button.
- New display and sound features have also been added.You can now force the PS4 to output 5.1 channel audio over HDMI even if it detects 7.1 channel support. You can also add a deep colour output, if your TV supports it.
- You can set the length of video clip that is automatically cached by the share system. It can be changed to 1, 3, 5, 10 or 15 minutes long – with 15 the default – in a setting that’s under Share Settings > Video Clip Settings.
Those are the bigger ones, but there’s more.
- New notification type: From PlayStation.
- Multi user login with a single DS4.
- When a game crashes you can now chose to attach a video clip in the feedback
- Option to enable sending in the crash reports automatically.
- Upload multiple screenshots to Facebook at the same time.
- Comments/viewers notifications when you are in a full screen streaming.
- You can still upload screenshots/video while broadcasting.
- You can view comments without having to switch streaming modes.
- You can adjust your Microphone input volume under the Device settings.
- There’s now a Connection History log option under Remote Play Connection Settings
- USB Export works with drives formatted in both FAT32 and exFAT, but not NTFS or HFS+.
- The screen layout for when you are broadcasting has been improved.
- Stop Broadcasting is now under Broadcast Settings.
And I think that’s it. Firmware 1.70 has taken the PS4 a step into the more than nominally functional OS. Hopefully, Sony keep listening and we get more updates like this in the future.