VidZone gets full 16:9 playback

Sony has issued a major update for VidZone, the PS3's music video service, promising full 16:9 playback and less annoying adverts.

"First of all, an apology," wrote Ben Creasey, VidZone's head of production, on the EU PlayStation blog.

"You might have been noticing an increasingly frequent and increasingly annoying amount of adverts in-between videos recently. This was due to a bug and was certainly not intentional and we have been working like dogs to fix it."

And fixed it they have, along with various other niggles users of the service complained about. Videos shot in widescreen will now be displayed in full 16:9, taking up the whole of your telly. The Virtual Keyboard is supported and the Search function has been overhauled to make finding videos faster.

The start-up time has been reduced and audio volume has been normalised, so each video will play at the same level of loudness. Your XMB profile will show which video you are watching, "So no more secret Celine Dion video viewing sessions."

Videos now link to their downloadable Rock Band counterparts where applicable, default settings are saved and the cache has been increased so less streaming is involved. And finally, help screens have been introduced and the settings menu has been reordered.