Today Sony is giving PlayStation 3 owners many appreciated features with the new Firmware 1.80 update. Full 1080p HD upscaling of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, as well as DVD movies, is now possible for HDMI compatible TV owners. Our wishes have been granted! Version 1.80 also allows us to hook up printers to our PS3 and print out pictures from our hard drives, or use a home network system to stream content back and forth from our PCs and PS3s.

The other big update is that we can now access our PS3s through an Internet connection via Remote Play on our PSPs. That means that if you're at a wireless access point with a version 3.50 updated PSP (new update coming by the end of the month), you can stream all your music and videos that are back at home on your hooked up PS3. Not bad at all, Sony's moving quick and helping out home entertainment systems a lot.

Last week Blizzard did a whole lot of teasing. On top of the StarCraft II news they also showed off this video to announce that a World of Warcraft Black Temple content patch release was nearing. The patch is now live for all of you W.O.W. players to download, here's the brief overview of what's new:

• The Black Temple, a new 25 man raid dungeon
• Nether Drakes, new epic flying mounts obtained through solo and small-group play
• The Ruins of Lordaeron, a new arena for the PvP Arena System
• Druid epic flight form
• Three new solo or small-group level-70 areas

If that's not enough information though, Blizzard has a twenty page tome of specific details here. Talk about an overview overkill, you might as well play a MMO text game if you're willing to read all of that.

New to GameTap? Here's how it will work starting on May 31st:

• Registered Gold Level members: No ads. $9.95 per month, 99 cents the first month, or $6.95 per month for a one-year commitment. Access to over 850 games, GameTap TV, and GameTap Originals and Indies games.
• Registered Green Level members: Need to register, but don't need credit card info. 100% free access to 30-60 currently public games (not limited by game ratings). Access to multiplayer games and community features (forums, leaderboards, profile, avatar, etc.). Can also access GameTap TV. Will be video roll-in ads prior to gameplay in the Deluxe Player and banner ads in the Lite Player.
• Unregistered visitors: 100% free access to 30-60 currently public games and (rated E- to T-) on the site through the Lite Player. Can also watch GameTap TV. Will be non-intrusive banner ads during gameplay.

In its first year alone, GameTap supported 20 million different games played, with membership up by 299% and a 58% increase in average user time spent on playing games. With this new business model that offers free games to the public, they hope to get more long-term users over time. It's definitely worth checking out next month once you won't be held down to any credit card information, you can visit the GameTap site here.

With Star Fox 64 in America, and a few fun Sega games in Europe, the April Virtual Console releases have been pretty good so far. PS3 will take the lead tomorrow though, Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed that Mortal Kombat II will be available for download on the PlayStation Network tomorrow for $4.99. That's twelve characters, ten levels, and whole lot of fatalities of good memories to revisit. Which Mortal Kombat character was your favorite in the series? I look forward to remembering how badly I wanted Kintaro to be the last boss in the game, I'd like to see Shao Kahn beat Kintaro or Mortal Kombat III's Motaro.

We already know that the PS3 is on its way to curing cancer, but Sony's got more good news for us. Tomorrow's firmware update will enhance the PS3's downloading system and add a download manager tab to XrossMediaBar that allows players to queue up to six downloads from the PlayStation Store at a time. Sony didn't say that we'd be able to play games while items are downloading, but we should now be able to watch videos, listen to music, and go on the Internet while files are downloading. Other new features are remote play PSP support for 20GB PS3s, disc autostart, and new support for keyboards and mice that use Bluetooth.

Like I said, if there's one game you should download on the Xbox 360, it's definitely the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game that'll be available this Wednesday. If paying for an Xbox Live download is out of the question, then you might want to give Viva Pinata a try for free. Rare's kiddy game didn't sell nearly as well as the Pokemon sized craze they were hoping for, but they've made it clear that the series isn't going anywhere. If you don't want to buy a game that looks like a rabies zoo, then you might as well rent it for free, the 1GB demo is now up for download on Xbox Live if you live in the United States.

Microsoft and Viacom will be releasing the first high definition episode of South Park on Xbox Live Marketplace tomorrow . . . how exciting. It's free though for two weeks, so don't pass up an easy opportunity. The episode they chose was the "Good Times With Weapons" - the one where the Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny all turn into anime ninjas and throw a ninja star into Butters' eye. Also, if you buy a new Xbox 360 console in between March 20th and April 3rd, it'll come with this episode on HD-DVD for free. What's more interesting though, is that once the new season of South Park starts this Wednesday, the new episodes will also appear on Xbox Live Marketplace for download one week after they're on TV. Pretty cool, but I'll still stick to hitting up DailyMotion.com every 2 A.M. for the new uploads.

Blue Dragon was released in Japan on December 6th, and it's been rumored that America only has to wait until June 5th for our chance at playing the Xbox 360's popular RPG. Its Mistwalker creators are finally giving out the first round of Xbox Live downloads for their game, and it's all free. Kotaku says the download will be available at 8 PM in Japanese time tomorrow, and that gamers will be able to get two new difficulties ('hard' and 'super hard'). It also includes a replay mode that lets players start the game over without their stats resetting. The size of the download hasn't been announced yet, but Mistwalker will probably give out a few more downloads soon, so save some hard drive space.

TLB reader Lawl just showed me a sweet Firefox gaming theme that he found:

"The buttons are all characters from the game, the scroll bars are pipes and there’s alot of nice little touches. I really like it, but I most likely won’t keep it permanently because it’s a bit too busy."

You can download the 897KB add-on here if you're up for some retro visuals while surfing the Web. Unfortunately, Mozilla isn't offering any other gaming skins for your browser, just plain old Mario, but that beats staring at varying shades of gray. I think Shadow of the Colossus would be a sweet skin to integrate into the toolbar area. And if I found a Bubble Bobble browser theme I'd never look back.

Peter Moore is not happy. One of the coolest things about buying next generation game consoles is that they can still play all the old games, but problems have come up for all three industry competitors. Sony has been offering a large amount of old PS2 games right from the start that are backwards compatible on the PS3, but many titles have had low quality pixel conversions that resulted in unreadable text that ruined the whole game. Sony has moved quick though, and late last night a firmware update was issued online to PS3 owners that took the console to version 1.5 and made the problem disappear. Good job Sony! Now why the fuck did it take so long to get Psychonauts working on Xbox 360?!