Update: PlayStation Home download leaked

When PlayStation Home finally goes live, a new icon will automatically appear under the [Network] category, without the need to update your firmware. Upon booting your PS3, the console does a simple check on two XML files to see if the service is active in your country. If it is active, the new icon appears and click on it will download the Home package to your PS3. After a bit of "hacking" using PS3 Proxy Server, we managed to get the icon showing on our console and even downloaded the Home beta file. Unfortunately, since the service isn’t yet active, we were unable to play. See the video below.

Video:

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How to download the Beta yourself (unplayable):

1. Download PS3 Proxy Server and install it on a Windows Machine (.NET v1.1 required)
2. Download the following two files:
   • http://select.ww.home.playstation.net/home/ww/country-select.xml
   • http://select.ww.home.playstation.net/home/ww/product-select.xml
3. Edit the two above files so that all occurences of "off" are replaced with "on"
4. Use PS3 Proxy Server to redirect the locations below to the local file on your hard drive:
   • http://select.ww.home.playstation.net/home/ww/product-select.xml » x:/path-to/product-select.xml
   • http://select.ww.home.playstation.net/home/ww/country-select.xml » x:/path-to/country-select.xml
5. Configure your PS3 to use your Windows Machine as the proxy server. This can be done by setting the PS3 Proxy Settings to point to your PC IP Address (usually something like 192.168.x.x).
6. Start the server and then restart your console
7. If all goes well, the Home icon should appear under [Network] (between [Account Settings] and [PlayStation Store])
8. Click the icon to download PlayStation Home

UPDATE:

The above download method no longer works since Sony have taken the download link offline. As a result, you will be unable to try and download the beta yourself. We can confirm that Home was available to download yesterday but was unplayable (even though the video doesn’t show this part).

Basically, you can download and install home and can even connect to the Home server. However, once connected you are prompted to download an update before you can play. If you download and install the update, you receive a DRM related error and cannot start Home.