PS3 Accessing the OLD and Faster PSN Store

[LuanTeles]

I don't know if you already know this but for me it's new @DeViL303, @bguerville , @esc0rtd3w and @sandungas

@Mello_1993 made a nice video comparing the New (current) vs Old (launch) PS Store as we already know the old is way faster than what we have now

What caught my attention was if we change the PStore AD Clock back to 2012 we can access it back, i wonder if we can patch something to force it.

 

[GuilloteTesla]

Nice trick!. I wonder if this PS Store Ad date is stored in xRegistry.sys (I'm still trying to develop my homebrew app that handles that file).

EDIT: doing a quick search, this entry might be the one

 

[LuanTeles]

Nice trick!. I wonder if this PS Store Ad date is stored in xRegistry.sys (I'm still trying to develop my homebrew app that handles that file).

EDIT: doing a quick search, this entry might be the one

View attachment 38787

Yeap it is, we can use webman as an example to write the date using web commands but i prefer a sprx approach to make it permanent

 

[DeViL303]

That is interesting and I have seen it mentioned before but never really thought about it.

Not sure if its wise to make a permanent patch though without lots of testing, its very possible there is some stuff that this old quicker store does not support.

 

[GuilloteTesla]

Well, instead of a permanent patch, a better approach would be to have some kind of "toggle" in the ★ Custom Firmware Tools menu.

 

[Louis Garry]

@LuanTeles, only change the year? month and date don't matter?

 

[Mello_1993]

It should be saved xRegistry. After this change you are only able to revert formatting the HDD. You can upgrade to an OFW and it will stay that way. All contents are present, but some are search only and they do not show icon.png. Obviously you are able to reverse this the same way you did.
I will try adding funds to the wallet using a credit card to see if it allows this again. Since Sony completely removed this function directly by PS3

 

[LuanTeles]

It should be saved xRegistry. After this change you are only able to revert formatting the HDD. You can upgrade to an OFW and it will stay that way. All contents are present, but some are search only and they do not show icon.png. Obviously you are able to reverse this the same way you did.
I will try adding funds to the wallet using a credit card to see if it allows this again. Since Sony completely removed this function directly by PS3

Yeap, it's saved in xRegistry.sys and AFAIK, it is rolled back by restoring default settings, no need to format the hard drive or you can simple delete it in dev_flash2.

 

[LuanTeles]

That is interesting and I have seen it mentioned before but never really thought about it.

Not sure if its wise to make a permanent patch though without lots of testing, its very possible there is some stuff that this old quicker store does not support.

Well, instead of a permanent patch, a better approach would be to have some kind of "toggle" in the ★ Custom Firmware Tools menu.

I'm thinking of it in the form of a toggle.

I'm messing with explorer_plugin.srpx but I couldn't find anything related to date or time, it's a pity I can't use SOCAT in my current setup.

 

[LuanTeles]

@LuanTeles, only change the year? month and date don't matter?

We need to test to see which specific date toggles it, I haven't had time to check this

 

[LuanTeles]

I will try adding funds to the wallet using a credit card to see if it allows this again. Since Sony completely removed this function directly by PS3

Probably the server will not accept it, i tried to add back the account creation and after EULA screen the server refused the connection.

 

[jios]

This is it a dream come true I cannot explain how excited I am.Thought I could only see this again in my dreams.


Edit* maybe the last days the old store was online will work

 

[arcadekidflo]

I have found an offline installer for Playstation Store and that one works much faster because all files are already cached in HDD . It's on archive.org

 

[LuanTeles]

OK
So i used webMAN MOD to show all the processes loaded by vsh and found that both methods uses newstore_plugin.sprx

So i decompiled the store and found some interresting urls

https://nsx.sec.%s.dl.playstation.n...31VCYr/c/NSXVID/NSXVID-PN.P3.%s-LEGALTEXT.xml
https://nsx.sec.%s.dl.playstation.net/nsx/sec/Xz78TMQ1Uf31VCYr/c/NSXVID/NSXVID-PN.P3.%s-GLOBAL.xml

The first one is a empty xml that probably was used to show an EULA
https://nsx.sec.np.dl.playstation.n...31VCYr/c/NSXVID/NSXVID-PN.P3.US-LEGALTEXT.xml

and the second is the one that has some magic in it
https://nsx.sec.np.dl.playstation.net/nsx/sec/Xz78TMQ1Uf31VCYr/c/NSXVID/NSXVID-PN.P3.US-GLOBAL.xml

So as you can see there are different kind of entries that only works from date (from=) to a specific date (until) tags

Let's decode the second one that lasted from="2009-06-02T18:30:00.000Z" until="2012-11-02T05:00:00.000Z"

Now lets see the one that lasts until from="2012-11-20T00:00:00.000Z" until="2100-12-31T23:59:00.000Z"

Comparing both you'll notice that the second one have an URL to a pkg, that is the current PS Store and comparing the dates, you will notice that the last one is valid until 2100

So if we roll back our PS Ad clock via Debug settings to a date between 2009-06-02T to 2012-11-02 (2012-10-31 is a good one) we'll not be prompt to download the PS store and it will launch the old one.

We can patch the newstore_plugin.sprx to load the xml for example from a custom server

We can also patch it to an unofficial server, so we can get an UNOFICIAL PS STORE with homebrews, i'll cover it up in the next days

Edit: Seems like everything is working

 

[LuanTeles]

@DeViL303 was simpler than we thought. We can use a toggle for change between the Old and New PS Store.

 

[LuanTeles]

@DeViL303 please, can you please try it with a network monitoring app? I can't use it because I don't have a working lan connection, I want to see what the PS Store content xml looks like and it would be nice to document its content as we change the date, the first page items change so there is probably a lot of declared content there by date, just like the What's New xmls.

 

[LuanTeles]

Seems like we can call different skins

2009 = skin_version="1"
2012 = skin_version="2"
Current = skin_version="3"

Skin 1=

Skin 2

I patched mine newstore_plugin.sprx to my github server and i still can't figure out how to call the skins types even using the examples of the original xml, but going back to 2009 it automatically toggles the skin 1.

Edit: It looks like the variations are defined in the Sony's server .xml as changing dates changes the layout

See after I patched the .sprx to my github server to allow up to year 9999, the layout changed again using the current date.

For those who want to try it, i attached the sprx (Only for CFW users, HEN users must use a remap to it)

Note: The US region has a small bug, assassin's creed background will be in certain tabs it shouldn't be, i'm using Brazil region and everything is in the right place.

BTW you don't need a PSN account to use this store, only to download the content.

PS3 - Legacy PlayStation®Store | PSX-Place

 

[LuanTeles]

I don't remember this feature but we can see videos in pop-up or full screen mode e.g: themes previews

 

[LuanTeles]

@DeViL303 remember the comic section in the explorer_plugin.sprx? It is also in the newstore_plugi.sprx, I think if we get an example of the .XML we can enable this tab in the store, just like the video one available in my country.

 

[LuanTeles]

i wish we could call this from the xmb