Better late than never as they say.

Not much to report here other than the fact that, despite previous promises of its availability back on November 26th, firmware 2.53 has actually turned up (late, disheveled and not wearing any pants) today. Go grab it now if you don’t believe us.

What’s new with the latest upgrade? We think you’ll be filing this one under the “Oh, really? That’s it? Oh, ok.” category but check after the jump for the full list of “enhancements” and let us know in the comments if you agree.

The Official PS blog shatters our minds with the revelation that 2.53 contains:

• Full-screen mode playability
• Live movie (using RTMP format) playability

Jokes aside, it’s actually a nice update that we’re sure will appease many of the stream-o-philes out there who have been waiting for full-screen compatibility. With the BBC iPlayer update also this week, the PS3 has actually jumped a few paces forward in the “viable media player” stakes. At least on this side of the Atlantic. All we need now is outside-U.S. Hulu availability and we’ll never leave the couch again.

By the way: RTMP stands for Real Time Messaging Protocol, a multimedia streaming and RPC technology that allows your PS3 to execute commands on the host server where the video is stored. In other words: streaming just got better.