Hrmm... why would people not use the System Update software to update the bios?
The main reasons I can think of is they may not have their PS3 hooked up to the Internet or they simply feel safer doing it themselves "offline"... personal preference really.
I have tried to check if there is any feature worth getting excited about and I think there are some nice gimmicks but of which I am remotely interested. I am hoping per chance the browser will be faster or have improved navigation and also have the ability to play flash videos directly outside the browser. Then I will notice some difference.
For those who are in Europe or America there are some services that have become available; here in South Africa and I think in Australia our wait for the playTV if ever it will come has been forever and even some of these services such as Vidzone may never get to our shores!
updated to 3.01 just recently as it seems they improved media playback from within the browser.
prior to 3.01 you could only fast forward up to x20 or x30 and the scene selection was disabled.
pls someone with 3.00 or less try scene selection on a vid opened in the browser (not downloaded).
it's not some killer feature, but since I use my local webserver rather then a media server it comes in quite handy.