Circle of Confusion

Besides playing games, the Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) is capable of:

- Photo jpeg images display
- Mp3 music playback
- Mpeg video playback
- Browse the web

It does much more than the iPod but it's big, heavey and fragile compare to the iPod. But why do people buy video iPod when the Sony PSP can also play video, in an much bigger screen? Putting you own DVD content is not very straight on the PSP as it should. Besides buying video from the iTune store, can the video iPod play DVD transfer contents?

This is my setup for on the road A/V system:



I am happy to note that contrary to what I read on the web, upgrading the ROM to 2.6 did not harm any video playback capability.

Using DVD Decrypter and PSP Video 9, I was able sent "An Ant's Life" into PSP and it play in wide screen. One person, sitting alone watching a movie. This is really bizzard. Something that's suppose to many poeple at a time now is playing to just one. Who's going to laugh with yout? That's why I don't buy UMD disc movie. DVD seems to be a better deal.

Everything sort of work but it is far from Steve Jobs Finishing.

In photo display, the PSP resolution is 480 x 272 (Good info to remember). To save disk space, it's really better to crop the image to the pixel size. It's not practical disk space wise to download 8mp image file. But this crop to PSP size is a manual step for each photo. I wish Sony's media manager software let you crop when the image is moved to Playstation. Miss: why not loop mode in slice show?

Mp3 player is nicely done, control is called up on screen and you have to move with the curson key to "land" on the right command and push X.

Video play back to most dispointing. Maybe this is because Sony wants to make it a miserable experience on purpose so you just buy UMD movies? I don't know. But Sony can't possibly have everything you want.

Web browser is really poor. Novigating around the page is done by "landing" on hyper line around the page. The analog stick move a pointer around but surprise! page does not scroll. It's only scroll around with you moving the current hyperlink using directional controll. And it's very slow. Surprise me because I thought the PSP is fast.