Everything you wanted to know about the PSP and you actually asked

Rather than responding to all the PSP questions in the comments on my last post I thought I would type out a post to reply some of the questions about this new spiffy game system.

It looks like Sony will be dealing with PSPs with dead pixels. I have a year to mail my PSP to Sony and they will replace the screen free of charge and mail it back but that sounds like a pain in the ass. I might just wait a month and see if it is still bothering me. If it still irks me in a month I will mail in my PSP. I can live with it but it seams like I am not the only one out there with a dead pixel. I would have thought that they would have gotten all the kinks out of the manufacturing process since the Japanese launch. I guess this is just the bad luck of the early adopter.

There is no video out on the PSP. It might be possible via the USB2 port but I do not know of how to do that at this time. I am sure that there are special review units that have video out so the game mags can take screen shots but currently there is no way to get a PSP to show up on TV using of the shelf tools. It would be a cool third party hack or Sony could implement a video out with the USB2 port with a firmware update.

And as for UMDs replacing DVDs No freaking way. That is just not going to happen. I could see PSP fans buying up lots of UMD movies and I bet that they will target gamers with action flicks and Anime that they want to see. I don't know what Sony is smoking by trying to sell PSP movies for thirty bucks a pop. I could see twenty bucks for a movie on UMD but there is no way that I would pay more than a normal DVD.

I think the saving grace of movies on UMD is that the PSP display is 480 x 272 that is nowhere near a TV resolution so each frame of video takes up much less space. Also the MP4 video file uses the H.264 codec. That is much more advanced and requires more CPU power than the MPEG-2 based DVDs. The DVD came out in 1995 and it's video compression technology is over ten years old. So the UMD based video can get more miles per gallon using the newer compression technology. H.264 is going to be used in both high definition DVD formats and it is going to be around for years to come. I might just get a 1-Gig memory stick and rip my own DVDs to my PSP format using iPSP or PSPware. Movies on the PSP look much better than VHS and they are technically just as good as they can be on the hardware. It looks much better than most of the portable LCD DVD players that I have seen. I Pre-ordered a SanDisk 1-Gig Memory Stick Duo and it should be in at the end of April. That is a beefy $145 and I am not sure if I really want to invest in that amount of PSP memory. Using that I could rip a full DVD movie and compress it to MP4 and play it back on the PSP and get a much better battery life than a UMD movie and I would not be limited to the handful of UMD movies. Heck I could rip and compress recorded TV shows from my DVD-Recorder. This is pretty cool but the main reason why I got a PSP is for the games. Everything else is cool but the game play and graphics is the real treat of having a PSP. I don't think most PSP users will go out and get a $145 memory stick and rip and compress their own movies for the PSP but the hard core nerds of the world are ready to stand up and do it.

I still think there is a place for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS. There is enough of a market that all three can do well but damn I do love those PSP games.