It's been out a while now. Anyone got one? What's the TV out? UMD quality? Battery life? Anything else to report?
Anyone got PSP Slim?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
I traded in my original PSP for a PSP slim yesterday. My initial reaction is actually one of disappointment - it really doesn't feel like a trade "up" at all. The molding of the casing looks and feels much cheaper, there is no eject action on the UMD drive bay, the L and R shoulder buttons are wobbly, and rather than a matt finish in the back of the unit it has the "piano black" finish which gets fingerprints all over it and, I'll wager, probably a little slippery after a while gaming. Initial impressions are that they have cut a lot of cost from the unit but not passed too much of that on to the end user (I guess they want to make some profits on the hardware seeing as how easy it is to hack).
I haven't spent too much time with it just yet, but after a few flights coming up I'll hopefully be able to gauge the battery life a little better. I also want to see if there is any difference from the UMD cache in some titles. TV-Out I've not tested yet as it doesn't come with the lead (in fact this model doesn't come with a mem stick or headphones even).
One element that is immediately and noticably different when playing it is the positioning of the onboard speakers is far, far better. Rather than placing them on the bottom of the unit these are now positioned at the front, at either side of the screen just above the control areas, so they are much more audible for the volume range they have and won't get obscured by your hands at all.
I haven't spent too much time with it just yet, but after a few flights coming up I'll hopefully be able to gauge the battery life a little better. I also want to see if there is any difference from the UMD cache in some titles. TV-Out I've not tested yet as it doesn't come with the lead (in fact this model doesn't come with a mem stick or headphones even).
One element that is immediately and noticably different when playing it is the positioning of the onboard speakers is far, far better. Rather than placing them on the bottom of the unit these are now positioned at the front, at either side of the screen just above the control areas, so they are much more audible for the volume range they have and won't get obscured by your hands at all.
Ooooh, Sony. You and your leads! I suppose it uses a proprietary format to buy separately? Much as I appreciate not wanting to shoulder the costs of a lead that people might never use, it does come across as cheap of 'em! Including the lead would also lead to experimentation that might get people using the services they otherwise wouldn't. You'd get better content sales if you can show it on other TVs, especially in conjunction with PS3 feeding data to PSP and out to TV. If it could sustain DVD bitrates it'd be an excellent social portable media player.
I find the new PSP quite impressive. It may be construed as feeling 'cheaper', but in reality, it's significantly lighter, and that's what counts. The component output is very nice. UMD movies look to be almost DVD quality. Unfortunately, games are letterboxed, but they are quite playable.
Obviously they can't put five RCA jacks on the unit, it's simply not big enough. Now, if they had an HDMI output...
Obviously they can't put five RCA jacks on the unit, it's simply not big enough. Now, if they had an HDMI output...
Why would they need to letterbox the image given that PSP games have an aspect ratio of 16:9 at 480x272?
My guess, the PSP doesn't scale the image to a full screen, and the TV doesn't support native 480x272, so the output image has to be padded up to NTSC/PAL EDTV resolution.
Before drawing conclusions, I would first ask ban25 what kind of display he has been using ... Could be 4:3 after all. 
PSP has always been able to scale UMD output in a few different ways, but games always assume a 16:9 display, which would lead to black borders on 4:3 tvs ... Just guessing though.
PSP has always been able to scale UMD output in a few different ways, but games always assume a 16:9 display, which would lead to black borders on 4:3 tvs ... Just guessing though.I'm hoping to get a PSP Slim the same way I got my PSP... with someone tossing out their old, "broken" one, and my replacing the power switch board, as that's all that was wrong with it.
This may take some luck, though.
This may take some luck, though.
[bow]Thank you. Thank you. I'll be demonstrating my amazing powers of deduction all week!
You go, Carnac.
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