PSP Impressions

Is it official that the PSP will have an updated screen? I am visiting Japan in a month and will be picking one up, but if the screen will be updated, maybe I'll wait for the officail Australian release... which is god know when.

 

What are you talking about? It's a single chip. Or are you saying the HotChips presentation is vaporware?

 

I know it is an SoC... I used the word chip wrongly and I am sorry it confused you.

Multiple processors (I called them chips as if they were separate, but they are on the same silicon die) embedded on the same chip... I called each of them a chip... incorrect terminology and I apologize.

 

Review: PlayStation Portable a Likely Hit

 

Lumines Impressions: http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthread.php?t=28795

Mercury Impressions: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=57474

I will so get this two games at launch over here!

Fredi

 

I love the Mercury look. And also the Lumines one.
Would be nice if they actually GOT HERE NOW FOR F**KS SAKE. Sorry.

 

yes londonboy , the machine is amazing i received them yesterday . let me tell you again like so many other people, the screen quality is a-m-a-z-i-n-g

 

Mercury actually ties in with an idea I had of using the PSP as a window onto a 3D world that is updated based on the tilt of the PSP using a USB sensor. I envisioned a marble game, but using mercury is a much cleverer idea and the fluid dynamics look totally realistic in the vids I've seen.

If the tilt device is executed as well as could be, I reckon this'll be a killer boost to PSP. The tilt sensor could act as a 2nd analogue stick whilst being more intuitive, so you could change camera angle by tilting the display to 'look round corners', or help steer your player by tilting into the corner. Then I imagine using the tilt to allow you to look around a 3D world as though it surrounds you, holding it above your head to look up. Could be useful for virtual museum tours and other MM applications.

 

My impressions of the PSP:

I imported mine and got it last friday together with Ridge Racer (Value pack BTW). I also got Lumines a few days later and am waiting for Puzzle Booble to arrive.

* First impression: WOW! The screen is HUGE. And yet the machine doesn't feel that bulky/big.

* Quality: Really good. Overall it has a good feel too it. The only negatives I can think about is the shoulder buttons which feel a bit plastic. The whole front has a reflective finish which 'attracts' fingerprints. I see no dead pixels and I've yet gotten the UMD-disc to be ejected during play even though I tried.

* Using the menus: Setting the PSP up is easy when you switch to English in the menu. The menu is simple to use and let you both browse through music, images and movies as well as check the UDM disc, check save games and set up stuff like WIFI settings etc.

* Using the PSP for music: I transfered a few MP3's to it and listened for 30-40 minutes. The includes remote/headphones in the valuepack is rubbish but I switched the headphones for my PortaPro's (still keeping the remote) and it sounded much better. You cans witch between different equalizer settings. I haven't looked into playlist support etc. yet.

* Using the PSP for movies: I bought a cheap SanDisk 512 MB memorystick Duo Pro mainly for movies. I used a freeware converter and converted a few episodes from TV-series. I also have convereted SpiderMan 2 from a DVD I got for my birthday. I had no problems getting and watching movies on the PSP. Depending on the source material and the quality you choose to convert at it is very enjoyable to watch movies on the PSP, especially with the large screen. You can switch between several formats for the movies (16:9, zoom, 4:3 etc.).

* Games!:
Ridge Racer: Cool!! The game looks great and plays great. The analog thumbpad works really great in the game and I ahd no problems drifting thorugh curves. The graphics are amazing considering we are talking about a handheld.

Lumines: I love this game. It's a puzzle game with music. It's just as addictive as Tetris were but even better. It features lots of cool music and this is a game that has kept me playing for way to much time. If you are even the slightest interested in puzzle-games this is a must-have.

* Battery: As I posted in another thread, I've used it for exactly 1 week and played RR for about 2 1/2 hours, Lumines for about 3 1/2 hours, Watched Enterprise for 40 minutes and listened for about 30-40 minutes on music. I also done some stuff in the menus and brifly played with the WIFI connection. This mroning it warned the battery was low and turned off. After charching I could continue on the spot I had stopped playing.

Overall: I'm extremely pleased with the PSP. The screen is amazing, the graphics in RR and Lumines great, the music quality when using my PortaPro's very good, movieplayback was great and the 2 games I have now a lot of fun to play. Still, the best feature IMHO is the way I can just flick the switch to off while playing and then, when I turn it on again the next time, continue playing right from the place I stopped. I've done this seeral times at bedtime when my wife turned of the light and I didn't want to bother her by keeping playing. Isntead of having to get to a place where I could save I just turned it off and continued playing from the same spot the next morning.

Feel free to ask about the PSP if there's something you are wondering.
/B

 

Were you able to fit the Soiderman 2 on the 512MB memorystick completely? How was the image quality with the converter you used?

 

Well, I'm currently testing various compressions settings for it. Spider man 2 is >2 hours which makes it a bit harder to fit on a 512 MB stick.

One settings (15 fps, 3784 kbps, 64 kbps stereo sound) created a 400 MB file so you'll see that this movie isn't the easiest to fit on a 512 MB stick. I'm currently testing on the the VBR quality settings the 3GP_Converter program has.

/B

 

QB4 setting in that encoder is apparently by far the best - looks almost as good as 768kbps but makes a lot smaller files. QB4 is one of the VBR settings.

 

Isn't that supposed to be "illegal"?
Genuine question, and not asking as if to say "U will burn in hell".
What i mean is, why can Sony dodge the "laws" they care so much about when it comes to copying movies to watch on PSP?

 

How is creating and modifying movie files you personally own illegal? As long as you're not hosting, distributing, selling, or doing anything else nefarious, it's all covered by Fair Use.

 

Technically, riping the DVDs and putting the contents of it onto another storage, even for your own use - is illegal, under the DMCA law. You are breaking the DVD encryption that you are not legally allowed to break. However, as noone but you is watching the movie that you already own, noone is going to file charges against you over that. It's an eqivalent of crossing the street on a red light when there's no police around (except you can't die ) - noone is going to report you to police over that, and even if some crazy guy does, noone in police is going to care about it

Sony is completely clean in this thing though. They are not giving you the software to crack/rip the DVD. They are only giving you the software that converts various video formats into MPEG4 H264, which is the video that PSP can play.

 

See, the above is proof that no one still knows what the hell is "legal" and what isn't....

 

I hope I'll be able to convert some of my 1Gig AVI and MPEG files that run for about an hour or so for PSP without the image quality suffering too much.
I guess they'll still fit in a 1 Gig MemoryStick when converted, right?

 

Oh right, my bad. I forgot how retarded the DCMA can be.

 

You're allowed to make a copy for yourself in the EU.

 

Unless you're circumventing copy protection - that's illegal. (Sounds familiar?)