Sony PSP Review
It plays MP3s. It plays video. It has 802.11b WLAN for gaming built in. And a Memory Stick Duo slot accessible via a USB 2 port. And a mini-optical drive, which accepts proprietary 1.8GB UMDs (universal media discs), including commercially available movies. Oh, and it plays games too. But that description doesnt do justice to the experience when you have a PlayStation Portable in your hands: the whole look and design of the device is unsurpassed, and the 4.3in widescreen LCD is simply gorgeous. The PSP has a custom-designed processor running at up to 333MHz, with 32MB RAM for games. It doesnt sound like much, but with a fixed hardware specification theres more scope for game programmers to squeeze performance out of the hardware than would be possible with a PC. And the fact that UMDs hold up to 1.8GB of data brings about the prospect of far larger and more expansive games than any previous console. There are drawbacks though. Although the slick menu system gives prominence to options for video, photos and MP3s, the PSP has initially been released without any software to transfer them to the device - a peculiar oversight, presumably resulting from the need to release it as close as possible to the launch of the competing Nintendo DS. Getting photos onto the PSP itself - a 32MB Memory Stick is supplied for storage - requires only the creation of folders with the correct names to drop them into. Videos are a different matter, and need to be converted to the correct MP4 format. Doing this for your personal DVDs requires trawling around the Internet for third-party utilities, but it can be done. Youll need a 1GB Memory Stick to get more than an hour of video at decent quality, although for a couple of half-hour TV episodes, a 512MB stick is sufficient and will set you back only. Videos running from the Memory Stick slot as opposed to commercial UMDs are limited to 320 x 240 resolution though full native-resolution 480 x 272 is a UMD-only luxury. But thats fine, especially as you can maintain widescreen aspect ratios the PSP lets you stretch the video. Imminent official third-party software should make the process easier.
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