Psp Editoral Part 2....Finally!
In the first PSP editorial discussed the hardware side of the Sony PSP, this editorial will browse over the software side of the PSP. From the time I turned on my PSP until the time I select which application I want to run (games, movies, videos, or photos), the PSP is in what is commonly called the home screen. The User Interface of the basic PSP menu is stellar. Entering text is easy , it uses the same type of input as a cell phone. Where one virtual "button" corresponds to 3 or 4 different letters. Setting up the wifi (80211.b) network is frankly a breeze. The process consists of scanning for networks, entering a wep code (if needed) and naming your connection, that's it.
Now onto the multimedia part of the PSP, the movies and music. The included "Spiderman 2" UMD movie is stunningly spectacular. The quality both audio and visual are top notch DVD quality. AS I speculated before, to fit a DVD movie onto a UMD which is much smaller, the special features have been cut to ensure high quality audio and video. The movie runs at least the standard 30fps(frames per second) very smoothly. The included headphones and inline control are high quality. One of the best headphones shipped with a product. There are better headphones, but again I doubt any other company has shipped as high a quality headphones bundled with another product. I haven't used my memory stick to encode and play anything off of, but I do intend to do so soon.
The music capabilities of the PSP are pretty good, but are hindered by the price of memory stick duo high prices. PC world has done an interesting story
here that Sony may release a writable UMD and UMD writer, only for music and movies( at the very least give more companies access to the UMD technology), and keep the game format internal to Sony.
Finally the games. All of the games that I have purchased, "Metal Gear acid", "Twisted Metal: Head On" and "Untold Legends: Brotherhood Of The Blade" have rivaled my home console experiences in both visual and fun. All games have eye popping graphics and audio that engulfs the user. Expect a full review of all these games and more coming soon
Psp Editorial Part 2: postponed
I have decided to hold off on the second part of the editorial on the Sony PSP for various reasons. The first is there are too many conflicting reports on the software side of the psp for me to do even a slightly relevant story without doing more research on my own, with my own PSP. Stay tuned for Launch madness.
Prelaunch Sony PSP editorial Part 1
With the impending launch of the psp, I felt the need to assess what Sony's Playstation portable has to offer to the market. Both software and hardware. Instead of drilling down the exact specs, I'm going to just go through what the psp can do. The hardware: The first and major ability that the psp has is games. Games are available on a proprietary umd disc format (just think of a semicircular minidisc) that hold about 1.8g of information. The umd discs are read only, meaning that any game information such as game save files need to be saved else where(on a memory stick)
Now on to the memory storage. Since the psp (just like the disc based home consoles) can't write to the disc, information needs to be saved another way. The removable format that the psp uses, of course, is Sony's memory stick duo pro. A flash based memory format invented by Sony. The available sizes for the memory sticks range from 32mb(four times the storage of ps2's memory cards that are 8 mb) to 512mb, soon 1g cards will be available. The prices vary widely so it is no use even to quote a price, but why would anyone need so much memory to save games? There is an answer which leads me into my third point.
The psp's ability not only to play games, but to play movies and music. The psp plays movies two ways. The first is the psp plays movies off the umd disc. These movie umd discs can be purchased at retail outlets. The first million psp's will be packaged with a umd movie of Spiderman 2. One thought has come to mind when researching the umd movie format. Dvd's hold at the very least 4.8g of information while umd's hold 1.8g. That is a great difference in capacity. What will change for a movie to fit on a umd. Obviously compression will take place, but will it affect the quality of the movie. The psp has a brilliant screen and it would be a shame for it to be wasted. Another possible area that could be limited to make a movie fit on a umd. The special features could always be minimize or eliminated to conserve space. Considering both options it is most logically that the movie studios and sony would want to create a cutting edge compression to both save quality and the special features. The movie must be watchable and should have the same features as a dvd to even merit a purchase of a dvd that a consumer may already own.
Now onto the psp's second way of playing movies, off of the memory stick. Here is one of the reasons for having a large memory stick. Movies obtained through ripping a dvd or another manner on a computer are then encoded to play on the psp using sony's encoding software provided with the psp (since the only encoder is in japanese, at this point, and I can't read or speak japanese I can't tell what the hell to do with it. An average 90 minute movie usually comes out about 300mbs on other handheld devices. So I would expect the same from sony's encoder. The other reason for a large memory stick sizes is the psp's ability to play music. It's not a huge stretch of technology for the psp to do this, but it is nice.
My final point of this part 1 editorial and far by the second most interesting ability of the psp is built in the wifi. The psp will be the first console (home or handheld) to have games support online play right from launch. There are four sports titles from 989 studios as well as some from ea that come launch day will have online play. The structure will be set up very similar to that of the ps2. I will be writing a story on online play when the psp launches march 24, but here are the basics. The psp will connect via a wifi hotspot, no matter if it is your home router or at your local starbucks. You will then be brought to a menu, a lobby really, from there you can select to enter a game that is about to begin or start your own. The psp will also be able to play wirelessly with other psps in the immediate area. So having a group of friends come over with psp to battle them in a multiplayer match is easy and there is no need for cables. Much like Nintendo ds's wireless capabilities. That's it for part one. In part two I will write about the software side of the psp which should be coming soon.stay tuned.
