Friday, April 15, 2005

On the movie playing functions of the PSP

I'v recently seen many websites saying how revolutionary the PSP is as a portable movie player.
Yeah, it plays movies, but not very good.
First, it uses UMDs or Memory stick duos.
With the UMDs, it's like you've got to buy another "lower resolution version" of every DVD you have. And they haven't even started selling them yet.
And with the Memory stick duos, it's very expensive (from what I know, it could sell for twice of that of CF or SD cards). And besides, it maxs out at 1GB.(Yeah, they just came out with a 2gig version in japan, but the price is like intended to stop anybody from buying it)

So, I guess most people would use MSs instead of UMDs for movie viewing.
But this isn't practical.

Viewing movies with the PSP is similer to viewing with a clie(a sony PDA). In fact, it uses Image converter 2(which is a modified version of what came with clies), to compress the files on your computer to a MS card. And notice the difference: Image converter for clies are free, but Image converter for PSP is "sold seperately".

First of all is the problem: where do you get your movie files?
The easiest way is to convert from VCDs, but those are hard to get these days.
DVDs are protected by encrption, so you need to crack the code first(and breaking the law), rip it to MPEG format(which is extreamly slow), then feed it to Image converter. I've seen someone on a fourm that said it took him a whole night to rip a DVD, and maybe an hour more to put it into the memorystick. That's crazy, if you have time for riping, why don't you just see it on your desktop, with a larger screen?
Or, get them with BT or P2P and look out for subponas from Hollywood. Something I wouldn't do.

Then, after you have it on the memory stick, do you really need to see it on the go? Only if you commute long distances on public tranportation, I guess. Steve Job got it right: "You can listen to music while doing other things, but you can't while watching a movie." Yeah, imagine watching a movie on your PSP while driving on the highway to work.

My Clie can play movies just the way PSPs does, but I seldom do it, even if my Clie's screen has much more pixels then the PSP. I don't have much videos to watch, and I can't watch videos while studing for an exam.

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