Ureview by: Gutspiller
Ureview points: 5
Ureviewer since: December 2005
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Reviewed On: Friday January 27, 2006
Price paid: $250.00
| Rating: 6 | Recommends product: Yes
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What a great device... that Sony is trying hard to make shitty. What I love the most about the PSP is that it has a great price for all the features it's capable of. You would expect to pay more for something that could do everything it can do, especially when you take into account the homebrewing which sounds like it may be cracked in the next few days, but I'm not going to wait to write the review about the homebrewing (maybe I will update this).
What I hate the most about it is the shiny screen and that Sony is trying to stop homebrewing on it. Without homebrewing (Upon purchase I didn't realise 1.5 couldn't run homebrew code) I would have never bought the device. Having a portable pirating err I mean gaming system is a dream come true for many gamers. The emulating the original Nintendo alone makes the device an attactive offer.
The device has some really great games... coming, but unless you are a sports, puzzle or RPG fan right now you will find the options of good games seriously lacking. Being an action fan myself I was really disappointed not seeing a single action launch title, though I think there were a few adventure games with hints of action gameplay.
The graphics are very nice and from the info I've read they could be getting nicer not only because developers will learn how to cut processing corners, but also because the processor isn't even running at full speed.
The glare and dust on the screen is killing me though. Sure, the device may be great if you plan on playing it in doors or on a subway or bus or vehicle with heavily tinted windows, but this last weekend we drove to Las Vegas and I of course played my PSP. The PSP is UNPLAYABLE while driving on a desert road. You need some type of shade to see the screen. Whether it's a towel over your head, or sitting in the back without a reflection coming off the back windows, you need something or the device is practically useless. I played lumines which was a good game to play even with a glare, but trying to play Wipeout Pure with a glare on the screen turned out to not be fun as you are constantly finishing in lower places than what you should because you can't tell left turns from right turns on many of the tracks.
I have not seen any dead pixels or dust under the screen. I have not sprung for a hard case for the PSP because I kinda like the soft case it comes in and any plastic screen proection would likely peel off when putting it in the case. For my main test of the trip to Las Vegas I emptied out a 20 CD case with plastic flaps and had room for the PSP, headphones and 2 UMDs.
32MB memory was simly not enough. You feel limited and 32 MB does not even begin to use the power the PSP is capable of. Cranking the memory up to 1 GB was a must for me and I would strongly recommended getting at least a 512 MB for anybody serious about watching videos on the device, not to mention once homebrewing comes to 1.5 the space will be need to hold emulators and game roms. (Illegal or not it makes for the most popular thing to slap onto the PSP) Using PSPVideo9 I was able to compress movies down to 200 MBs. For example I got Fast and the Furious down to 219 MB and looked decent for the filesize the movie was. At that compression (Highest compression possible except changing mono to stero and screen size to largest) the video turned out better than I thought and at slightly over 200 MB gave me room for 4 movies and room to spare for a few mp3s all on a 1 GB memory stick. Fast moving movies could have used less compression to not look blocky during fast camera movements.
Mp3 on the PSP right now is kinda a joke from my perspective. The device does not allow you to exit the MP3 menu and keep the mp3s playing. They will simply stop playing. It would be nice to listen to an mp3 playing while I either mess around in the system settings or perhaps (when it comes) listen to mp3s while playing a homebrewed emulation game. The mp3 does not even play while playing games. It would have been nice to listen to my own tunes while playing Wipeout Pure. The ability of the PSP to only play MP3s and a few other audio formats I've only heard of a few times was unimpressive. I was saddened to see that the device doesn't even have support for wma audio files, which are always intersperced in your mp3s if you obtain your mp3s through "free" services.
Along the same lines I was a little unhappy about always being forced to convert videos to the mp4 format to play from the memory stick on the PSP. Perhaps there is a good reason, but converting any video that you want to watch can be a serious pain in the ass. You have to know a good hour or more in advance what movie you want to watch, and convert it to the propper format because you can transfer it and view it on the PSP. Trying to watch movies with a glare on the screen is just as impossible as the games are if not more so. I find it hard to believe that Sony did not include a brightness or gamma feature in the system settings of the PSP. I believe that those could have helped with glares hitting the screen.
We had a car charger so I was never really using the PSP batteries, but at the motel I was suprized to have been able to play a few games for a while and watch all of Fast and the Furious without needing a charge, however this was from a memory stick so the power require would easily be more if you were trying to watch a movie from UMD. I mention the car charger because turning up the gamma or brightness even if it would have taken more battery power would have been a welcomed option since I had it running off the car.
Overall the device is slick and runs at a price other mobile media options can only dream of competiting with. I rated the PSP "Great" assuming that the 1.5 firmware would be cracked eventually, but if by chance it's never hacked (unlikely) I would rate the device as only "Good". I stick by my statement that if I would have known that homebrew was not available on the 1.5 (all US versions of PSP) I would not have bought the PSP until I had others confirm that homebrewed apps (emus, roms, etc.) were running on the the 1.5 firmware. The device is awesome, but running homebrewed code on it without being forced to buy or rent new games to play on long (or short) trips is a huge selling point of the PSP. At least downloaded movies can run off the memory stick though.
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| Pros: Small, widescreen, easy to use, cheap for what you get, sleep mode |
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| Cons: shiny screen, only comes with 32MB memory stick, Sony trying to kill homebrewing, earplugs and recharging cable in at same time can cause handling problems, no gamma or brightness control, cannot play mp3s outside of mp3 menu, screen gets dusty every 15 m |
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Ureview by: dahliamurder34
Ureview points: 6
Ureviewer since: March 2006
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Reviewed On: Thursday March 16, 2006
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 7 | Recommends product: Yes
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This is a very effective device. It has many features that intrigued me. Many people debate the Ipod Video because of the psp's size which is about twice the size of it and the hard disk space to hold. Also people want to choose the Ipod video over this because of the battery life.
Alright, well first of all the features that the psp includes is that it is capable of holding music. But...you must have a memory stick duo which is very pricy depending on how big of a size you want. But I would not recommend holding music on it. Another is that it can hold movies. This I do recommend because of its big screen and portability options. The battery life is almost twice as long as the Ipod video's life for watching movies if not more than twice. And you can hold about a full two hour length movie on a 1GB stick. Another feature is the games. The games are wonderful! They even have Grand Theft Auto for it so you can kill people in your spare time while your on the run. The graphics are the fucking best I have ever seen on a portable gaming device, MUCH better than the Nintendo DS. Photos...ehh I guess if your that type of person yes you can hold photos on it.
Sony likes to make people want to kill themselves because of homebrewed games. Personally I love homebrew games and would like to play homebrew games on the psp but then I would not be able to play other games because you need to downgrade your psp to 1.5 or below to play the homebrewed. I love original doom but I cannot play it on the psp!
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| Pros: Small and portability, big screen size, very good graphics considering it is mobile, |
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| Cons: Bad type of screen display, analog stick falls off sometimes, battery life is not that well |
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Ureview by: dahliamurder34
Ureview points: 6
Ureviewer since: March 2006
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Reviewed On: Thursday March 16, 2006
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 7 | Recommends product: Yes
|
This is a very effective device. It has many features that intrigued me. Many people debate the Ipod Video because of the psp's size which is about twice the size of it and the hard disk space to hold. Also people want to choose the Ipod video over this because of the battery life.
Alright, well first of all the features that the psp includes is that it is capable of holding music. But...you must have a memory stick duo which is very pricy depending on how big of a size you want. But I would not recommend holding music on it. Another is that it can hold movies. This I do recommend because of its big screen and portability options. Also when you buy the movies already formatted on the UMD disk the video is in full screen where as when you download it and put it on your psp its not gonna be full screen, but it still will be bigger than the Ipod video's screen. The battery life is almost twice as long as the Ipod video's life for watching movies if not more than twice. And you can hold about a full two hour length movie on a 1GB stick. Another feature is the games. The games are wonderful! They even have Grand Theft Auto for it so you can kill people in your spare time while your on the run. The graphics are the fucking best I have ever seen on a portable gaming device, MUCH better than the Nintendo DS. Photos...ehh I guess if your that type of person yes you can hold photos on it.
Sony likes to make people want to kill themselves because of homebrewed games. Personally I love homebrew games and would like to play homebrew games on the psp but then I would not be able to play other games because you need to downgrade your psp to 1.5 or below to play the homebrewed. I love original doom but I cannot play it on the psp!
The internet is fucking awesome. you can go on the internet if you have a wireless lan network in your home or wherever you go. You can play people in some games through the internet, for instance Socom. You can also play a person that is within 100 feet of you with the radio signal that it has. So that you don't have to even go on the internet. Which is very fun for grand theft auto liberty city stories if you have not tried it yet.
The analog stick falls off folks. It happened to me and it happened to a couple others that I know have it. But not to worry you can buy backups at a gamestop or some place like that. Without the analog stick it is very hard to play the games.
The games are run off of UMD disks, which stands for universal media disk. They did this and not a regular disk because of copyright material. You cannot buy a blank UMD disk. They are very small actually smaller than the Nintendo gamecube's disk's.
Well I guess that about raps it up. Overall I recommend the psp it is the new generation of gaming in the palm of your hands. Do not drop it though...
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| Pros: Small and portability, big screen size, very good graphics considering it is mobile, battery life is sometimes good |
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| Cons: Bad type of screen display, analog stick falls off sometimes, battery life is not that well |
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