Hardware PSP Slim as a portal media device?

[anonkit]

How does the psp hold up as a media device? Is it a good any good for music and video while you're on the road?

 

[JPH]

Yep.
Big ass screen for movies (just make sure you get a screen protector when buying one!)
Plays Mp3 files.
Plays Games.
Light weight and looks nice.

So, yeah, it's a portable media device.

 

[anonkit]

Yep.
Big ass screen for movies (just make sure you get a screen protector when buying one!)
Plays Mp3 files.
Plays Games.
Light weight and looks nice.

So, yeah, it's a portable media device.

Yes, I know that...but does it do those things above well? Like, is it a good music and video player?

 

[JohnDrake]

The Slim is an outstanding media player. Now there are better MP3 players on the market, but none of them have all of the incredible functions of the PSP Slim.

As someone already said its light and comfortable to hold. Also, playing MP3s doesn't drain as much battery life as other functions.

 

[Veho]

One problem, though. Memory. Having a PSP as a media player is pretty much a huge waste if you're going to have your movies coded in any quality lower than the highest, but if you keep the quality high, you'll end up with huge files, and a 1GB Memory Stick will hold a grand total of one movie. Code to a lower quality in order to save on space, and you lose the whole point of having a huge high-quality screen.

 

[jesterscourt]

Yeah just pick up a Zune for 99$ and be done with it

 

[TaMs]

It's a good media device overall. Plays everything. Videos, pictures, music etc. :F Only minus is the lack of space (if you don't have some epic memorystick) and it's maybe little too big. But hey widescreen is worth it. hehe

 

[001100]

Yeah just pick up a Zune for 99$ and be done with it

Yeah, thats what I ended up doing. 30gb memory for 99.99 or
169.99 psp + 4gb card (40.00 if on sale-80.00) Granted Psp offers more,
playing psp games, homebrew and internet. If watching media is your primary goal. Zune or Ipod
might be some other alternatives.


Full charge I get 3hrs 20min.
files are encoded to WMV
Size: 320 X 240
Bit Rate: 768
Frame Rate: Auto
Audio Bit Rate: 64
Sample Rate: 41000

You can do higher Bitrate, quality in the above looks fine for me.

 

[Remy669]

But the PSP isn't made for watching Movies or listening Music. It's made for game. Watching movies and listening to music is a nice little extra.

 

[jesterscourt]

But the PSP isn't made for watching Movies or listening Music. It's made for game. Watching movies and listening to music is a nice little extra.

Not true. The PSP was made to be an all-in-one device, and was marketed as such. UMD movies, anyone? It's partially because of this that sales have been kinda iffy in comparison to the DS, it does a lot of things okay, but nothing great, which is why the DS is dominating, it's designed solely to play games, meanwhile the PSP is trying to play music, movies, browse the internet, and play games. It's not a portable PS2 (Or I'd buy three!) It's more like a widescreen PS 1.5, most of the decent games are ports from it's big brother or miniaturized versions of such. That and the space issues for memory sticks, as it has been stated previously. Now if the PSP was simply a portable playstation, and didn't do anything else, yes. With the recent ad campaigns it seems like Sony finally gave up on UMD movies, and is now really only pushing the games, but no, initially it was marketed as a sorta all-in-one device, maybe not with those exact words, but that was the demographic... "Sure, the DS can play games, but LOOK WHAT THIS THING CAN DO!" was sorta the initial sentiment.

 

[Skv0ra]

Slim+2200mAh battery and say 4-8GB stick owns quite a bit of players out there. You get like 8 hours of video, god knows how many of music, 6 ish of games and I believe that having too much memory is redundant. Will you EVER go through more than 2GB of music in one day? Probably not, but your ipod or zune won't let you play good games or use brew.

 

[mrgone]

regarding the video capabilities:
i have my futurama episodes encoded to ~60mb / episodes
they look okay with occasional blocking

but my transformers ( movie from this year) needs alot of bits
its 800 mb in size, and when i reduced it to like 600 mb i didn't like the result at all

 

[phoood]

My 2 cents:
The psp does what you mentioned well. Videos are nice, the quality you convert them doesn't matter at the end since I always find it very good (been using the fastest/lowest setting in pspvideo9) but the big disadvantage is the price w/ a 4gb ms.

I just wish the psp supported the divx codec, because with either the ds or psp, converting is always a pain in the ass.