Sony PSP Thread

[Nick!]

As far as the PSP goes, not pushing the hardware means the battery life is much better anyhow. But even Lumines which isn't graphically the most intense of the launch titles has audio and video well beyond anything I've seen on the DS so far. That's just a statement of eye candy, but it may be very telling of the PSP's future.

Seemed like a pretty quiet launch, and my Walmart hasn't run out of PSPs either! But they also have NO signs. I've hardly ever run into anyone who knew what PSP was. Playstation 2 wasn't like that at all! When I would say Playstation Portable the response I got was 'it plays Playstation games? How big is it with those CDs in it'... he he.

Check out the latest Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php...05-03-25&res=l. Sorry for my Lumines gushing. I'm still on the honeymoon.

Arnir: Which screen protector did you get? That sounds horrible! I have the Martin Fields (??) ones. I can't stand the "sticker" types they have at the Gamestop all cheap. They're HORRIBLE. On PDAs too. MF is more like a solid sheet of plastic thats removeable and rewashable.

[arogan]

better link for dead pixel tester:
http://psp.ign.com/articles/599/599236p1.html

best buy has 512mb duo for $60 (10 rebate)

I got the pelican Face armor and so far I like it a lot. It just screws in on the top (big thumb screws), still fits in the original case (though a bit tight now), nicely padded on the interior, and still keeps the psp pretty thin.

I've spent a lot more time with the games over the weekend.

Untold legends: I actually drained my entire battery on this one in a single day. It's a great action rpg with some nice graphics and a lot of convenience features built in. Very easy to pick up, play a bit, and put down (though that was a bit hard for me). I can see it can get a bit repetative but so far I'm enjoying it a lot.

MGS Acid: Stealth + turned based strategy do NOT mix. I've enjoyed a good turned based strategy game before but stealth turned based is a bit odd and pretty slow and dull. I'm only on missing 4. I find it more satisfying to just kill everybody even if I get a bad ranking.

I'm really thinking about getting twisted metal to try the internet play. Everything I have right now is wireless ad hoc only.

Maybe I'll give tunneling a try. I remember back before xbox live I was playing halo over the internet using tunneling. Here we go again...

Also if you are like me and like to use memory card readers and then notice most readers only support regular size memory sticks check out this:
adapter so you can use the duo with any regular size memory stick reader:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...=356244&is=REG
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTE...ductSKU=MSACM2

What's shocking is Rendition holding out this long on not getting one. Come on you know you want one. Put down that shuffle and go get a psp! :-)

[firstadopter]

Lol. I visited a Target, Kmart, and Circuit City yesterday, just to.. uhh.. window shop. And the Sony PSP was sold out at all three, so I haven't been properly tempted yet.

I'm having a blast playing God of War, which is keeping me busy. The bosses on that game are unbelievalbe, huge hydras in the first level took my breath away.

I wonder if it's like RE4 in a way, I wonder which game is better.

[arogan]

A few minor gripes:

- no chapter menu in spiderman 2 umd. You can skip forward and back chapters but no way to go directly to a specific chapter. Also the UMD has to spin up each time you skip chapaters so it's not exactly zippy. Makes it hard to show off your psp trying to find a good action scene with lots of motion. If I have to see spidey deliver pizza one more time......

- video out. If it had that it would be killer. You could output your photos/movies out on a big screen or just play games on your tv.

[arogan]

Just tried several races of wipeout over wifi adhoc 2 players. Connection was a snap and no lag at all. Overall a great experience. I just wish more games supported internet play.

Some tunneling links:
http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/
http://www.xbconnect.com/

[Nick!]

Originally Posted by arogan

Maybe I'll give tunneling a try. I remember back before xbox live I was playing halo over the internet using tunneling. Here we go again...

I eventually wrote a little script to rotate my Airport connection to get around Lumines' goofiness, and it STILL didn't work (but we got farther). Seems tunnelling is a mixed bag because Adhoc just doesn't like work that way. There's luck with Wipeout Pure and Ridge Racers IIRC... but Lumines seems to die because of latency. I heard grumblings on how Untold Legends didn't work either.

I'd expect a lot of the early games that are adhoc only have some very basic network code without strong concepts of robustness -- and I suppose if you aren't involving all that Internet drama you don't need it. Adhoc is local, low latency and high bandwidth.

I was using XLink Kai.

Personally I hope Game Sharing works ok tunnelled, so you can find one person who bought, say, Namco Museum and download Pacman to your PSP over a tunnel. he he. Would Namco/Sony consider that to be piracy if hundreds of people are mooching off one purchase like that?

[arogan]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1780907,00.asp

I tried psp video 9.
Matrix reloaded chapter 23
3:40
I used movie (0-2h) profile with a few changes
64kbps sound, 2 pass, boost volume 120%
368X208, cbr 480kbps, 29.97fps
file size: 14.7mb
Quality wasn't too bad. I bit higher bit rate probably would help.
Motion is smooth with just a tad of macro blocking in some scenes.
4mb/min
2 hr movie around 480mb

This is basically what I was doing with the pocketpc. I tried to encode a movie that fits on a 512mb memory card. I think the latest divx codec actually looks better than h.263. I still need to mess with vbr. I wish it had preview to help crop out the black bars (which would also improve quality since you aren't wasting bits on black space).

DVD -> PSP is super easy.

[arogan]

I tried clipping out the black bars (instead of encoding them). It seemed to work except aspect is all out of whack (everbody is stretched and skinny). It doesn't seem to handle anamorphic material correctly. Anybody know how to fix this?

[arogan]

I finally got my 1gb duo in.

http://www.pspvideo9.com/

after hours of testing here are my recommended settings:

name="rcMovie3" resolution="400x192" vbr="true" vbitrate="384" qscale="5" minrate="0" maxrate="0" framerate="29.97" passes="1" abitrate="96" achannels="2" vol="175" samplerate="24000" crop="true" croptop="40" cropbottom="40" cropleft="70" cropright="70" custflags="" avsfile=""

name="rcTVHQ" resolution="320x240" vbr="true" vbitrate="384" qscale="5" minrate="0" maxrate="0" framerate="29.97" passes="1" abitrate="96" achannels="2" vol="100" samplerate="24000" crop="false" croptop="0" cropbottom="0" cropleft="0" cropright="0" custflags="" avsfile=""

I like the crop of 40 off the top and 70 off the sides. You do lose a bit of picture off the sides but you maintain aspect ratio.

for matrix reloaded to crop off all the black bars you need to use 54.
to calculate the side crop:
16/9*54 = 96
remember you can only crop even numbers.

I encoded all of tron (1:35) and the file size was around 450 megs. Encoding on an athlon 2000xp took about real time.
Overall the quality is pretty good.

at qscale of 5 it tends to encode at around 350 kbs/sec in still scenes and 750 kbs/sec for fast action scenes.

Remeber in dvddecrypter to set in the preferences/ifo to NO split so you get a single vob when you rip. Rip using ifo mode, enable stream processing, choose the video track and ONE audio track.

[Nick!]

http://www.psphacker.com/2005/06/psp...r-picture.html

On Wednesday we discover if this Spanish hacker group has successfully exploited PSP firmware 1.5 to allow booting of homebrews (or, more accurately, unencrypted binaries)... of course, it doesnt look like the exploit will work for 1.51 or 1.52, so if you already updated your firmware, it's not good news for you...

I sure didn't update (I can't get my PSP on my home network anyhow because of lack of WPA support. I need to setup a second network, and as of yet I have not seen a compelling reason to bother. Some of those online DS titles are likely to be that reason)

But Sony is also pushing firmware updates right on game UMDs. So even though you have 1.5 now, if you put Grand Theft Auto PSP in your PSP, you may suddenly find yourself with firmware 1.6 and all your homebrew is broken. That sucks. So you either choose homebrew, or games. [Or, you could wait on games until the point where they figure out how to exploit the firmware that game comes with... seems like it could be a long wait that way, as I'm sure every time Sony fixes something it gets even harder to find another exploit]

It's going to be an interesting cat-and-mouse with the PSP. I'd wish, at the very least, that Sony put out some official software like a stand alone web browser. Or that they'd trust the copy protection of UMDs and allow homebrew, knowing full well that they could patch things with firmware updates. (Of course that gets into the issue of the legality (or not) of emulators, which I'm sure they dont want to allow either)

Hopefully on Wednesday, for a few weeks, I will be playing NES on my PSP ;D *fingers crossed*

(With the DS, all you need is a GBA flash cart and a DS passthrough cart and you can run some DS homebrew off the GBA card... and I'd doubt any firmware update will break that)

[arogan]

stuck or dead pixels? maybe give this a try:
http://www.psp-vault.com/Article168.psp

[arogan]

Hori PSP Screen Protector $5


http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/255993.asp

cheap, easy to apply, no air bubbles, static cling I think (no adhesive), removable, reusable, a bit hard to get all the dust out, VERY CLEAR (I almost couldn't tell if I applied it or not)

This one is suppose to be a lot better than the pelican one.

Highly recommended.

[stupot42]

Originally Posted by arogan

stuck or dead pixels? maybe give this a try:
http://www.psp-vault.com/Article168.psp

Has anyone tried this to unstick pixels on a Dell monitor. I still have a dead pixel on my 2005FPW, and might give this a try.

[arogan]

A friend of mine tried it on a envision lcd panel and he said it worked great. I personally haven't tried it at all on anything.

[stupot42]

Unfortunately I think the pixel on my monitor is just plain old dead. It just stays black, so I'm not optimistic. I left that movie running for 4 hours this evening without luck, but I'll leave it on over night and lets hope for a result. I'll let you know how I get on.

[stupot42]

Just thought I'd update that I left it running for 13hours and still no luck. Like I said, I think it's fried!