Hi there!
It has been almost three months since my last post, but I summed up enough new information about a newly purchased portable device for the mobile-computing folks like myself.
When I was around, looking for interesting mobile devices, I never thought about adding Sony´s PlayStation Portable (PSP) to my searching concerns, I believed it to be solely a gaming handheld, for people that only desire to have something to play with when they are not at home, but sitting in a bus / train / whatever.
I just can not tell you how wrong I was.
This device has a more than active programming community behind it, that delivers a whole bunch of self-written (homebrew) software to be used on it. I would have never dreamt of that.
The hardware base is more than promising: 1 to 333Mhz variable speed CPU (standard running at 222Mhz), 3D-Graphics Processor that almost reaches PlayStation 2-quality(!), an excellent 480x272 pixel 16:9 tft screen (though its refresh rate is sub-standard), a memory stick duo slot (It´s a Sony, afterall ;) ), USB-Port, WiFi, stereo speakers and so on...combined into a very sleek design with a shiny finish. Simply beautiful :)
The standard functions and features are already numerous and impressing enough to justify owning a PSP.
Here are a few:
- Gaming, of course, is perfect a thing to do on the PSP, as the technical level reaches almost the PS2 (in some cases even surpassing it), and the device is basically a PlayStation-pad with a screen in the middle. The PSP got me back on gaming, as playing games on the QTEK always was a problem due to the button layout. It just was not made for gaming.
- MP3-playback with an beautiful graphical interface, including nice visual "plug-ins"
- Movie playback: convert your own videos to .MP4 AVC or SP codecs, and play them from memory stick, or buy the movies on UMD (Universal Media Disc) discs. The image quality on UMD is breathtaking. As there is 1.8 GB of space on an UMD-Disc, you won´t see any compression artifacts or alike at all. In my personal opinion, it is hard for every other portable media player to reach that movie quality, simply because people tend to compress movies to around 700MB, so that they fit on a standard CD. But 1.8GB can just hold so much more data ;)
- Web Browser: hook up wirelessly to an access point or hot-spot, and there you go. 480x272 pixels seems not that much for browsing, and is smaller than the 640x240 of the HP620LX, but it still sufficient, and I use it regularly. Flash and JavaScript is onboard, Java not.
Due to flaws in the original Sony firmware, the homebrew-scene was, as mentioned above, able to execute their own program code, enhancing the possibilites to an entirely new level. Here is a list of programs I use (click on image to inflate it):
The PlayStation 1 Emulator. Yes, you read it right. You can play PlayStation 1 games on the PSP, PS2 games do not work though, but all interesting PS2-games have their own PSP-version anyway ;) This Emulator is made by Sony and integrated into the standard firmware. Nice!
Gran Turismo 1 on-the-go. No kind of graphic enhancements or whatsoever over the original PS-One version, though, but still, the original game, running at the original speed.
ScummVM at its PSP-glory. Even Curse of Monkey Island looks wonderful on it, the big screen is really helpful with that game. Screen showing "Day of the Tentacle".
PSPUAE, the Amiga emulator. Unlike with Windows Mobile devices, the PSP´s screen is not touch-sensitive. Mouse is emulated via the analog stick thingy on the PSP, which works pretty good! Emulation speed on 333Mhz is significantly higher than with the QTEK @ 252 Mhz.
Super Nintendo (SNES) Emulator: PERFECT! All original SNES-pad buttons are physically on the PSP, so you play the games just like playing them with an original nintendo pad. Even L + R shoulder buttons are there (in a nice glass finish). Emulation speed at 333 Mhz is 1:1, means 60 frames per second with 2D titles like Mario. 3D (Mode 7) games require much more emulation resources and run at original speed with frameskip-settings of 1 (30 fps) or 2 (20 fps), depending on the game.
Super Mario World. With 2D-side scrolling games you can notice the PSP screen´s refresh lag quite good. Moving things on the screen can get blurry. The darker the pixels get, the longer it takes for them to quickly change color. I never noticed anything like that on the QTEK´s tft, still, compared to the HP620´s DSTN screen, the PSP screen is far from problematic ;). But, there is still much room for improvement concerning the screen.
Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) Emulator. Perfect speed, perfect playability. Screen showing "Sonic, the Hedgehog"
Every platform needs it´s own DooM port :) As you would have expected, no performance problems or what-so-ever. Strafing with L + R is very intuitive.
The built-in browser. Good: it has different profiles for adjusting and rearranging the page to the PSP screen and tabbed browsing. Bad: it has some kind of memory limit, some really complex pages won´t load completely. The second browser I use is "Links 2", which has been ported to the PSP. No need to say that browsing on the PSP is far more convenient than on the tiny QTEK-screen.
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