21st Century Toy

In addition to games, PSP functions just as confidently as a music and movie player. It rivals the best of the MP3 players for sound quality, and is first to market with DVD-quality movie-playback quality on such a compact device.

Music files can be encoded for PSP as MP3, ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding 3) and ATRACplus. ATRAC is Sony’s audio compression technology developed for its ‘Network Walkman’ range (MP3 players to you and me). Playback options on PSP are extensive, although not as in-depth as those on dedicated players in terms of graphic equalisers presets and so on. Judging on pure playback quality though, PSP is second to none.

Movies on PSP are encoded as MPEG4 files. The easiest way to watch them is from pre-recorded UMD. There is already a rapidly expanding range of major releases available to buy, including Spider-Man 2, House of Flying Daggers, Alien vs Predator and Bourne Supremacy. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is also collaborating with Sanctuary Visual Entertainment to bring over 100 music titles to PSP.

Both music and movie/video files can be saved onto Memory Stick Duo. The 32MB version included with every PSP is okay for a handful of compressed music files, but you’ll want to upgrade before dabbling in video files – a full-length movie formatted for PSP viewing eats up 350MB!

Next: PSP Download Festival