-Video

Finally, we have PSP video playback. I won't go in to how to create videos for the PSP too much, because of its simplicity -- a piece of software called the "3GP Convertor" has been created just for this purpose. You drag your DivX/XviD/whatever files into the software, select your quality setting, and it will churn out a .mp4 file ready to be loaded o­nto a Memory Stick and played o­n your PSP. There's a couple other things involved in the process, but Engadget has laid nearly all of them out in their excellent HOWTO guide about creating videos for playback on the PSP. By all means, take a look.

Because of the PSP's screen, video playback o­n the unit is nothing short of fantastic. Video files need to be renamed in order to be recognized by the PSP (see the Engadget guide), but that's ok -- all file names are retained in the extended MPEG-4 information, which is recognized by the unit. In other words, you may have to rename "BattleRoyale.avi" to "M4V31248.mp4," but when you actually go to play it o­n the PSP, it will still show up as "BattleRoyale."

One shortcoming of the video playback is the limited resolution -- all videos have to be 320 x 240. Considering the 16:9 aspect ratio of the PSP's screen, you'd think Sony would have thrown in some support for MPEG-4 video of the same aspect ratio (because 320 x 240 videos are 4:3). As it turns out, however, MPEG-4 video in an aspect ratio OTHER than 4:3 isn't officially MPEG-4 compliant, so I'm thinking that's what led them to do so. Still, I'm hoping someone comes up with a hack to solve this problem, because otherwise, you're forced to lose some of your video or watch things at the wrong aspect ratio. There's a couple options here -- more o­n this later.

Once you've got your video selected, press O, and it will immediately begin playback. If you hit X to exit video playback at any point, then go back to the video, it will resume where you left off. This doesn't appear to last through a power-off, though, meaning you'll need to remember where you left off in your video should you need to stop halfway through for whatever reason. Again, this is hopefully something Sony can fix in a future firmware update.

Your video is now playing. Pressing triangle brings up a small control panel, giving you a few options. Not o­nly are normal playback controls available (including those can be normally accessed by pressing the buttons...for example, right arrow sets different levels of fast-forward, and left sets rewind), but there are extended options. Here's where the aspect ratio comes back into play. "Screen Mode" allows you to select what sort of playback mode you'd like for your video. "Original" shows the video in a 320 x 240 block o­n the PSP (actually creating a total of about a half inch of space above and below the video; because 240 is 32 pixels short of 272), "Normal" will blow the video up to 366 x 272 (still 4:3), "Zoom" displays video that's 480 x 320 (still 4:3, but cuts off some video at top and bottom), then finally "Full Screen" which forces 320 x 240 video into a 480 x 272 screen (thus changing your aspect ratio to 16:9, making things look stretched). Because I'd rather have wasted space o­n my screen than a video in the wrong aspect ratio, I find myself using "Normal."

Display provides a bar o­n top and bottom of the video display information such as name, duration, and such, similar to that of the display o­n the Music playback mode.

Finally, two playback options I was happy to see are Slow Motion and Frame Advance. I'm not entirely sure why Sony would include such modes o­n a player of this size (hell, I don't think my DVD player even has Slow Motion), but as far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier.

Click the image below for a video demonstration of the PSP's video playback functionality (DivX 5, 2.60MB, 0:56).

Conclusions o­n the next and final page.