The thing that is really holding back video on the PSP is the lack of a hard drive and the high cost of flash memory in Sony's Memory Stick Duo.

Like I said.

Now it is pretty cool to compress small movie clips for the PSP but it seems like a total pain in the ass to rip a DVD and have to wait several hours to compress it to the PSP MP4 format. Even then you need a $150 memory stick. It is cool that Sony included video playback off the MemoryStick but the talk that the PSP is going to be the new "Video iPod" is just a bunch of hype. It would have been cool to watch a ripped DVD off the MemoryStick but I could buy three games or eight UMD movies for the cost of the bigger card.

Sure there is some cool non-game features on the PSP but the whole goal of the PSP is to sell lots and lots of games and movies in UMD media and make lots of money of game publishing for the PSP. I mean other stuff is cool but it's only goal is to sell games. And oh boy will it ever.

Am I the only one that remembers the Apple Pippen?

Also the Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo Triforce Hardware, Sega Mod-3 arcade hardware and the next generation Nintendo system the N5 Revolution all have PPC CPUs.

I think Microsoft was smoking somthing when they went with a CISC based CPU in the Xbox 1. I mean CISC is so... 1970s.

mPod. Lord, it scares me. The iPod is a hot little device, sure, and the PSP is slowly becoming that "Wait it costs how much, but it... and... really... wow ok I'll take seven," kind of Device, very similar in stampedesque (blog words rule) purchases the way second generation iPod started floating off of shelves. Sony's PSP has technically been on the market for some time now, simply available only in Japan. What surprises me is how these hacks everyone is so quick to show off are actually American developed software. Makes you wonder if the DIY nature of many hackers we witness here in the states is mimic'd in any form in Japan. You'd think we'd be seeing American ports of existing Japanese software if that were the case, or these programs ARE simply re-hacked material re-written for English users.

What I fear however is Sony coming out in the form of Firmware updates and outright devistating a good portion of the popularity the device has thus far enjoyed. Should they wish to change their operating system, even slightly, they could engineer their own glitches that only appear when running an innaproprate function that the PSP is not familar with. This will either breed a smarter hacker, or force consumers to take what Sony packages for them. Take XBox live approach, "Don't mod your XBox and we'll let you pay for downloadable levels for your XBox." Its a good idea, but Microsoft just misses the big picture, to some, cookies pale to compare to a freshly baked cake waiting aside a glass of cold milk. The DIYers reign in this arena, and I fear the time when these bloggers/hackers who are out here saying "Here we are you can't touch us" trigger a war between rights holders who are unhappy with changes made for their systems.

Does installing a foreign software application void your warantee with Sony? Should you try returning your PSP to your local EB Games will they check the internal memory for signs of these hacks? Will connecting to a wi-fi port become limited if your OS is altered past Sony's original intent. The more the "Look what I can do" DIYers tamper with these devices the more Sony will tighten their grip on how open ended the device is, what that translates too unfortunatly is the average user being left with a device that can't do as much as it could due to the DIYers pushing the bar too far. When the system ceases to be Sony's and simply becomes a platform for open source content and Enterpriseless media. Thats not the capitalist way afterall, and big business won't stand for that.

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one made any money off of it, did it actually fall? This is the fall of the .com all over again, only we should know better from day one. You cannot ignore the blog nation, the hackers, and the DIY software designers, then on the same coin, you cannot stop companies from striving to control their digital media, and the marketed "face" of their created devices. The back and forth here is going to continue until someone comes along and pushes that button too many times, like a troubled child "you can't make me" will become the battle cry of legions of hackers and their followers taking direction with an electronics device. DIY centered devices may appear from napsteresque companies trying to capitalize on the culture when the outright nature of the culture is anti-capitalistic from the start. Traditional logic doesn't apply here, and those who forge us forward, be it the hackers finding a way through whatever Sony or whoever throw at them, or the likes of Sony who've finally had enough and lockdown the hardware via some self-enabled wifi feature.

You'll see it on the news. "PSP allows children to access pornography from WiFi hotspot in School Library," what a media frenzy that'll insight. Won't somebody think of the children? Hard to think of the kids at all these days with so many parents allowing them to jack in rather than providing adequate parenting. A replacement for the Television Babysitter is the never ending content feeder that is the web, but when that fails us, and puts these tools of freedom from digital rights in their hands, what then? Is the business fall from the era of the .com simply a precursor to the fact that a digital civil war is brewing? Will hackers turn against Hardware developers and fight for their open source rights? Will consumers shun developers who stand on one end or the other of the debate?

The PSP is a fantastic device, with a great selection of games, great technology, and great open ended hacker-friendly freedom, but with those perks looms a shadow of things to come, when the rights holders say "enough" and install safeguards to the freedoms our DIY and Blog nation currently enjoy. Perhaps I am paranoid, perhaps some bold individual on the side of big business will come up with a plan, to care for these DIYers who are only really hacking a device so they can get more enjoyment out of it. Maybe good will come of all of this, and the hackers will send the message to Sony that more was expected from their device, and the future devices like it, and that they need to turn to this new breed of "consultant" on just what their device can do. Maybe it'll all turn out for the better, really, but my heart tells me that optimism has little place in the future of the DIY nation, because when Big Business feels its not getting its share of the reward, bad things are known to happen.

Hi Watcher Team,

I think the Trend of PSPcasting shows the potential of the Playstation Portable. It is definetly a great multimedia devise.

We called this phenomen "MediaCasting".
This includes: Podcasting, RSS Feeds & PSPCasting:
http://www.cscout.com/blog/index.php?p=46

Best,
Monty

Your article on the m-pod has been employed by many hedge funds to support short thesis on both Portal Player and Sigmatel. May I suggest that Broadcom's Alphamosaic chip has no on-board processor and so can only be employed as an image display accelerator and scalar. It cannot be used as the primary processor in a MP3 player or mPod or PVR or whatever you would like to call it. That role would have to be playerd by a chip like Portalplayer's new 5022.