I’m going to buy a PSP (as in today or tomorrow), but I had trouble on deciding whether to buy a Japanese or US version.
Now my region is region 2, so a Japanese PSP would play UMD movies I get here, but on the other hand I remember hearing about defects and other things in the Japanese version of the PSP. Also, the Japanese PSP is significantly cheaper than the US version where I live.
Are there any other differences between the US and the Japanese PSP? Can the language easily be changed or do I need to download firmware? Are there any homebrew apps that let you evade the UMD region code?
Buy a white one to be sure and get the latest hardware revision - it has all the 1st batch problems fixed. Well, all the ones sony will bother to fix, the LCD is stil lass quality (100ms refresh or some horrid shit)
There are no homebrew dealies that I know of that allow you to get by the region code on a UMD video. But it only affects video anyways, and there are very few reasons to buy one of those. Pick up a giga pack if you can so you are spending $50 on a 32mb stick. Spending $100 on a 1gb stick isnt a good deal either, but its betetr than wasting money w/ the ‘value’ pack.
I was writing it off as an optoin because last time I checked, the author stated that it only works with an ISO of a UMD video, not with a real umd video, and there isnt much reason to rip a umd video. The option was there, but not functional as far as actual videoUMD usage goes, and AFAIK you did indeed need to set it to get a VIDEO iso to load properly if it had a different region than your machine. He is now retired, so the tool wont be getting any updates to make the feature function.
Tranq: the first batch of japanese ones had an iffier square button (1.0). The US early ones (1.5, also the 1.52 batches) had somevery slightly wonky dpads and buttons themselves compared to the newer ones (2.0, white one’s generation) The earlier batches may have also had more dead pixels, I dunno. I’d buy the most recent one possible I could if I were you, the buttons are supposedly much better on the newest ones, dpad included.
And ALL of them have lousy lousy lousy screens for gaming, because sony and their customers are cheap asses. (it’d be 1000x more fun to play games on if it had cost $500 and had an LCD w/ a decent response time)
that said, it’s fine, but play a gohsty game on it (gta/thug/untold legends) to be sure you are ok with it before you buy, IMO it is the #1 HW flaw in the system and all units suffer from it, and there is no end in sight. It ruins more games than a funky square button ever will, ie- death junior, while sucky on its own, it godawful with the darker environments due to ghosting. I’m starting to think dev systems have a totally different screen or more steps would be taken to minimize the problem (pallette choices affect it rgeatly, some games, like wipeout, hardly have any ghosting at all)
Are there any apps that let you encode certain video formats into MP4 that work better than others? I’ve got quite a few DVDs of TV shows ripped onto my PC and I’d like to encode those so I can watch it on the bus to college in the mornings. Also, how small does a file become when compressed into MP4? Suppose an episode of a show is around 200 MB, how small does it become after the encoding?
I’m also thinking my first game would be a racing game, and it seems the better of the crop out there are Ridge Racer, Wipeout Pure and Burnout Legends. Heard Midnight Club had terrible load times. So any recommendations for one of these?
Also was there any improvement in battery life with the hardware revisions?
Wipeout Pure and Burnout are obvious choices. Wipeout has tons of downloadble content. There are 5 download packs for Wipeout, you get two new cars and something like 10 new tracks. Burnout PSP is basically Burnout 3 with a few small additions, which is a good thing.
Ridge Racer gets repetitive, and Midnight Club 3 doesn’t just have long load times, it has load times in excess of a minute, before and after each race. For a 2 minute race.
battery is the same, though there is a, I think 20%, longer lasting battery on the market in japan. The battery is fine though, get a charger case or something if you fly a LOT, that will give you 7 more hours or so.
Burnout legends is the best racing game, fairly short loads and fantastic game. Terrible music. Wipeout/RR, to me, were good but got old fast, burnout stays fresh longer. Also wipeout/rr will likely become ‘greatest hits’ before burnout. GTA also has racing :D (burnout is ‘tighter’ ontrol wise though)
And you didnt ask about an rpg, but Legend of Heroes is decent fun so far, though very stale.
as for mp4, pspvideo9 works alright for me, size depends on quality, most of my movies are 350mb or so, for like an hour and 45 minutes or so. I’d start w/ dvd as the source though, going from avi or whatever to mp4 is going to be slightly lower quality I think, due to be compressed mutliple times in different ways. Maybe not, I just always start w/ the best source I have out of habit.
Another thing: stick w/ 2.0 for awhile until you are sure you dont care about homebrew / emulation. 2.01/2.50 will lock you out, 2.0 can be rolled down to 1.5 and can also run a few things as 2.0, like SNES, GB/c, NES emulators. It will be painful for me when I have to let thoise go, but the megaman remakes, the gradius package and ghost n ghosts etc… will help a bit.
No problem, they are cool little consoles, but they definately have some issues that buyers should be aware of (both good and bad things that people may not know)
Ask me about a DS and I’d just say ‘go buy it and MK and Castlevania’
Be aware the Moore’s criticisms (re: screen) are not the normal opinion of PSP owners. The bright and wide screen is usually the biggest PSP selling point. The response time is high, but that may or may not be a bother. I wouldn’t have noticed it myself if it weren’t for people mentioning it. Having said that some people are more sensitive to ghosting then others so it could be a problem for you.
Well, I notice a ton of ghosting on my PSP, but it’s worse in some games than others. The Con and Untold Legends are particularly bad.
The only real drawback of the PSP is the price. I love mine, but if I wasn’t able to afford both a PSP and a DS I’d have gone DS-only. The PSP is more than twice as much if you factor in game costs, but it’s not twice as good, especially with all the amazing DS games out there.
everything about the screen other than response time is fine. I get a bit frothy about the ghosting since most reviewers blame it on games, almost noone mentions it when praising the wonderful screen (it is fine, but wonderful implies that it hasnt got any issues, and the ghosting can be an issue, depending on game and temperature)
It drives me nuts how they get a pass as far as reponse time goes. When your charaerts legs in GTA (while wearing any of the darker clothes) literally blur like a looney toon when running, it is a flaw. If there was a bit more uproar, there would be hope for later revisions fixing the problem (like the button issue was fixed) and I’d happily buy a new PSP to get rid of the issue.
I really did feel a bit burned when I bought mine, since no press or anythnig had any comments on the screen aside from it being AMAZING and WONDERFUL. I’m just trying to prepare him a bit so he isnt as dissapointed as I was. I like the device, I like some of the games and I’m excited about a bunch of games coming, but the screen detracts from it to the point where when I buy a game I cross my fingers that it wont ‘be all ghosty’
Kryten: No pda functions on either one. The DS is the only one where I could imagine that not sucking, but I’m biased towards stylus input for PDAs due to using, well, PDAs in the past.
