PSP is probably my favourite

[scott_mckenzie]

All,

My recommendation for any PMP is the PSP. There are 2 reasons why I would suggest this over the majority of other devices:

1. It plays games.

I know that most people looking at a PMP are probably not interested in this, but nethertheless it's fun every now and then.

2. HOMEBREW!

Because developers have now taken advantage of vulnerabilities of the PSP, the amount of development for applications is brilliant. Last night I was able to stream MP3s, and VIDEO from my Media Centre's drive with an app called PIMPStreamer. This app resizes the video and streams on the fly over WIFI and the picture quality is absolutely brilliant. There's also heaps of other apps out there that take advantage of WIFI and you can do pretty much everything a PMP does (Music, Video, and Pictures).... Only bad point is the storage but 4gb Memory Stick Pro Duos have come down a lot so it's no big deal.

Cheers - Scott

[merovingian]

I just got myself a Creative Zen Vision W 30G. Need it to tame my toddler son with Cars, Wiggles and Bob The Builder on an upcoming flight.

In the end, my decision came down to PSP or the Zen since they were the only two PMPs I could find with a 4" 16:9 screen for under $500. As my son's too young for the games, and I'm not interested in them either, that side of it was no real advantage for the PSP. They key factor was that the PSP plus 4G memory stick comes to about the same price as the Zen with 30G hard drive. Seemed a bit of a no-brainer at that point.

Putting Cars, Wiggles and Bob on there was as simple as copying the files. No re-encoding needed. Works a treat.

Only trouble with the 30G Zen W was that I couldn't find a single bricks and mortar store in Perth that stocked it. Two Tandy's each had one 60G model (but wouldn't let me load anything on it even if I bothered to drive out there), and that was it. So I bought it sight unseen over the internet.

[cheesymong]

Can anyone post a link to the best homebrew and a guide to down grading.

Thanks

Joel

[rcork]

Go to psp-hacks.com and dark-alex.net (NOT dark-alex.com !) and look there - that's where I went to do mine.

I also joined the forum and actually got some live advice just to make sure I didn't do anything wrong (you don't want to 'brick' your PSP), and the guys there were very helpful and giving with their knowledge.

Make sure you know exactly which model you have - check the tutorials and FAQs.

Good luck.

[cheesymong]

Thanks RCORK

[cheesymong]

Originally Posted by scott_mckenzie

All,

Last night I was able to stream MP3s, and VIDEO from my Media Centre's drive with an app called PIMPStreamer. This app resizes the video and streams on the fly over WIFI and the picture quality is absolutely brilliant.

Cheers - Scott

Hey Scott

Have you tried streaming Hi Def content only SD content will stream to the PSP, HD will not and I get 2 errors

"get_packet_stream failed" on HD recorded content and ""pmp_file_open: video.rate < video.scale" on recorded foxtel.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Joel

[scott_mckenzie]

Hey,

Sorry I have to admit that I've only tried SD.... But it worked 100% perfect! I thought it would ahve been capable of scaling it but obviously not.... I think the app uses something called FFDSHOW so maybe there's updates for that component/library but I have not looked into it....

Also I've come accross something wierd.... For some strange reason after copying the PIMPSTREAMER folder from my XP partition to my Vista partiition (as the installer failed in Vista), while it runs perfectly, when I change the ini file to add dvr-ms as an extension it doesn't recognise it in Vista but recognises it on my XP partition if I do exactly the same thing.... Even If I delete the whole folder off my Vista partition and then copy it again using the Folder from my XP partition with the updated ini file it still won't recognise dvr-ms files on Vista. Any ideas? I'm thinking that it might have something to do with Vista getting the ini file data from somewhere else but if I search for the ini file everywhere on the driver there's nothing other than the one in the App folder.

Cheers - Scott

[windeath]

Yep I did the unthinkable and got myself a white PSP. I do not get involved with the homebrew stuff as I've seen and heard to many stories of people bricking them when they fiddle to much. I'm happy just using it as it was intended.

I'm currently hooked on burnout Legends (oh and Ace Combat).

[scott_mckenzie]

Yeah know what you mean RE the risk with the downgraders.... Mind you since I have got it running it's awesome! Just to be able to run all the brilliant apps that others have created is the biggest benefit.... It's also quicker to run homebrew apps because you can access it via the Game menu as opposed to using other exploits.

I have found that as long as you are using the downgrader apps that have been tested successfully then you are OK, but as they say "it's at your own risk!".....

Have to say though Sony is wasting their time with all of these fixes that they release because there are many users with homebrew and now with custom firmwares it will never end! I can understand the whole "pirate game" issue, but the homebrew apps (such as PIMPStreamer) have make the PSP a better tool.

I've heard a rumour that Sony are going to release a PSP without gaming functionality and with a hard drive.... this would be great and hopefully they would allow homebrew on that device coz it wouldn't affect relationships with game developers.

Anyway, just my 2 cents

Cheers - Scott

[rcork]

Hey Windeath, mine's a white one too!

It has the special version of the mobo that at the time they said you couldn't downgrade (model TA-082 running firmware 2.71). Lucky for me dark-alex had JUST released the downgrader specifically developed for this model .

I downloaded everything I needed, did exactly what I was told to (followed the specific tutorials and got some advice live from the PSP-hack chat site prior to performing) and it worked perfectly.

Then I upgraded to dark-alex's 3.03 rev C - awesome!

For me, if I COULDN'T downgrade it it would be virtually useless to me - I wanted it to run PSPVNC and all the old game console emulators - having a blast now!

Don't be scared about bricking it (this too can be undone in most cases), as if you get the right tools and follow the bouncing ball you will be A-OK.

Oh, and by far the best game I've played so far is Pirates (like the old Pirates Gold) - couldn't put it down.