Tuesday, August 09, 2005

high-res video on the go

nyanko mentioned earlier that I am a recent recipient of a Sony PSP as a birthday gift (thanks to all my awesome friends). I'm told that this thing plays games, but my real interest is in using it as a portable video/web-browsing device.
For those of you who haven't seen one yet, the PSP sports a very sharp 16:9 LCD screen, making it optimal for viewing all this crazy widescreen stuff that's so popular these days. I've managed to successfully convert a small 5-minute .avi TV-show file into the PSP format, and it looks great.
Even more promising, a recent firmware patch to the PSP has enabled H.264/AVC video. The tool I'm watching the most closely is pspvideo9 and I'm hoping that by the time I can dig up enough cash to buy a large memory stick (I wish Sony would learn what 'standard' means) I'll be watching The Wire on my PSP everywhere I go.

On a related note, all my ranting about the PSP got nyanko thinking about it, but it seems like a pure portable-tv solution might be found in the upcoming Creative Zen Vision. Built-in TivoToGo and a much larger storage capacity for the win. Lame 4:3 aspect ratio screen for the loss.

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