Reviews

Reviewing digital media devices and services

JVC MP-XV841 MiniNote Review: Small is beautiful
The JVC Mini Note (MP-XV841GB) is what’s known as a sub-notebook, but for such a small system it’s packed with features. What is immediately noticeable is the fantastic screen which is extremely bright and sharp and in a widescreen format (about 9 inches across diagonally) perfect for playing DVD’s on the move. The screen resolution is 1024 x 600.
It’s powered by a 1GHz Pentium processor (Centrino) with speed-step technology, so it slows down to save battery when you don’t need the processing power. Unfortunately the base system only comes with 256MB of memory which is just about enough to run Windows XP (Professional, which came with the unit), though another 512MB can be installed by the user by removing a few screws in the base and inserting and clipping in a single expansion card.
The internal drive plays DVD’s (and comes with WinDVD so you can watch them) and also writes CD’s (both CD-R and R/W). There’s 2 USB ports, an i.link (or IEEE-1394/Firewire) port, 10/100 Ethernet, a V.90 modem, microphone and line out jacks. The in-built microphone is OK for Internet chat type applications and the stereo speakers have a virtual surround sound. You can plug in an external monitor with a supplied adapter, there’s a PC Card slot and a slot for an SD memory card. Not forgetting the built-in WiFi for connecting to wireless networks or hotspots. The disk drive is 40GB split into a drive C: and D:
The docking station/port replicator which comes with is plugs into the same connector as the external monitor, giving you 4 USB ports, an Ethernet socket (LAN), standard VGA connector and an optical digital out so you can listen to your DVD’s through an external surround sound decoder.
JVC include some reasonable software. Pinnacle Studio v9 which is a simple video editing package (supporting capturing video from your DV camera through the firewire port), Real Networks RealOne player, Norton Antivirus (with a 3 month subscription), WinDVD for DVD playback and CC converter a sound enhancing utility.
All work makes you a dull boy
The Mini Note is a full featured PC, though definitely aimed at the user on the move who wants to use the media friendly features – at a light weight. Unfortunately though usable, the keyboard is just too small to do real work and plugging in an external keyboard is definitely needed if you want to touch type (unless you have tiny fingers). The pointing device is a small nipple type in the keyboard and again is usable, though I didn’t find it particularly easy.
Summary
All in all it is a good system, the screen is one of the best out there, it’s got enough grunt to run most standard applications, but I found it too small to use as a desktop machine without external additions. For such a light and portable system it’s pretty usable for working on the move and watching DVD’s.
JCV MP-XV841 MiniNote
1 June, 2005
Vodafone 7100v: Upgrading Its Software And Syncing With PocketMac Blackberry
Following on from my recent detailed review of the Vodafone 7100v Blackberry, I thought it would be worth passing on a few tips I’d learnt over the process. One attempting to reassure readers through the scary process of upgrading the operating system on the 7100 Blackberry; the other, a solution for syncing your information with an Apple Mac – not something that is natively supported by RIM or Vodafone.
Upgrading the software on a Vodafone 7100v Blackberry
Before properly using the Blackberry, I paid a visit to the Blackberry Web site and downloaded the latest software update for my handheld. This is one of the things with advanced devices such as this: they get to be so much like computers that they have new software upgrades available on a regular basis.
Upgrading the software on the handset was quite a daunting experience, because my 7100v refused to connect correctly. I would get repeated error messages, saying it wasn’t connected properly, and the only way to get it connected was to unplug and then reconnect the cable from the handset.
Updating the software on the Blackberry essentially wipes everything off the device before putting new software on, there were a few occasions when I thought, “oh dash, I’ve broken it” because nothing seemed to be responding. These worries proved to be unfounded, as after a few minutes I was greeted by the Vodafone logo appearing on-screen signaling success of the upgrade process.
Syncing (with a Mac)
After updating the software, which by the way you need a Windows computer for, I set about syncing the Blackberry with my Mac. My existing phone, the Sony Ericsson P910i, works correctly out of the box with Mac OS X’s iSync application, syncing wirelessly over Bluetooth within a few seconds.
The 7100v, although it has Bluetooth, doesn’t have a Bluetooth synchronization profile, which in my mind is something the Blackberry developers should have thought about, as it would have been a relatively easy software fix. As a result of this, the Blackberry wouldn’t sync with iSync and the cable wouldn’t work either, as iSync had no drivers for it.
A little research on the Internet revealed a company by the name of PocketMac who make Mac/Blackberry sync software. Upon request, they kindly sent me a free license key for their software, which then allowed me to seamlessly sync my address book and calendar from my Mac to my Blackberry.
PocketMac Blackberry in operation
I did have one or two issues with it initially, but these were to do with using Apple’s new released operating system update, Tiger, which has a new version of iCal, a calendar application, which initially refused to work with PocketMac.
Some lateral thinking was needed – by getting iCal to sync to Entourage, the Mac equivalent of Outlook on Windows, and then telling PocketMac to sync calendars from Entourage, I got it working.
Despite the Tiger problem, that they tell me will be fixed soon, I was impressed with PocketMac Blackberry. It fills a large gap left by RIM’s lack of Mac support.
PocketMac Blackberry
Vodafone 7100v Blackberry
27 May, 2005
Vodafone 7100v Blackberry Review – email; Calendar; Phone
This is the third and final part of this in-depth review focuses on the mainstay of the Blackberry – email, calendar, or even using it to speak to people. The first part of this review, looking at
Usability: 3/5
Syncing: 4/5
Screen: 5/5
Web Browser: 4/5
Email/Messaging: 5/5
Calendar/PIM: 3/5
Software/Features: 2/5
Central Telephone Functions: 4/5
Overall Score: 3.5/5
26 May, 2005
Sony K750i: Pre-release Preview: It’s A Beauty
About a month ago I had the chance to spend two days with a pre-release version of the Sony K750i handset and as it’s now closer to the release of the handset, I thought an overview of the product might be timely.
Despite it being a pre-release version of the phone, the couple of bugs that I came across were pretty small and inconsequential and in general it ran very well.
The form of the phone was, for me quite petit, but that�s to be judged against a Nokia N-Gage QD, which isn’t the lightest of fellows. I soon got used to the size and placement of the keys, picking the use of the central joystick up quickly.
The navigation through the menus is very simple and effective, which is heavily aided by the quality of the good-sized display which takes up the same space as the keypad.
One feature I particularly liked was being able to soft-program the joystick “User Controlled Interface” Hurrah! I set it up to start the built-in audio recorder (quality OK, not great) when I pushed the joystick right, and turn on the bright/near-blinding light that is the flash.
Despite its very handy form (~10cm H, 4-5 cm W, 2 cm D from memory), it has some impressive features.
You morph it in to a camera by sliding the lens cover at the back of the device. Using the 2mpx camera you can easily captures clear pictures with vivid colours during light days.
When shooting in low light levels the quality is noticeably degraded, but what do you expect from a 1cm lens? To account for this they’ve provided a flash that can also be selected to flash SOS with retina-burning brightness!
Video recording is OK, given the devices restrictions.
The biggest news I’ve left to last. It’s also an MP3 music player, which having been using the W800 a lot recently, appears to offer the same functions as the much anticipated first Sony Walkman mobile phone.
It has a play/pause button at the top left on the side, and volume controls on the opposite side (the shutter button is also on that side).
I’d just assumed the K750i would have a ‘normal’ headphone jack, letting me choose the headphones that excited me, but the provided headphones had to be connected via a Sony-interface at the bottom of the phone. This brings obvious advantages, like them having a mic, letting to let you use them as a hands-free set.
Connecting a uploading content was relatively straight forward to setup and use. I can’t comment on its information syncing ability as this wasn’t available.
Conclusion (based on two days usage)
Despite having to get used to a new phone interface, I fell for the K750i over the short period of usage I had. Frankly it was a real struggle for me to give it back. I think this is going to sell by the truck-load (and that’s a lot of phones, because they very small :) ).
Summary
Compact, quality, capable music player and camera phone.
Rating
4/5

We understand the k750i will be released in the next month in Europe.
26 May, 2005
Vodafone 7100v Blackberry Review – In Everyday use
Part syncing a 7100 with a Mac.
I’m writing this review over a few days, using the 7100v instead of my usual phone. Today, I switched the 7100v on in the morning, received and replied to a few emails and set off for the day.
On the bus, I read the PDA edition of the BBC Web site using the built-in Web browser (more fully covered later). After lunch, I pulled it out of my pocket to check over the mail that had arrived. Imagine my horror when I spotted two huge, yellow lines covering the screen. On scrolling, these lines became more pronounced and seemed to spawn more of themselves, until they covered the whole screen. My first thought was that pixels in the screen were damaged, possibly as a result of me sitting on it, as it had been in my back pocket shortly during my lunch break. I tried switching the handset off and back on again, but the lines didn’t disappear. I was already thinking “Oh no, I’ve broken it” when I had the presence of mind to take the battery out. Miraculously, this solved the problem with the screen, suggesting this problem was possibly a software related one, as opposed to a hardware one. I never did track down what caused it but having bugs like this in released software is not a way to reassure customers that a product is beyond the early-adopter stage and while not a major problem. Occurrences like this one do make you slightly wary of purchasing such a device with your own hard-earned money.
Battery life
My initial experience of the battery life was very poor, with the battery dropping from full to empty within about 8 hours. After a few charging cycles, however, this improved dramatically, and the battery now lasts a good two days under relatively heavy use. This discovery came as a very pleasant surprise to me, as with my usage pattern the only other handset that I had managed to keep alive on a single charge for over a day was an ancient Nokia 6210. The one thing that is bad about the battery on this handset, however, is the time it takes to charge up: It takes around 6 hours (!), an unheard of amount of time in my experience of other handsets. This makes my customary “plug it in for an hour before I go out” habit worthless, as the battery doesn’t even come close to full in that time.
Screen
The screen on the 7100 is very impressive in its clarity and brightness – the contrast isn’t bad either. Images viewed on it look very solid, almost as if they are actually colour-printed backlit acetate as opposed to being displayed on an LCD.
The main downfall of the screen is when it is placed in sun-light: The screen is about 5mm below the plastic covering over the screen, and this covering isn’t of particularly high-grade plastic, leading to a badly obscured screen in bright conditions. The cover is also quite reflective, so often you can’t see anything on the screen at all. Indoors however, the screen looks great and everyone I’ve asked about it has been very impressed by it.
Web browsing/access
I have grown accustomed to doing a lot of my Web surfing on the move, or at least not while sitting in front of my computer, as I find it more comfortable that way. To me, it means that the Internet can truly take over from books and newspapers, because you can browse the Net on the sofa, while eating dinner, or anywhere else for that matter and aren’t tied to sitting in a rigid office chair staring at a screen.
As a result of this, the Web browser on the Blackberry was of particular interest to me. RIM seem to have paid particular attention to complying with standards in the design of the Blackberry’s software and this shows in the browser: It supports style sheets and javascript, both features very uncommon for a mobile device. Style sheet support means that, in theory, a Web designer can write one page that will look different when viewed with a small-screen device than when viewed with a full-size computer. This means that it is possible to, for instance, make a small-screen device employ a larger font when rendering a Web page than a computer, to take account of the small screen size. Sadly, sometimes sticking to standards isn’t enough, and this is the case with the Blackberry.
When Web pages are rendered, there are a lot of unnecessary images which would be represented instead by text. This text is usually shown in the ALT tags of the HTML from which the pages are rendered. On a lot of sites, there are a lot of navigation images, which are not good for render time on a low-powered device like the Blackberry: every time a page is opened containing images, these images are downloaded (this takes a long time with the Internet connection on a 7100v being at dial-up speeds). When downloaded these images are resized individually so as to fit on its screen.
Unless the sites that you wish to visit using your Blackberry are graphically very light with little images on them, you may despair of the slow speeds. Other handhelds get around the image problem by simply not displaying all images, only the ones that they think are vital to the site. While this can lead to problems like the right images not being loaded, these problems are uncommon, and the associated speed increase more than makes up for this.
There is a hotkey in between the answer and hang up buttons on the keypad of the Blackberry which opens the Web browser. This may suit some people more than others. Personally, I found it a bit annoying, and it would have been far better to use it as a selection softkey or at least make it configurable.
Part one of this review, looking at how to enter and retrieve information, was published yesterday. Part three will follow.
24 May, 2005
Vodafone 7100v Blackberry Review
Being a self-professed gadget lover, I tend to get new toys as they come out. One particular gadget, however, escaped my grasp: I’d heard about it – all about how it was the oh-so-great new fashion for business users, and about how it was transforming people’s lives (and phone bills too as it happens). You might already have guessed what it is that I’m talking about: The Blackberry.
Introduction
Blackberry is an invention of a company called Research In Motion (RIM), and its primary function is to provide email while you are on the go – as soon as someone sends you an email, it is received into your hand, and you can reply too.
It enables SMS-style communications, albeit with someone using e-mail. The cost advantages are obvious to this form of communication: In the UK, an SMS can cost up to 12p, whereas the bandwidth for sending a similar-length email costs around 1p, depending on the service provider used.
Having e-mail on the move is also the first step to a mobile office, freeing you from the confines of a desk, and allowing you to receive and reply to emails when and where you want. Of course, the Blackberry also integrates seamlessly with office extension numbers and text messaging to provide the full mobile office experience.
Previously, Blackberrys tended to be reserved for executives of large companies, as an expensive Blackberry Enterprise Server was required. This made Blackberrys something that the general public couldn’t afford to implement. To fill this gap, RIM started to offer a Web-based service, that collected emails from a number of ‘normal’ (POP3) email accounts.
Blackberry and Nokia 6630 side-by-side (Blackberry on the right)
While standard Blackberrys have been singularly focused on business user, the 7100 range has been designed for owners of small businesses and individuals to use the Web-based service.
The 7100 sold to a number of mobile phone companies around the world. In the UK it’s called the 7100v, the v signifying it’s been licensed by Vodafone UK. It’s has a different case and final letter in Germany – the 7100t,for Deutsche Telecom.
When I was first contacted about possibly reviewing the Blackberry 7100v, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect: I had never even played with one before. When, a few days later, a package arrived in the post, I unwrapped it in some haste to find a surprisingly small phone lying in front of me.
I’d assumed that Blackberrys were very large, chunky machines, and thus I was surprised to have a phone that was marginally smaller and lighter than the phone that I currently use (Sony Ericsson P910i)!
Keyboard
If anything had caused concern to me, it was the keyboard. Whereas the ‘nornal’ Blackberry has a full QWERTY keyboard, the 7100 has half the number of keys.
Arranged in 5 rows of buttons, it has two letters of the alphabet on each button in a layout similar to QWERTY.
It was unclear if there was going to be any way to adjust to it. Clearly QWERTY is second nature, as is type messages on a mobile phone using T9, but getting used to a new keyboard?
Initially, typing on the 7100’s keyboard actually hurt my head, as your brain is screaming T9 key position to you, but you have to treat it as a QWERTY with half the number of keys.
It is however soon mastered after a few hours of practice, making it is possible to get about half of your normal typing rate on a standard QWERTY keyboard, something which I find impossible with a T9 keypad.
The upper characters on each key (numbers 0-9 and the ? and ! key etc.) are used by tapping them in conjunction with the ALT key, located at the bottom left hand corner of the keypad.
The only disadvantage to having this style of keypad as opposed to a standard T9 one was that it was almost impossible to use one-handed, something which T9 was very good at. This means that it is impossible to fire off a quick text (“Will be late”) while in the car or, in my case, riding a bike. I found this quite annoying, as it meant stopping just to write a quick message, something which isn’t always a viable option. This coupled with the Blackberry’s lack of voice-dialing features shows that it isn’t really intended to be used whilst doing other activities, and thus one must devote full attention to the device when using it for anything more than a simple voice call.
Scroll wheel
Considering that my review model arrived without a manual, you can likely understand my initial total confusion as to how to operate the phone. After about 5 minutes of stabbing buttons and eventually finding the right one to turn it on, I found the small scroll wheel on the side of the phone (see picture above).
This scroll wheel is how you navigate around almost the entire phone. The scroll wheel can be scrolled upwards, downwards and pushed in to select items. To go back a menu level, the escape key, just below it, is used (again, image above).
For those who are not used to a scroll wheel, it may initially feel a bit strange, but within a short while you’ll be wondering how you ever managed without one. Indeed using a handset without one feels clumsy.
It’s also worth mentioning that with the wheel in on the right side of the phone, you may not thing this phone if for the left-handed. I can confirm that left-handers should find no difficulty using this handset, with the only time it may be noticeable is when you need to scroll down long lists, where the dexterity of the thumb would come in useful.
The two further sections of this review; In Everyday use; and focus on its email; Calendar; & Phone are also available, as is a seperate piece focusing on syncing a 7100 with a Mac.
23 May, 2005
Shure E4c Review: Perfect Earpod For The iPod
Summary
While they are expensive, if you want excellent sound reproduction, noise isolation and good looks, these fit the bill.
UK Street Price £190.00
UK Amazon Price £157.58
US Amazon Price $299.00
UK PriceGrabber
US PriceGrabber
Review
Shure have just released their E4c earphones. These are the in-ear type with various mouldings (sleeves) that fit on to the actual phones so you can get a comfortable fit.
There are four types of sleeves, a soft rubber one (that seems to work well) in 3 sizes, a medium rubber one, and a triple flange type (which probably gives the best seal, but you need a biggish ear canal – these would be more suited to studio work) and some foam rubber ones that mould to the canal (compress them [squeeze] before you put them in the ear, and they’ll expand to fit). The foam ones are pretty comfortable, but don’t quite seal as well and maybe more suited to flights or situations where you’re likely to wear them for a while.
Since they are in-ear phones, you’ll either get on with them or not, it depends whether you enjoy things stuck in your ear!
They are slightly fatter than the older E3c phones and though Shure have retained the white colour for the bulk of the barrel, the last section (just before the sleeve) is steel (or metal). They look much better and feel more chunky without being too heavy.
Looks aren’t everything
Of course the main reason for buying earphones is for the sound. The E4c’s do superbly and it seems that bass, midrange and treble have all improved. A big advantage of using in-earphones is that they block off almost all external sound (which can be detrimental to your health if you use them in a situation where you need to hear things going around you). Not being distracted by external noise means the volume of the device you’re listening to can be turned down, which has two advantages i) battery life is extended and ii) more importantly, there is less distortion and notes sound truer.
While sitting on the underground you could just hear the station announcements on the public address system, but not much else. The music playing was ambient dance music and you could really make out the nuances etc. Unfortunately the only downside of blotting out everything made you realise even more how miserable everyone looked.
Looks aren’t cheap
The retail price of the earphones is over £200 (~US$370 ~€293), which is a lot, however if you listen to music all the time and you’re sensible and use them at a low-ish volume, you’ll both appreciate the sound and save your hearing. There are times when they could be invaluable, such as when you’re in noisy surroundings, or using them in a studio.
The packaging has been improved, they come with a selection of sleeves (more can be ordered as well as custom fitted sleeves), replacement inner parts (which can become clogged with wax and become damaged), a wax remover (for the inner part – not your ear), a volume control (which is a separate piece, so you don’t have to use Shure’s, if you’re using it with say an iPod remote), a nylon case to carry the lot in and a mini to big jack adapter.
The only part which lets the units down is the cable itself, which looks and feels a bit flimsy.
Summary
While they are expensive, if you want excellent sound reproduction, noise isolation and good looks, these fit the bill.
Score – 5/5

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16 May, 2005
How-To: Sony PSP Internet Access
Looking for a review and background on the Sony PSP? Steve runs through the highlights.
Games developers have included Internet access in their products. The best example of this is Wipeout Pure, which includes a browser, allowing the user to download new game levels and features. Since the game has a browser built-in, it can be reasonable to assume that Sony have actually put all the code to access the Internet in the PSP itself (and made it available to developers).
Some clever users then looked at what the browser was doing (by monitoring the data packets that the PSP was sending across the Internet via their network) and it all looked pretty normal, i.e. it was just a standard browser. In order to access real sites they had to locally pretend to be the Sony servers that the PSP was accessing. This was accomplished by “spoofing” DNS (DNS is the system that maps names to numbers on the Internet, people like using names, but the Internet actually works by numbers i.e. it’s hard to remember something like 127.0.0.1 but easy to remember “localhost” as a name). The spoofing meant that the PSP would no longer go to the games servers to look for content, but rather a local server which could be configured with any content that was so desired, including a text box that allows you to enter another site name.
Rather than everyone set-up spoof servers, some nice people have done it for you, and these then point to a PSP portal which someone has set-up PSP friendly content. You can access the spoof DNS servers by amending your Internet set-up configuration (on the PSP) and leave everything to automatic except for the DNS settings, into which you enter the spoof server settings.
To complement the PSP portal, a PSP irc client has been written. This is actually a script run on a Webserver, but the output fits on the PSP real estate (screen).
There’s probably going to be a lot of copies of Wipeout Pure sold, purely for its browser capabilities.
Once updated versions of the firmware come out, or there are 3rd party applications, the system will have all the features to be a powerful media hub. It supports WiFi, has a decent screen and video capability now, adding other Internet capabilities will just add the finishing touches to a superb product.
9 May, 2005
How-To: Spotlight, Power Search With Tiger, Mac OS 10.4
It’s that time again, a new version of OS X has been released! For those that aren’t aware of OS X, it’s Apple’s operating system. As usual, OS 10.4 is named after a cat: 10.2 was named Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and the new 10.4 has been titled Tiger.
OS X has been touted by some as uncrashable, and that is how I’ve found it too: After setting it up, I haven’t once restarted my computer despite having installed over 30 applications since. This stability is what makes Apple have such a following of fans, and would be unheard of on a Windows box.
There’s lots of new goodies in Tiger, but in this article I’ll focus on the addition of a search technology called Spotlight, which makes searching through files instantaneous. It also allows the creation of so-called search folders, with links to every file which matches that folder’s search criteria, which I detail lower down.
The clever bit, is that these search folders are self-updating, meaning that as soon as you start writing a document containing the word “banana”, the search folder that is told to look for this word, will find it and create a shortcut to it along with all the other files that contain the word.
This is the spotlight icon in the menubar

Click it.

And type what it is that you are looking for. In my case, I typed ‘Summer’.

Within about one and a half seconds, the above menu appears. Clicking the top icon (Show All), shows a traditional window of all the results for the search. The second icon, labelled Top Hit, is the file that Mac OS X thinks is the most relevant to the search criteria.
The next section of search results lists folders with the word ‘Summer’ in their names. Pretty self-explanatory really.
Then email messages with the word ‘Summer’ in them are listed. The ability to index pretty much anything and then make it searchable is what’s so special about Spotlight.
The following one has items that Spotlight drew up from the calendar application I use.
Images, self-explanatory too.
PDF Documents are listed in the next section. Not many other search applications can index PDF files, but thanks to the tight integration of PDF with Mac OS X it is easily possible.
The last section contains music with the word ‘Summer’ in. Although not apparent here, Spotlight even searches the tags of MP3 and AAC files for words, meaning that if a song file was called, say, Winter but the artist in the tag of the file said ‘Summer’, it would still show up in the list of results.
Searchable folders, or “Smart” folders as Apple likes to call them, work similarly, but they are more use for things you often need to access and don’t want to keep typing into spotlight to find.
Click on the “file” option in the finder and then click on New Smart Folder.

A window appears.

I typed “Summer” in the top right box as before. This instantly showed all the related files:

Next you just have to click on the red circle, the equivalent of the close window button in Windows. Finder asks you where you want to save the smart folder just created. I told it to just save it to the desktop as “Summer”:

Hit Save and the newly created smart folder appears on the desktop:

Summary
Apple are carrying out a pincher movement. Bit by bit, Apple are both removing reasons for Windows users not to switch to Mac, while adding tempting reasons to convert. This latest offering of OS X, in conjunction with less viruses on a Mac, and access to a powerful collection of digital media software (iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD) should encourage Windows users to want an Apple computer. Let’s not forget that the next significant version of Windows, Longhorn, and its promised security and anti-virus features, are still likely to be more than a year away,
Overall, there are many more new features in Tiger, over 200 according to Apple. Having made the change from Windows myself, my suggestion is to spend some time with a Mac and experience it for yourself. You too might make the change.
For those wanting to buy a brand new Apple Mac, they can be purchased from Amazon (US|UK), and if you are a student or are otherwise involved in education, you can get a juicy education discount from Apple, so there’s really no excuse anymore!
Apple Spotlight
6 May, 2005
Sony PSP Review: PlayStation Portable – Not Just Games
We’ve published another piece by Steve, where he covers How-To get your Sony PSP to access the Internet.
Sony have produced a portable games console which on its own merit is going to sell a lot of units. However it has the possibility of becoming a portable media hub that will give even Microsoft a jolt by driving into their Portable Media Center market.
The unit isn’t small, but small enough so it could just about fit inside a large coat pocket. It’s got a fantastic wide screen that is extremely crisp and sharp, 4.3 inches across, supporting 480 x 272 pixels and 16.77 million colours.
The system uses Sony’s 1.8″ UMD optical disk which comes in a protective sheath (like a minidisc). They’re small enough so you could easily carry a few around with you (though don’t eject them unless there’s something solid and accessible beneath you as they have a tendency to fly out and disappear somewhere awkward). There’s also a Memory Stick due (32MB supplied) to allow game saves and other features.
It’s also got WiFi (or to be pedantic IEEE 802.11b which is the 11Mb/s older version) built-in that can be set-up in AdHoc mode allowing game play with other PSPs, or in Infrastructure mode which goes through an access point. Though there doesn’t seem to be any Internet utilities on the device yet (apart from a network update section, which allows the unit to update its system software from Sony i.e. your WiFi connection must connect to the Internet). However it is rumoured that the Opera browser is being ported and there’ll be a firmware update for that, email and calendaring.
The system looks like a USB memory device when attached to a PC (which basically gives access to the Memory Stick) and you can store audio and video on it. Sensibly, Sony support MP3 directly on the PSP, though it will also support ATRACplus encoded music. Interestingly, if someone decides to produce UMD music disks, they only support ATRACplus and linear PCM). Video is H.264/MPEG-4 AVC on the UMD and MPEG-4 SP, AAC on the memory stick.
The CPU runs up to 333MHz and seems to have the grunt when needed.
Multiple languages are supported (including system, video, subtitles, etc) but it seems that game menus are hardcoded by the manufacturer, so if it’s say, a Japanese game, it will have Japanese menus even though the system settings are in English.
Media Center
Once the PSP has real Internet capability it will be a media powerhouse, the screen size is about right for watching movies on the go. You could do this now by converting a current MPEG-2 (DVD) to MPEG-4 and storing it on the memory stick (ignoring all legal ramifications), but in future it’s more than likely you’ll be able to stream movies (or audio) directly to the unit. Sony as a music publisher and movie house, is likely to want to sell its content to a market of portable viewers – it owns both ends of the stick.
Of course, Internet is the key, as stated previously the only utility Sony provide, is to update the firmware of the PSP itself, it’s completely automatic (once WiFi has been configured). The unit goes to Sony’s site, pulls down the new firmware to the memory stick and then loads it into the unit from there.
We’ve published another piece by Steve, where he covers How-To get your Sony PSP to access the Internet.
Look out for a further piece that we’ll be running over the next few weeks on the pros and cons of importing a PSP.
29 April, 2005

UK Street Price	£190.00
UK Amazon Price	£157.58
US Amazon Price	$299.00
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