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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Fuck Sony: Why I Won't Buy A PSP

(Originally posted on Hawanja.com on 7/29/05)

The PSP is awsome. It looks cool, the games are nice, it's compact, the screen is incredible, plus it's hacakable to do all kinds of cool shit. The day it came out all the guys at the office show up with thier PSPs that they had to wait outside of the store at 6 am to get. I was blown away.

Then why don't I get one? Why aren't I dropping the three bills to partake in the high tech piece of ultra goodness? Why am I writing a page called "Fuck Sony?" Becasue Sony fucking sucks donkey nuts, that's why. Before all the fanboys start complaining, let me explain my particular gripe here with the PSP, proprietary format.

In order to watch your own videos on a PSP you have to encode them on a memory stick. In order to get anything of decent length you'll need at least 1 GB. But the PSP only works with Sony's own propritary line of memeory cards, Memory Stick PRO Duo format. So I've already dropped $250+ on a PSP and games and crap, now I have to spend another $100 on Sony's special brand of memory card to get full useage out of it. Fuck that.

Plus add to the fact that your video has to be in some wierd-ass Sony codec to run. So if I compress a 2 hr movie down to 1GB with Xvid or something, too bad, can't watch that. Sony's own codec only lets you get on about half an hour of video on 1GB. Like one episode of the Simpsons. They don't even include the damn program in with the PSP either, you have to download 4 different programs to do it (Sony's own program costs an additional 10$, bringing the total price of the PSP, 1 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo card, and Sony video encoding program to $310.) Many people have pointed out to me that all the restrictions Sony places on it's PSP in regards to format and security are easily circumvented or otherwise hackable, and anyone with a brain should be able to get around them. That's fine, but the point is you shouldn't have to do all this in order to get full intended usuage. All the other portable media players out there work with many types of memory cards, play many types of formats, I don't have to spend more and more money every time I turn around just to watch an episode of Family Guy while waiting in line at the DMV. What the hell kind of crap is this?

How hard would have it been to make the PSP compatible with any type of memory card? Why can't I use a cheaper card I already own, why the hell do I have to buy thier memory card? That's like me buying a Panasonic DVD player and finding out it only plays Panasonic DVDs. How hard would have it been to include the coding software with the package? How hard would have it been to allow the PSP to use other types of video codecs? It's bullshit.



Fucking Greedy ass Sony.

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