PSP the way you want it

(tags video, MMFlash, hacking, failure)

As a Sony product, the PlayStation Portable is locked up. UMD, Memory Stick, Location Free, PS1 emulation. As an owner of many Sony products, I suppose I am used to it.

Take for instance, videos. Any video such as UMD or online from P-TV or Google Video or free official stuff like the Content Pack can be played at full screen. However, videos that you convert yourself are limited to 320 by 240 (update: Firmware 3.30 now allows native PSP resolution!?). You could convert it to Motion-JPEG, but the resulting file size is really a non-starter. So much for converting 16:9 videos to the PSP. Unofficially, there's a hack firmware that enables the playback, but you will need to jump through a lot of "hacking" hoops to be able to use it.

On a related tip, I wanted to watch that crazy Touhou-related music video "Marisa wa taihen na mono wo nusunde ikimashita" (「魔理沙は大変なものを盗んでいきました」) on my PSP. (Yes I bought the CD). The PSP does support Macromedia Flash. Basically you just need to copy it to your Memory Stick, then point your Web Browser to "file:/my/flash/is/here/in/this/folder.swf" and it will play. Except that for this particular video, there was an Out of Memory error, so it didn't play.

And yes, I let a good thing slip through my hands. There was an old copy of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories sitting at the store on Friday, but I was unsure. I double-checked the Internet. It's not a game, it's the (only!) key to hacking a later version PSP. I went back to buy it, but... no picture here means I couldn't. Well at least I saw with my own eyes, because all the other versions of this game that I've seen in the Japan stores are the patched ("Greatest Hits") versions. One thing that worries me is if the Japanese version is already patched. But for now, I just gotta keep a lookout again, instead of resigning to Internet auctioning.

Finally, I bought this mook 「ＰＳＰ裏ｐｅｒｆｅｃｔ」 (ISBN 9784861902130, picture above). It reminds me of the time I bought a mook for copying DVDs to my iPod. It has all the software and knowledge you would have to scour the Internet to get started with unlocking your PSP's potential. Now I am armed with a clue.

Yeah, but my current PSP? I'm reading George Orwell's 1984 on it. So potential-less.

(edit: Google Video is not full screen)

(edit 2: Video size increased in Firmware 3.30?)