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The pricing was expensive, but ultimately I just couldn't answer the big question whether or not I really need a PVP (or how cool I would thing one was if I were to own one).
Then last month I bought a PSP for the intent of having somthing to play videogames with during my downtime. I saw some of my students playing with them and the PSP did look sexy. I'm less interested in playing games on it now than I am watching videos! And I have some good games (at least for my style of gaming): Twisted Metal, Metal Gear Ac!d, and Untold Legends. I bought "Appleseed" on UMD for a long flight, just to check out the quality. As impressed as I was, I still think it is silly to pay so much for somthing you can buy on DVD.
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To be fair, you should guage the cost of the UMD, with the cost of a DVD, the time it takes to rip and encode the movie, the process of saving it to a MS as opposed to having a UMD to "throw" into the PSP at any time for viewing, and the quality of your ripped movies vs. that of the UMD. I guess in some cases, it might be a close call. Living abroad, that decision easily gets flipped into the "rip the DVD and encode it yourself" category. You choose.
Reading through the April 2005 edition of MacAddict I came over a product by Nyko that I had forgotten about. The "MoviePlayer" converts my 3G 40GB iPod into a media player. I haven't read any reviews about it yet, but I'm very interested in using my iPod as a PVP.
If you like movies and you're a gearhead... you'll probably never regret having a good PVP. You'll be amazed how you can fill up "small time" with some video entertainment of your own choosing. I just hope I don't lose my fiance now.
I'm not going to throw down any more cash for a different PVP now that I have a PSP, but I'm not totally satisfied yet. I'm not really happy with the line up of games for the PSP. The memory cards and extra batteries are outrageously priced. The encoding software for DVD to PSP has a long way to go. And I'm not happy that Sony limits the quality level for MS playback. Come on guys! Who knows what's the future of the PSP will be? It's not even a year old yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.