I want a Sony PSP. I’m not afraid to admit it. I’ve been fairly lukewarm about gaming handhelds in the past, but I really want this one. It’s just my tech geekiness flaring up, I know, but this thing just looks sharp. A decent launch lineup plus more games in the pipeline make for a strong outing against the relatively uncontested marketshare of the Nintendo DS. Sony is relatively quietly releasing the PSP tomorrow across the US, to the delight of hundreds of thousands of fanboys. Some are a little more excited than others. I don’t actually think availability will be an issue tomorrow, but we’ll see, I guess.

In anticipation of the great buyout of Sony merchandise tomorrow, I figured I’d do my part to promote the PSP. Enjoy!

Information

PSP Space — digital download and PSP news headquarters.

PSP Home — “Here at PSP Home.com we aim to provide you with everything you need to know about the Sony Playstation Portable, better known as the Sony PSP.”

PSP 411 — More collected information on the PSP.

PSP Vault — News updates regarding the PSP.

PSP Forums — community of PSP fanboys.

PSPcasting?

The principle here is very cool. Similar to podcasting, but with video, the idea of combing bittorrent, RSS, and video encoding is quite enticing. The application probably isn’t quite there yet, but being that the PSP hasn’t been released yet to build up marketshare, that’s not surprising. It’ll be interesting to see what this will be like in a year.

PSP Video 9 — “PSP Video 9 is a free PSP video conversion and management application. It can convert regular PC video files (avi, mpeg, etc) into PSP video files, as well as manage/copy these PSP video files between your PC and PSP. When combined with another application, Videora + PSP Video 9 form the first PSPcasting solution, allowing you to download, convert and copy video to your PSP, automatically using BitTorrent and RSS technology.”

Videora — “Utilizing BitTorrent peer to peer technology and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, Videora automatically and intelligently finds and downloads video you want to watch.”

Media On PSP

It’s nice to be able to convert your own DVDs for the road. Sure, UMD movies will be coming down the pipe, but if you already own a DVD, why not convert it yourself, if you’ve got the patience? Though Sony memory sticks aren’t cheap yet, they will probably drop in price before too long, making this even more attractive as time goes by.

Video 2 PSP — DVD to PSP conversion guide.

PSP Forums thread on converting video

There is a dark side to PSP owners, though. You can find sites that have torrent links to encoded video. I don’t imagine these sites sticking around very long, as neither the MPAA nor Sony take kindly to that sort of thing.