PSP goes to the movies

PSP goes to the movies

As promised, I watched the UMD version of Spider-Man 2 on my PSP, and here's my report. I was fully prepared to enjoy it and have it dazzle me since, after all, it's a movie disc designed specifically for one device. The sound was reasonably good though it wasn't surround sound and I was using the relatively cheap headphones supplied by Sony. But the picture, that's another story.

If someone rigs a way to hook a PSP to your living TV set (and I'm sure we'll be hearing about a hack to do just that by, I don't know, noon tomorrow?), I wouldn't expect the movies to look nearly as good as a DVD - particularly on an HD-capable screen. But on the portable it was made to play on, it should look great, right?

Yes and no. The PSP does have a gorgeous screen, but only if you keep it at arm's length. Up close, you'll get smacked in the face by the screen door.

Those of you who know your TVs are no doubt emitting a collective "Aha!" The rest of you are scratching your noggins. Allow me to explain.

Most of the pricier TV options (plasma, LCD, DLP) have one big problem: Viewed up close, you can see the grid of picture elements used to display your programs. Translated into non-geek speak, it's like a woman who wears a lot of makeup. Across a crowded room, she's a supermodel. Move in for a smooch and, well, you start to see the effect that all of those years of cosmetic abuse have had on her skin. You literally see a screen door mesh overlayed on your TV picture.

The trick is to sit back about 5-7 feet from your set. Then the mesh disappears and all you see is a great picture (assuming you have a great TV that's reasonably well calibrated). Or if you're at a party, "Hello beautiful!"

The same thing happens with the PSP. If you're sitting down playing a game, you're probably holding the device about 15-20 inches away from your face. The picture looks fantastic and, besides, things are happening on it that require all of your attention. When you're playing games you probably aren't studying any one part of the screen too closely. But try to replicate the widescreen cinema experience by moving the PSP within 10 inches of your face and you'll see an ugly mesh of disgusting dots. Blech.

The effect diminuishes during action scenes where your eyes are busy following everything that's going on. But slow things down for a quiet talking scene and your eyes will focus in on the underlying pixel-pushing technology. Let's just say that releasing My Dinner with Andre on UMD probably wouldn't be a good idea, even if Wallace Shawn does somehow develop a devoted following among handheld gamers.

True, the PSP has a huge screen for a gaming device. But it's not so big for a movie player - just about any DVD portable would kick its ass, and usually for less money. It'll have the screen door problem too, but thanks to the bigger screen you can hold it further away and still enjoy a bigger picture than the PSP up close.

Another flaw with UMD movies (apart from everything that I've already chronicled) is the lack of a zoom feature. Regardless of what you're watching, there are often times when the PSP's small screen just doesn't cut it in the detail department. You might want a close up of the action, whether it's to examine a small background element or some hottie who's going all girls gone wild.

I suspect this is due to the UMD movie discs' reduced resolution. If you were gambling millions of dollars on a cool new consumer electronics product, you probably wouldn't invest in a feature that shows off your biggest flaw. Just don't expect to be able to read any of the closing credits on your UMD movies. I know, everybody skips those anyway. But it just seems disrespectful for a movie studio to develop a video format that slights the hundreds of people who toiled away on a movie project for them.

Don't get me wrong, I still like my PSP and even harbor some hope that it'll go mainstream as a portable device for video content - if Sony ups the ante a bit.

But the screen door effect that its tiny screen emits is a pretty strong nail in its coffin as a serious platform for UMD movies. If the screen were a bit bigger, you could watch it from further away. But, at the end of the day, the device is a convenient size and not bad for watching TV shows and movies where convenience weighs higher than your investment in the media. (Well, after the price of memory sticks drops again.)

I'm sorry UMD, but I would expect a much better experience for a $12-20 movie title. Whereas if I already owned the movie on DVD and simply ripped a reduced quality copy to my PSP for on-the-go viewing, I'd be pretty happy. But who would spend money on a disc that's locked to a device with these kinds of playback flaws?

People with more money than sense.

-=Gamewatcher

p.s. - I blitzed a year's worth of iTunes data by moving my music files to an external hard drive, so I've been spending much of the weekend piecing back together as much of the ratings and song lists as I can. I finally had to spend $20 on a third-party app to recover most of this data from my iPod (where, fortunately, most of it had been sync'd). As I type this I'm about halfway through what looks to be a 12-hour copy operation. When it's all done, I suspect I might find that I screwed it up and have to do it again.

Thanks, Apple. So much for iPods being "Grandma easy." Still, even with this nasty little turn they're a damn sight more intuitive than PSPs for portable media - at this point.