April showers bring pranks and dead pixels

April showers bring pranks and dead pixels

Check the date - it's April Fool's Day. C'mon, "punk'd" and "DiP"? The clues were there.

For the five of you still scratching your heads, there is no DVD into PSP.

Though I have to say, why the hell not?

I mean, there's a USB 2.0 connector sitting right on top of the PSP, minding its own business and not doing anything. Most people won't even use it. And there are ultrathin DVD players dropping in price everyday. Subtract the screen (since the PSP has one) and you could create a sub-$100 peripheral that would help drive sales of this portable gaming platform. It plays games, it plays music files, it plays movie files, it plays DVDs. It even plays some formats like UMD and ATRAC that nobody but Sony wants or needs.

I have to admit the honeymoon has worn off on the PSP just a little bit. I absolutely refuse to pay MSRP for the overpriced Memory Stick Duos, so that really limits my ability to enjoy services like Videora. And until today I only had two PSP games, and they're competing with Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater on the PS2 and now Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on the Xbox.

After a weeklong quest, I finally tracked down a copy of Lumines. From what I've heard, this is the PSP game to own - and good luck finding it. I hope to log a little time with it this weekend, if I can wrestle it away from GrrlGotGame. She absolutely loves Tetris and puzzle games, and this is right up her alley.

I've also heard a lot of whining about dead pixels on the PSP screen. I have one that's stuck, right smack dab in the middle of my screen. And I could care less.

When I bought a 42-inch rear-projection LCD TV a little over a year ago, I located and fixated on a stuck pixel almost immediately. I'd been reading all of the video forums and hearing all of the whining (mostly from plasma owners) that stuck pixels were a huge downside to LCDs. And that TV was a significant investment (10x the price of a PSP). The more I stared at the stuck pixel, the more pissed off I got. But I eventually started actually watching the programs on it instead of staring at a single spot on the screen and, you know what? I haven't seen it more than a year. It's like it isn't there.

Sony's advice, for once, is right on the money: Hang onto your PSP and play it for a week or so. If it still bothers you, call 'em on it. If you have a cluster of dead or stuck pixels that are close together, get a replacement. Otherwise, you're probably fine and will have years of pleasant gaming ahead.

-=Gamewatcher