PSP Round-up - Skype, Blu-ray movie conversion and GPS

The big news from Sony at CES had nothing to do with gaming. Instead, expect your PlayStation Portable to become more useful at just about everything else. First there's the news that Skype voice calling and related features will become available for PSP in late January, though only on the newer slim models due to their enhanced processing power. Next, Sony announced that the PS3 will eventually get a feature that permits copying a lower-resolution version of your Blu-ray movies to a PSP or memory stick for portable playback. (This, along with the news that Warner Bros and most likely Paramount will abandon HD-DVD, suggests the tide has turned toward Sony in the HD format war.) Finally, Sony revealed that its GPS accessory (already out in Japan) will launch in the U.S. sometime in 2007 - and it will work with the older PSPs...