Specs

The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is Sony's 21st century multimedia machine. Not only can you play video games on it, but you can also listen to music, view pictures and watch video.

The PSP comes with a beautiful 4.3 inch LCD screen, perfect for playing videos in a widescreen format common to most DVDs. The screen is incredible. Until you see it in person, its hard to really describe the vivid color and depth of the images you see. The first million units shipped came with "Spiderman 2", and the quality of the image was just as good as anything out there.

The PSP has two storage devices: the Universal Media Disc (UMD) and Memory Stick Duo. (Note: Sony has made many different types of Memory Sticks. Only the ones with Duo in their name work with the PSP.) What does this mean? It means Sony has messed up again and wants you to go with a Sony only media format. Even the Memory Stick is different from the one you use on other Sony products. So say you have a Sony Clie, that memory card won't work here.

The UMD is a Sony proprietary optical disc capable of storing 1.8 GB of data in a small package. This is 3 times the capacity of a standard CD. In addition to video, these UMDs can also store PSP games and Audio. These discs are read only, like a CD, and are only produced by Sony at this time. There is no way for anyone, other than Sony, to make their own UMDs at the moment. The rumors are that they may open the format to the general public (let's keep our fingers crossed).

The UMD video discs include DVD-like features like alternate audio and video tracks, scene selection chapters, subtitles, slow motion and fast forward. Sony has already announced a number of UMD Videos, a list of which can be found here.

The Memory Stick Duo (MS) is a Sony proprietary flash stick capable of story up to 2GB of data in an even smaller package. But beware, the 2GB is expensive! The largest MS holds a little under half the capacity of a DVD. These sticks come in all sorts of file sizes including: 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and 2GB. These flash cards are writable and anyone can read and write to these cards either using their PSP and a USB cable or a Memory Stick reader (Yes, you will have to buy a USB cable or Memory Stick reader to transfer files to your PSP Memory Card). So in a nutshell, the PSP doesn't come with a hard drive, the Memory Stick Duo acts as the PSP hard drive. Yes lame. Better yet, they give you a 32mb card to start with. Try not to laugh (hey, thats why Sony missed the boat with digital music players). In addition to video, these memory sticks can also store saved game data, photos and audio. A list of memory sticks can be found here.