wraggster
November 11th, 2005, 17:35
Team Xtenders PSP2TV (http://www.lik-sang.com/info.php?products_id=7749&lsaid=219793) has today been given a once over by the Gaming Network known as IGN, heres what IGN (http://gear.ign.com/articles/666/666034p1.html) thought of the Device:
Final Impressions
The blocky image quality is obviously a disappointment, but it's not necessarily a deal-breaker. Framerate and color is nice, and you can get used to some of the resolution loss. We've used Sony's own equipment for capturing PSP video, and it's far from perfect as well. We'll be testing the other video utilities that come down the pipe, but unless Sony makes a UMD player for PS3, this will likely be the best solution to put PSP video on a TV set for a while.
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/files/psp2tv-hands-on-20051110102025715-000.jpg
Still, the scaling quality sometimes makes beautiful PSP games look like PS1 games when put up on the big screen. We would have loved for that Turbo switch to have been replaced with a brightness dial or something else to help pick up the picture quality. And the blockiness seems like a problem with the PSP2TV box rather than a technical impossibility in putting PSP-sized pictures on a TV. Pixels are getting dropped, and your TV needs all of the pixels it can get (up to its resolution, of course) to make PSP games look as great as they do on the handheld system. Fortunately, this seems to be something that might get fixed in the future -- now that our PSPs are modified and have an output plug, a new PSP2TV dongle with better filters (albeit more expensive filters) might make everything better if Team Xtender makes a better PSP2TV sometime down the line. We'll also be in touch with the PSP2TV's makers to see if maybe there are any options for making the picture come out a little better (don't think of this as a review just yet -- we're still putting the PSP2TV through its paces.)
Overall, it's a good solution to the problem, and the actual install and hardware construction is a hell of a lot better than we've seen from products by other developers (we've bought Memory Stick components that didn't even fit in the Memory Stick slot, so it tells you something that we were able to put this together and have it look like a brand new PSP without a lot of prior assembly experience.) The video quality is short of perfect, but for a direct-feed solution, it's the best you're going to get for a while, and it's possible that it might get better in the future. The price is also not bad for what you're getting in the box, although whether you'll feel good about dropping $120 for a mod to put PSP video on TV in the first place is up to you. You'll be seeing a lot more of PSP2TV on IGN, as it's our only PSP video output solution at the time, so keep an eye out for examples of its video qualities to see if PSP2TV is right for you.
If you are interested in purchasing the PSP2TV, you can check your local MOD or import shop, including Lik-Sang (http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3723&lsaid=219793) and others. Shipments should be in stores as you read this.
Post your views of the review in the comments :)
Final Impressions
The blocky image quality is obviously a disappointment, but it's not necessarily a deal-breaker. Framerate and color is nice, and you can get used to some of the resolution loss. We've used Sony's own equipment for capturing PSP video, and it's far from perfect as well. We'll be testing the other video utilities that come down the pipe, but unless Sony makes a UMD player for PS3, this will likely be the best solution to put PSP video on a TV set for a while.
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/files/psp2tv-hands-on-20051110102025715-000.jpg
Still, the scaling quality sometimes makes beautiful PSP games look like PS1 games when put up on the big screen. We would have loved for that Turbo switch to have been replaced with a brightness dial or something else to help pick up the picture quality. And the blockiness seems like a problem with the PSP2TV box rather than a technical impossibility in putting PSP-sized pictures on a TV. Pixels are getting dropped, and your TV needs all of the pixels it can get (up to its resolution, of course) to make PSP games look as great as they do on the handheld system. Fortunately, this seems to be something that might get fixed in the future -- now that our PSPs are modified and have an output plug, a new PSP2TV dongle with better filters (albeit more expensive filters) might make everything better if Team Xtender makes a better PSP2TV sometime down the line. We'll also be in touch with the PSP2TV's makers to see if maybe there are any options for making the picture come out a little better (don't think of this as a review just yet -- we're still putting the PSP2TV through its paces.)
Overall, it's a good solution to the problem, and the actual install and hardware construction is a hell of a lot better than we've seen from products by other developers (we've bought Memory Stick components that didn't even fit in the Memory Stick slot, so it tells you something that we were able to put this together and have it look like a brand new PSP without a lot of prior assembly experience.) The video quality is short of perfect, but for a direct-feed solution, it's the best you're going to get for a while, and it's possible that it might get better in the future. The price is also not bad for what you're getting in the box, although whether you'll feel good about dropping $120 for a mod to put PSP video on TV in the first place is up to you. You'll be seeing a lot more of PSP2TV on IGN, as it's our only PSP video output solution at the time, so keep an eye out for examples of its video qualities to see if PSP2TV is right for you.
If you are interested in purchasing the PSP2TV, you can check your local MOD or import shop, including Lik-Sang (http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3723&lsaid=219793) and others. Shipments should be in stores as you read this.
Post your views of the review in the comments :)