Great news for PSP owners who want to do more, as Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) announces the launch of a new Media Manager for the handheld. The idea is to enable users easily drag-and-drop video, photos, documents, podcasts and music to and from their PC to their PSP.
Users will be able to simultaneously transfer multiple items from their PC to their PSP system and a media previewing function will also assist in the flow of content to and from the PSP system.
"We are delighted to launch Media Manager for PSP in Europe. Media Manager adds a great deal to the everyday running of the PSP system and ensures that it will remain the ultimate entertainment companion for all present and future PSP users’’, says Stephane Hareau, PSP Senior Brand Manager for SCEE.
"Consumers will now be able to organise and manage non-game content like videos, music, photos and much more on their PSP with the utmost ease,’’ he adds.
For those casual PSP gamers not familiar with third-party offerings such as the very handy (and free) PSP Video 9, the new Media Manager v2.0 is going to be available to download for €9.99/£7.99) from this coming Friday 3rd of November.
Or, if you are a bit daft and really want to spend nearly double that amount, you can pick it up boxed in store for €19.99/ £14.99 next week, from the 8th of November.
Supported file formats are as follows:
Audio – mp3, ATRAC, wma, wav, pca, ogg, m1a, mpa, m2a, m4a, m4b, aac, mp4
Video: mp4, avi, wmv, mov, qt, dv, mpg, mpeg, mpeg1, mpeg2, mmv, m1p, mp1, mp2, m2t, 3gp, m4v
Image: jpg, jpeg, jpe, jfif, pnp, gif, bmp, dib, tiff, tif
Document: .txt, .rtf, .doc, .wri, .wpd, .wps, .xls, .html, .mht, .htm
One minute of video will take approximately 3.5 MB when using the Low AVC setting or 6.6 MB when using the High AVC setting. The following table illustrates how many hours and minutes of video you can fit on common sizes of Memory Stick Duo media:
FORMAT 32MB 64MB 128MB 256MB 512MB 1GB 2GB
Low AVC
(384 Kbps video; 512 Kbps total) 0:09 0:17 0:34 1:08 2:16 4:33 9:06
High AVC
(768 Kbps video; 896 Kbps total) 0:04 0:09 0:19 0:39 1:18 2:36 5:12