Bought a PSP today, my first console this generation

It was as sudden as these kind of things happen. I thought of it two days ago, and bought it today.
About it? Well....its as cool as I thought, probably more. What I am impressed from currently are its multimedia capabilities. I never thought that being a gaming console, it will be real good at multimedia functions. But I must say, its darn good. Sound quality (you must have real good earphones though) is real good. It feels like a theater. The video quality is real good too at default options. But if you have gor firmware 3.3 or above (if you have a PSP slim, then you have), you can play videos in its full resolution (480*272). Its a long process but I will tell you. First you will have to format your Memory card (if you bought one) through PSP (remember, not through a computer). Then, when you will connect your PSP to a PC (by USB), you will notice that there is a new folder created named 'Video' in the PSP memory disk. Now, the thing to notice here is that if you search google about playing videos in PSP, you will find many sites saying that make a folder 'MP_ROOT' in the disk, then make a 'Video' folder in it. Then put your video inside it with right naming system (that the file must begin with M4V etc.). While this works if followed, but the new 'Video' folder which PSP created automatically when you formatted, is much better. In this folder, you can give any name to the file and PSP will recognize it, you can put a JPG with the same name as video in the folder and the PSP will show that as a screen on video file in PSP and the best thing is that you can play full resolution videos on PSP only in this folder.

Now, download Xvid4PSP. You can download it from here. You will need Microsoft dotnetfx3.0 too.

After installing Xvid4PSP, run it. Click on Open, select the file you want to encode. In format, choose MP4 PSP AVC. Leave all other options as they are. Now click on 'Encode'. It will encode it (might take long time depending upon the file). After its done, copy the video (and the JPG pic which it will create, if you want) to the 'VIDEO' folder PSP created when you formatted. And now, you are ready to play videos on highest possible resolution and quality on PSP. In my opinion, the quality is real good. I am really surprised that a handheld can output such good videos.

Again coming back on my thoughts on it. I didnt buy any game as of now. Only downloaded some demos. Out of them, I liked Syphon filter and Killzone most. Initially it was awkard as I am a PC gamer and so wasnt able to control properly. But after a while, I started liking it. Probably I will be good at playing in a few days.

Browsed the net too through Wi-Fi. Settings were not that hard, and especially considering that I am on Proxy server of our university and the access point was a PC! The browser is quite decent. Almost as good as it can be on a handheld. Picture quality was good and text was easily readable. Obviously one wont find entering the URLs so easy, but it cant be easier.

All in all, PSP is a real good multimedia device on a very reasonable price. I would say that if you are thinking of buying an 8 (or more) GB iPOD, then buy a PSP rather than that. Many of my friends have iPODs and now I see them saying that why they didn't buy a PSP rather than an iPOD.