Lately I’ve been wanting to watch anime portably. This has been inspired by (a) being jealous of Fat Cat and Dogmeat who have (or have recently purchased) PSPs to watch animes on during lunch and commute time (b) FMP Fumoffu looking really nice on TJ’s 4 inch Archos screen and (c) finally trying to watch anime on BART and realising that I can’t read subtitles on my tiny Zen.
I know it’s terribly indulgent when I got my Zen just 4 months ago, and the thing is I’d bought the Zen precisely because I wanted something small, but at the time I’d (a) not thought I’d want to watch videos on the go and (b) not considered the fact that I might want to watch stuff with subtitles….So anyway, I won’t try to justify this because, like someone said, I know I’m just going to give in to my primal urges and buy a new toy regardless of whether I’m justified to do so.
The thing is, it’s not the cost that’s holding me back, it’s the fact that I have so much Stuff in my room. I don’t have a lot of storage space, but I have a lot of Stuff. And buying a new toy will mean a new charger, a new box, a new user manual, a new USB cable, too much New Stuff. When I look around at how much Stuff I have I feel like such a Consumer and I’m ashamed of myself for having given in to Capitalism so many many times. But I’ve been thinking about this way too long now (2 days) to let it go so I’m just going to have to do it.
So now the question is, do I get a PSP or another portable media player (PMP)? The arguments for either are as follows:
PSP
- Price - this is about $170 on Amazon.com before taxes, with a 4gb memory stick it’ll be about $200. The PMPs I’m looking at (Archos 605 and Cowon A3) will be upwards of $300.
- Might play games on this? I definitely want to get a copy of Me and My Katamari. Although I’m admittedly not convinced that I’ll be making good use of the gaming function, it’s at least an option, plus it would make me feel a lot less dumb than if I got yet another PMP.
PMP
- If I’m primarily looking for a video player I should look for something whose primary purpose is to play videos? No idea about video quality, but a PMP will be able to handle a lot more formats. Not sure if the conversion programme for PSP can handle .ogm and .mkv files? Or if there’s free software out there I can download for conversion?
- A lot, a lot, a lot more memory - I’m going to have to pay extra to get a 4/8gb memory stick for the PSP, and a PMP will have at least 30gb. Of course, as many people have pointed out, if I delete and upload episodes on a regular basis this won’t be a problem, it’s not like I’m using it as a storage device and the battery is bound to run out before I can get through 40 episodes of anime anyway…
- TJ thinks the PSP is ugly (open to debate).
- Tim doesn’t like Sony (not that I care haha).
I’m actually pretty sold on the PSP, since it’ll be something different. I’m just looking for reassurance that I’m doing the right thing!!!! I have to wait for my Amazon gift certs to come through (redeeming credit card points o.o-b) before I can make a move, so tell me what to do before then!
