Sony has updated its Media Manager for PSP software, with several new and useful features.The Media Manager software allows you to transcode video files for playing on your PSP. In addition to AVI, MOV, MP4, and WMV files, the new version lets you convert DVR-MS files recorded using Windows Media Center.
You can also transfer videos from camcorders or DVDs to your PSP, and the update also supports .m3u and .wpl playlist files.
There's also been some changes to the user interface, and the new version lets you use a PSP to view documents including Word, Excel, HTML, and txt files.
I've always felt that there's a problem with the way portable media players are marketed (and I'm going to go ahead and lump the PSP in that category for a moment). When you buy an MP3 player, you may buy some songs from iTunes or other online music stores, but you've also probably got a huge collection of music on CD that you can easily convert. And then there's illegal downloads, but the MP3 player manufacturers don't want to talk about that aspect.
But what about portable video players? Sure, you can buy some videos online, but how often do you plan to do that? Ripping a DVD is still a time-consuming activity, not to mention legally ambiguous. And let's ignore all the videos you've downloaded illegally, because nobody's going to market a video player's ability to display those files.
What seems like an obvious solution to me is that PMPs should be doing everything they can to ensure compatibility with Windows Media Center, TiVoToGo, and every other PVR solution that lets you save files on your computer. If Microsoft is going to insist on using DVR-MS files, then it's nice to companies that don't include Windows software on their PMPs steeping up and making it easier to get DVR-MS files onto their devices. Sony's done it, (even if you do have to pay $17 to download the software or $25 for a boxed version). Wouldn't it be nice if Apple followed suit?
