Sony PSP Media Manager

http://www.us.playstation.com/psn/mediamanager/

Yes it's from SONY's Playstation site. It's new, they finally succumbed to the pressure that it SHOULD have been included in the first place with the PSP.
I have an XP, it works great for transferring video and music. You don't need it for transferring games/demos.

If you don't mind allowing this software to manage everything for you its own way, it's probably fine. I paid for the software and now I use Windows Explorer to manage my PSP.

First of all, it insists on making a complete copy of your memory stick when you run Media Manager. I use 4GB memory sticks to store videos and music and I don't really need an extra copy of all of that clogging my laptop's hard drive. I'd rather not make a copy, but that's not an option that I can uncheck anywhere. I have to manually stop the process each time I run Memory Manager or insert another memory card.

Second, if you didn't use Media Manager to put the files on your PSP, for some reason Media Manager won't show them to you. I can see hundreds of mp3s on my PSP from Windows Explorer, but Media Manager shows me an empty window. I can't even browse what's already on the PSP with this software. OK, it finally figured it out, but only after I allowed it 3.5 gigabytes of my precious disk space to make full copies of everything.

Third, I expected a drag and drop video functionality. The main reason I wanted this software was to provide me a failsafe way to encode mp4 video to the PSP. I've used other software and got tired of renaming files for the PSP to recognize them. Unfortunately, even if I have the codec installed on my system, Media Manager will not find half of the videos on my PC. I assume they're a format MM doesn't understand. I even had a .mp4 file that I've played on the PSP so it obviously recognizes it. But MM wouldn't show it as a video I could transfer. I had to copy it with Windows Explorer instead.

Suggestions:
- I'd love to see the Media Manager use codecs from the codec folder the way Windows Media Player does. I could install a codec and all of a sudden, Media Manager could interpret the video and move it to the PSP for me.
- I'd love to see the PSP read pdf documents. But, in lieu of that, maybe Media manager could convert pdf to html for me so that I could read them on the PSP.
- The Media Manager ought to be able to read the PSP without making a full copy of everything, and ought to allow me to turn off that behavior.
- I would like to make playlists with Media Manager that show up on my PSP, but can't do that either.

This is decent software if you want to back up your memory cards, but isn't worth paying extra. It ought to be bundled with the PSP, and many of us still wouldn't use it. With a little extra expertise, Windows Explorer and a free mp4 video encoder will do everything this software can do.

Do not buy this software! Buy the new Vista compatible update directly from Sony for $16.95. This version is superior because it includes more codecs and a way to backup game demos.

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