MST3K on my PSP = sweetness. Check it out. (Greg B others)

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 2:14 am

Figured I'd show off some pics of the MST3K vid I converted to my PSP. I took it for a spin on a roadtrip a little over a week ago, and not only was it so cool to be watching Mystery Science Theater in a car on a portable game system but it is also now one of my favorite episodes. It made the car ride breeze by. I apoligize for the poor picture and color quality of these shots, it's mainly due to my cruddy 4 year old webcam, light reflection and the fact it's a 770 MB VCD/mpeg2 file I sized down to 170 MB so I could fit it on my 256 MB stick. That said, for a B quality vid file it still looks great on the PSP, looks much better than what these pics show. Anyways, here are some pictures of my PSP running "Operation Double 007." A highly recommended episode for MST fans, I plan on burning it to VCD so I can watch it with some friends soon:

Beginning of the show. Close up of Crow in front of camera while Joel, Tom and Gypsy watch some home movies:

Dr. Forrester taunting Joel before the invention exchange:

Joel smarts off to Dr. F:

Crow's invention, the "Bobbing vulture" used to clean up left over meat. haha

Dr. F strangling Frank (as usual):

"Starring" Neil Connery:

Whoo boy, and you thought Elektra was a bad franchise spin off idea:

Ladies and gentleman.....Neil Connery in the role of a lifetime (or literally, THE role of his lifetime heh heh)!

8 1/2 · Post by **8 1/2** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:15 am

Holy crap, holy crap! Where can I download MST3K episodes? Is the whole "keep circulating the tapes" idea still ok with the creators of the show? So long as it's not on DVD or video of course? My favorite show of all time by a mile. Damn it, now I have to get a bigger memory stick for the PSP!

Now, if we could just get them to put the Volume 7 box set on UMD as well...

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:44 am

8 1/2 wrote:Holy crap, holy crap! Where can I download MST3K episodes? Is the whole "keep circulating the tapes" idea still ok with the creators of the show? So long as it's not on DVD or video of course? My favorite show of all time by a mile. Damn it, now I have to get a bigger memory stick for the PSP!

Now, if we could just get them to put the Volume 7 box set on UMD as well...

Yep, they are still 100% fine with folks copying and burning episodes as long as it's not on Rhino video/DVD already as you said. I downloaded my episode from Limewire but it was encoded by the good folks at the MST3K Digital Archive Project here (make sure to read the FAQs thoroughly before you download an episode from them, it can be tricky):

http://dapcentral.org/

Make sure to download PSPvideo9, a well designed and easy to use fan-made PSP video program:

www.pspvideo9.com

If you are a newb to using video with the PSP, definitely read IGN Gear's excellent and easy to follow steps on how to make video folders on your mem stick, transfer ect. here (where I found the PSPvid9):

http://gear.ign.com/articles/598/598803p2.html

Also, one thing to know about putting video on the PSP (after the files have been properly encoded), unless you have XP, a direct USB cable connection between the PSP and PC won't be recognized.

So if you have an earlier version of windows, save yourself a lot of trouble and definitely invest in a Lexar universal media reader like I did which reads everything from Sony's mem sticks, to SD ect. Also, on the 98 machine at work I used, PSPvideo9 encoded the vid file to mp4 without a hitch. But the transfer feature of the program wouldn't put the encoded files into my memory card reader (again, I'm guessing it is because it's 98 ), so after a bit of messing around I just manually cut and copied the newly encoded video files into the memory card in the drive (like I always do if it's MP3s, pictures, ect.) and finally had MST3K playing on my PSP. You may not have to go through that but just posting that just in case you don't have access to XP like I do I figured it'd be good to know all this, and for anyone else reading too.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:49 am

I forgot to add if it wasn't clear already, PSPvideo9 has tons of easy options which allow you to size down large video files with ease. It all of course comes down to how good you want the video to look. But with MST3K who needs DVD quality picture considering the quality of the movies they watch and the show looks good kinda fuzzy considering MST3K has such a "homemade" feel to it anyways.

8 1/2 · Post by **8 1/2** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:39 am

Thanks a bunch Dylan. I think I'll have to go out tomorrow and track down a better memory stick and get started on all of this. There are so many episodes that I've never seen and the PSP would be such a fun way to get into them.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:53 am

8 1/2 wrote:Thanks a bunch Dylan. I think I'll have to go out tomorrow and track down a better memory stick and get started on all of this. There are so many episodes that I've never seen and the PSP would be such a fun way to get into them.

Awesome, lemme know what happens.

MadSteelDarkness · Post by **MadSteelDarkness** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 2:04 pm

Oh, Dylan...

That looks mighty sweet, man...Thanks for all the great info!

*Keeps telling himself he doesn't need a PSP yet...*
*Looks again at pics...*
*Again tells himself he doesn't need a PSP yet, in smaller voice*

SheSaidDutch · Post by **SheSaidDutch** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 2:07 pm

It sure looks crystal clear the screen that is.

U K Narayan · Post by **U K Narayan** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:29 pm

Question:

How much memory does the PSP have? I assume it's alot, seeing how you can play full length movies on it.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 5:18 pm

MadSteelDarkness wrote:Oh, Dylan...

That looks mighty sweet, man...Thanks for all the great info!

*Keeps telling himself he doesn't need a PSP yet...*
*Looks again at pics...*
*Again tells himself he doesn't need a PSP yet, in smaller voice*

Haha. I know when I heard all the reports of buggy systems I was a total hater and into full anti-Sony rant mode. But as more and more positive reports flowed in and better and better 'n better pics....well you get the idea. Seems like a lot of it was overblown. That said though there have been some problems with some folks' systems with dead pixels and such but I am happy to say my unit has zero issues so far. I made sure to check for defects in the parking lot right after I bought it (and you should too when ya get one), ready to return it right away if there were any dead pixels but to my relief there weren't.

It seriously is a well made piece of machinery, it really seems like Sony put great effort into designing it, waaaay above and beyond their other game hardware related efforts, that's for sure. It makes the PS1 and PS2 look like clunky living room lamp stands.

Also, I was playing Batsugan last night for the first time in months and when facing the 3rd boss I figured out where your user name came from.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 5:51 pm

I forgot to add, the Lexar universal media card reader I got from Walmart was only $20. Again, if you don't have XP you need one of these babies to get files onto your memory stick.

Oh yeah, and PSP doesn't recognize Mac OS at all for any Mac folks here.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 6:25 pm

I need to grab some of those to put on my Axim, since I've got a couple of long airplane rides coming up. I already know how to rip DVDs down to manageable files, but I've never tried the DAP stuff before (one of these days I need to give it a shot, since I hear they have Freakazoid there.)

greg · Post by **greg** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 7:06 pm

NICE!

In other MST3k related news, I just read this article:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory. ... eo/3127541

Mike will be taking on the legendary Plan 9 From Outer Space with commentary! I'll have to re-buy this on DVD apparently.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 7:45 pm

greg wrote:NICE!

In other MST3k related news, I just read this article:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory. ... eo/3127541

Mike will be taking on the legendary Plan 9 From Outer Space with commentary! I'll have to re-buy this on DVD apparently.

Yeah, I will definitely be picking that up.

8 1/2 · Post by **8 1/2** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 11:41 pm

Have either of you guys seen the recently released colorized version of Night of the Living Dead? Mike does commentary on that as well and it's some of his most harsh stuff yet. It's odd to hear him swear, but I like that he's getting more bitter as time goes on. "Only a woman could wreck a car that's not even running!" It's not as good without the bots, but hey, I'll take what I can get at this point.

MadSteelDarkness · Post by **MadSteelDarkness** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 11:47 pm

8 1/2 wrote:Have either of you guys seen the recently released colorized version of Night of the Living Dead? Mike does commentary on that as well and it's some of his most harsh stuff yet. It's odd to hear him swear, but I like that he's getting more bitter as time goes on. "Only a woman could wreck a car that's not even running!" It's not as good without the bots, but hey, I'll take what I can get at this point.

I've not seen that yet, but you better believe I'll be picking that up, as well as Plan 9. If you don't mind me asking, where did you pick this up?

Oh, and Dylan...I'm definitely getting one of these sexy MFs as soon as I can. The tax man is taking a chunk this month though, so it might be a little while

.

8 1/2 · Post by **8 1/2** » Tue Apr 12, 2005 11:57 pm

Best Buy. It was cheap too. The crazy part is it's actually put out by 20th Century Fox!

MadSteelDarkness · Post by **MadSteelDarkness** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 12:01 am

8 1/2 wrote:Best Buy. It was cheap too. The crazy part is it's actually put out by 20th Century Fox!

I'm so there...

Thanks, 8 1/2!

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 6:35 am

So you didn't get a tax refund this year, Mad? Bummer.

I didn't see the NotLD DVD. Wow, that is more harsh. I'm sure the "Only a woman could wreck a car comment" was just in jest. They would sometimes get really annoyed or indignant when women were degraded, hit or treated badly in many of the movies they watched.

But they would also made funny "schoolyard" style girl jokes. Like in the episode Riding with Death when a government lady tries to escape some bad guys by clumsily throwing down some stuff in front of them and running only to be tackled and Crow says "Haha. It's always so funny when a girl tries to do something!"

Or another gem from one of the driving shorts Narrator: "Here we see another problem commonly seen on the road..." *cut to shot of lady in car* Crow: "Women drivers!"

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 7:19 pm

Just out of curiosity, what kind of file sizes do you get out of that, and how long did it take to encode?

Inspired in part by this thread, and in part by needing something to pass time on a couple of some upcoming airplane rides, I finally figured out how to encode video off ripped DVDs down to manageable size for my Axim. Here's a shot (admittedly crummy, note that the stuff in the lower right corner is dust on the screen, not artifacting) of a Tom and Jerry cartoon entitled "The Truce Hurts":

The video is encoded at 640x480 (the resolution of the screen on my Axim), and the file size for a 7 1/2 minute cartoon short is 45MB, which should allow about 20 to fit on a 1GB SD card (the guide I used recommended 110mb size for 30-minute shows, and 450MB size for feature length stuff. I tried 25MB, but found the quality to degrade too much there.) Best of all, these videos stream from my desktop PC to my PPC without interruption over WiFi for when I'm at home. I have yet to see an actual PSP, much less get a chance to mess with one, so I can't really make any comparisons. I'm currently working on encoding my other DVDs (the encoding from DVD rips can take quite a while, up to 4 hours for a feature-length movie) but ultimately would like to have all my DVDs available this way to watch over my home LAN, or on SD card if I go somewhere.

Edit: A couple of details I forgot. To play the videos, I'm using BetaPlayer which is a far better player than what's included in Windows Mobile, and pulls video off my LAN with little effort. The instructions I used to encode the videos should work with any PocketPC, and can be found here.

gmw · Post by **gmw** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:10 pm

Dylan1CC wrote: Oh yeah, and PSP doesn't recognize Mac OS at all for any Mac folks here.

Bzzzt.

PSPs work perfectly with Macs. As usual, transfer, connecting, etc is millions of times more simple with Mac OS than on a Win-PSP connection.

There're already plenty of PSP-related shareware video and transfer programs for OSX.

Some links for the Mac-inclined:

http://www.macintouch.com/playstation.html

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/25 ... /index.php

gmw · Post by **gmw** » Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:34 pm

For Mac folks, here's an absolutely fantastic PSP manager for Mac:

http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware

100% worth it. Beautiful, stable, professional-looking interface, syncing with iPhoto and iTunes, perfect video conversion, etc.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 3:07 am

Vexorg wrote:Just out of curiosity, what kind of file sizes do you get out of that, and how long did it take to encode?

Well, like I said, the file was originally over 700 MB. (i said 770, it was roughly 700 actually, as IRCC now). Using the program I was able to scale it down to 170 MB using the PSPvideo audio, video, bitrate options, ect.

Nice work on the Tom and Jerry btw. Best violent old school cartoons ever. I love how funny Tom's scream sounds in the 40s and 50s series. "YEEEOOOOWWWW!" haha

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 3:08 am

gmw wrote:
Dylan1CC wrote: Oh yeah, and PSP doesn't recognize Mac OS at all for any Mac folks here.
Bzzzt.

PSPs work perfectly with Macs. As usual, transfer, connecting, etc is millions of times more simple with Mac OS than on a Win-PSP connection.

There're already plenty of PSP-related shareware video and transfer programs for OSX.

Some links for the Mac-inclined:

http://www.macintouch.com/playstation.html

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/25 ... /index.php

Whooops. Sorry. Just going by what my owner manual said. Thanks for the great info, gmw. Nice avatar btw. I assume that's Gillian from Snatcher, right?

gmw · Post by **gmw** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 4:34 am

Dylan1CC wrote:Whooops. Sorry. Just going by what my owner manual said. Thanks for the great info, gmw. Nice avatar btw. I assume that's Gillian from Snatcher, right?

The avatar is actually from the classic Japanese detective adventure series Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - I can see it being Gillian from Snatcher pretty easily though.

Anyway, to anyone with a Mac - I can't recommend PSPWare highly enough. Makes the whole PSP experience fantastic.

Specineff · Post by **Specineff** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:08 am

Glad to hear the PSP is not completely incompatible with the Mac. Perhaps soon Sony's neglected baby, Hi-Minidisc will follow the same route. BTW. For those with a DS there is something called the Yan (sp?) that lets you download and play movies using a CF card. Don't know about the screen quality.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:37 am

Based on comparisons to some of the other devices I have here (PocketPCs mostly,) I'd say that the screen quality of the DS falls slightly behind in quality to the screen on my Toshiba E405, and roughly equivalent to the screen on my Dell Axim X5 (but far behind my X50v, which has a very nice VGA screen on it.) The transflective screens on the DS are far superior to the frontlit GBA SP's screen though. You do have the option to turn backlighting off in software as well, but that depends on whether or not the game you're using supports it, and the screens are very hard to see when turned off unless you're in direct sunlight (which is typical of transflective displays.) It would have been nice if Nintendo had put in the ability to adjust brightness to conserve battery life (a feature that has been in PDAs for a long time now) but the DS already has very good battery life, so this isn't too big a deal.

The other issue with video on the DS is that the individual screens are not particularly high resolution, especially when compared to other devices (The DS has two 256x192 pixel screens for a 256x384 total resolution, most PocketPCs have 320x240 displays, and the PSP is 480x272.) Since the break in between would be distracting you're basically limited to playing video on one screen on the DS. On the other hand, the DS is also pretty much a pure gaming device, where the PSP is more of an all-in-one gaming and media device.

All in all, the screens on the DS aren't bad (especially in comparison to the GBA SP) but I don't know that I'd really want to use it to play videos on. Maybe I can take some pictures comparing the DS screen to one of my PPCs