PSP - Firmware?

[The King]

Hallo Friends!!

After buying a PSP a couple of years ago, and basically never using it, I'm going away a few times over the next couple of months, and I want to take it with me.

As it stands, I haven't upgraded any firmware or done anything to it.

Got a few UMD games, but wanna get it cranking for video and the like too.

So, those of you who've done all of the legwork in figuring these things out - what firmware should I install? A sony one, or a custom one? And what else should I do to make my PSP rad?

THANK YOU KIND SIRS

[Andres]

Custom firmware allows you to install a lot of nifty stuff apparently. ebook reader is one (legitimate) great reason to do it.

Not to mention you can rip all your games to the memory card to avoid having to take lots of little UMDs everywhere. Also improves battery reading from MS as opposed to UMD.

I basically went through this on the weekend, so I'm not expert. But if you go to psp-hacks.com they'll walk you through how to install CFW. I did mine with the 'chickenhen' method and is now running 5.00 CFW.

For video I think PSPVideo9 IIRC works pretty well from most accounts?

[The King]

Sweet.

I've got a 16gig card; how big do the games tend to be?

Also, sort of apologies - I know I could trawl through the consolidated PSP Owners thread, but I figured this would be a much easier way to condense the nonsense, so to speak.

Cheers

[Andres]

Haha yeah I spent a LOT of time trawling through the consolidated thread. I guess I should again reiterate that I am no expert and kinda took a crash course in PSP-hacking over the weekend. So not 110% sure if its better to stick with an earlier custom firmware. Mine was already at 5.03, so I decided to jsut stick to 5.00 CFW.

Games I've noticed to be between a few hundred mb, to about 1.2gb. I think a UMD's capacity is only about 1.2 or 1.4gb, so it's kinda limited to that.

Encoding vids is a bit of a pain, but results are decent.

[Subcommandante]

there are some good programs to encode videos to psp. Does take a bit fo time from recollection.

[The King]

Can I download MP4s off of ITunes and throw them straight on?

Is there some other way I can just throw .avis and shit on it, or it has to be mp4s?

[qwertylesh]

They can playback a certain video format really well, but youll need to convert all of your video to the correct resolution and format before they'll play (AFAIK).
If your gonna go a CFW (custom firmware) then look at Dark alex's 5.00 M33 or newer.
Remember the PSP 3000 is not CFW capable, but the older Slims and fats are. It only takes a couple of hours and a bit of reading on various forums to figure out how to CFW them, plenty of the methods involve battery dissasmebly, if you know anyone with a PSP Fat that already has CFW then you wont need to take apart your battery in order to CFW it (the batteries contain the EEPROM chip usually needed for the recovery mode to flash the CFW)
My advice, if your going to load CFW so you can do more with your PSP, be absolutly sure to backup the NAND and keep it somewhere handy, theres this thing called IDStorage and if you dont keep the origional NAND from the PSP (when it was in a non CFW state) then if it bricks, you may not be able to unbrick it.

They have to be MP4. You can get a free proggy called XviD4PSP theres another one called Pazera_Free_PSP_Video_Converter.
best format for psp playback is called M2TS using x264 Q21 Ultra encoding

[Shaunbacca]

Originally Posted by The King

Can I download MP4s off of ITunes and throw them straight on?

Is there some other way I can just throw .avis and shit on it, or it has to be mp4s?

I think there are ways of getting AVIs running but your best bet is to run with MP4s. As for the Apple thing I'm not sure...

For AVI -> MP4 conversion can I suggest xvid4psp. Simple to use and does what you need it to.

Game size runs the whole gamut. God of War's CSO clocks in at over a gig and Every Extend Extra's game file is, if I remember correctly, a bit over 200 meg. Given that you've got a 16GB card I wouldn't worry.

For getting custom firmware on your PSP I'm sure there are a number of people here that might be able to help you out without you having to go to the trouble of getting a Pandora battery and associated card. Post in the main PSP thread with your location and see what pops up.

[qwertylesh]

Pandor battery (softmodded) and a magic card is the best way..
My preferred magic key maker is called PSPAllinone. You can find this on sites like maxconsole.
same with the OSPBT (open source pandora battery tool).
if you dont know anyone that has a CFW psp already tho, you'll have to look at hard modding the EEPROM chip on your battery. (best to do some reading into that)

[heist82]

Originally Posted by qwertylesh

Remember the PSP 3000 is not CFW capable, but the older Slims and fats are.

They are now

[Andres]

Whoa - If he has an old fat PSP, there is no need for pandora's batteries or extra PSPs etc.

I put CFW on mine using resources found on psp-hacks.com. Involved loading a couple of things onto a MS, and pretty much following the prompts.

King - Prob best to look at your psp and see if its a 100X, 200X or 300X model. Will say under the battery. If it's 100X (mine is) you should need nothing but software and a usb cable.

[qwertylesh]

How do you get the battery in a pandora mode with just software if you dont already have a CFW'd PSP handy (to load OSPBT)?

[The King]

Tis a PSP Slim.

Custom firmware sounds pretty involved, and I want to take it away with me on Thursday morning... so at this stage, I guess I'm better off just upgrading to the latest Sony Firmware, and maybe changing it at a later date, when I've got time to do it properly?

Last thing I want to take on my holidays is an expensive Sony paperweight

[Andres]

Originally Posted by qwertylesh

How do you get the battery in a pandora mode with just software if you dont already have a CFW'd PSP handy (to load OSPBT)?

Not really sure what you are referring to (I'm a n00b to it all).

But I used some 'chickhen' program and another called 'recovery flasher' all found on the psphacks site. And I'm now running 5.00 m33-6 CFW and can run gamed with no UMDs etc. (So it def worked!)

Didn't have to open the battery door once

(All the instructions I found on the aforementioned site. This is for a 100x series PSP. And now has the 1.50 kernel thingy installed too, so allows the use of FW 1.5 software from what I gather. i.e. the BOOKR software is for fw1.5 only, yet it still works on mine now with the 1.5 kernel add on).

KING!!!

Don't update your firmware to the latest Sony firmware. It makes things harder to customise later. Better just leaving it as it is.

If you have an older Slim PSP, still might be able to do it.

[RJ45]

I am in a similar situation, i want to get started into PSP again (as there's a few games i want to play)

I have a fat PSP, running the original V1.5 firmware. I was previously using devhook to play games.

What's the new firmware that everyone is using? and what's the easiest way to upgrade?