TV-out and about

Discover the benefits and learn all about PSP Slim & Lite's new TV-out features.

Outputting content to a TV is one of the key features of the new PSP Slim & Lite. Two questions dominate any discussion of TV-out, "What are the benefits of this new feature?" and "What is the output quality like?"

What are the benefits?

To answer the first question, it is a great way to share your content with friends. Extremely portable, you can show off your latest finds, whether photos, videos or music by simply plugging into a TV using the correct cable.

It is not just content saved on your Memory Stick Duo that can be displayed, as TV-out works with UMD, letting you output movies and games to a big screen. By doing this, you let everyone enjoy the action and drama.

If you have access to a Wireless hotspot, other PSP functions such as the Internet Browser and RSS can be used, and accessed content displayed.

Remote Play extends this connectivity to PlayStation 3, letting you access and share content on the Hard Disk Drive remotely with your PSP. You can stream content from your PlayStation 3 sitting in the living room wirelessly to your PSP, outputting it to the TV in your bedroom for instance.

Taking that scenario further afield, if you're away on business or holiday, you can plug your PSP into your hotel room TV and, as long as you have access to a Wireless hotspot and you're PlayStation 3 is online back home, again content on the Hard Disk Drive can be accessed.

Coupled with the recent announcement of PlayTV, which lets you record live TV to your PS3, this is an amazing benefit of Remote Play and TV-out.

What is the quality like?

Quality will be dependent upon the television you're outputting to, and will vary from model to model.

Visual output from the PSP system can be set to either 16:9 or 4:3 and either Progressive Scan or Interlaced. Picture quality varies with the source media: UMD video quality is comparable to DVD, while video saved to Memory Stick Duo may not be as sharp at higher resolutions. In the case of the latter, using Screen Mode in the options menu lets you set the display dimensions to Original, Normal, Zoom and Full Screen to find a resolution right for your TV.

Sound quality is superb in any form of playback, whether video, music or game, while UMD gameplay is clear, better than early PlayStation 2 game graphics, indeed for a device so small the quality is incredible.

To use all of these features, you will need a cable and here you have two options. Exclusive to the new PSP Slim & Lite (PSP-2000 series), these cables will not work with the original PSP system (PSP-1000 series).

Component AV Cable

A Component AV Cable enables you to output photos, videos, music and games to your TV from your PSP Slim & Lite (PSP-2000). Output is in NTSC video format, so if your TV does not support this, no picture will be displayed. Additionally if your TV is not compatible with progressive scan, game images will not display.

How to spot: Five pins (See gallery image 1)

AV Cable

A standard AV Cable supports photo, video and music output from your PSP Slim & Lite (PSP-2000) to a TV, but it does not support game output. Again the output is in NTSC video; if a TV is used that does not support NTSC video format no picture will be displayed.

How to spot: Three pins (See gallery image 2)