Posted on 2006-01-23 09:29:00 | by: Daimaou | 0 Comments
Product Name: Company: Price: € 0.00 Rating: 8
Rapsody S25
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Sony's portable gaming console, the PSP, is a truly versatile little bomb. On top of playing games, you can surf the net, watch videos or pictures, listen to music and for the more geeky people, you can basically do whatever you want with it, like reading eBooks or install game emulators. The potential of the PSP is almost endless... almost, I said, because the manufacturer wants, once again, to control everything by imposing UMD and MemoryStick as the only two supported data storage formats (and imho, they're making a big mistake there).
There are not about 30 million solutions nowadays to tune up the memory used on a PSP: there are overpriced and quite limited large capacity MemorySticks, there is the infamous 4GB Hard Drive/x2 Battery Pack by Datel, but once again, you hit the limit of 4GB, and soon there will be MS's with these dimensions on the market. You can of course dismantle your PSP, take out the UMD drive and replace it with a CF Type II port, but are less risky and affordable solutions to bypass Sony's imposed memory limitation.
The ultimate dream is to stick a small external and autonomous HDD to the PSP... and that dream becomes reality with this Rapsody S25! But, let me get things straigh immediately: you cannot playback a video stored onto the external HDD of the S25 on the PSP, that is not possible at this moment, but we're definitely hoping to see some Einstein emerge with that kind of solution one day...
So what is the S25 capable of?
Well, it's a casing for a 2.5" HDD, and its rather small too. HDD's up to 120GB are accepted (or more once they get onto the market) and it's really a piece of cake to find one of these discs in a local computer shop or online at affordable prices.
The S25 is autonomous, which means that it has an internal battery, so you don't need to be near an electricity plug to use it.
This device is an OTG (On The Go) USB case, which means that it can communicate with another device without the use of a PC.
This video is also available in HD. The Download link is available at the end of this article.
Short for USB On-The-Go, an extension of the USB 2.0 specification for connecting peripheral devices to each other. USB OTG products can communicate with each other without the need to be connected to a PC. For example, a digital camera can connect to a PDA, or a mobile phone can connect to a printer or a scanner, as long as all the devices are USB OTG-compatible. USB OTG grew from the increasing need for portable devices to be able to communicate with each other as the culture of technology moves away from a PC-centric world.
One of the important features of USB OTG is that the standard does not require a host PC in order for the devices to communicate. USB OTG devices, known as dual-role peripherals, can act as limited hosts or peripherals themselves depending on how the cables are connected to the devices, and they also can connect to a host PC."
The device has a control screen as well as 6 buttons that allow you to navigate through the menus and the internal HDD of the S25.
So what's the link with out PSP? Very simple: once you hook up your S25 to your pocket console, you can do the following:
- Save the contents of your MS
- Delete the data if you want to
- Copy data from the S25 onto the MS of your PSP without using a PC.
But that's not all, the PSP is not the only device it can interact with, we also managed to copy data from a Zaurus PDA onto the S25, and the same goes for a digital camera (but it did not work with my Canon Kiss Digital N though).
Some might think that it's only a small comfort, because after all, we're still stuck with the memory capacity of the MS, and we have to agree, but let's look at the situation from a different angle: a 1GB or 2GB MS is big enough to contain several movies encoded for the PSP, a lot of MP3 or picture files and for some geeks even a full game. With this S25 and the HDD of your choice, you will have all your PSP data with you all the time. The S25 will not solve the problem, but it provides a workaround!
So how does it work?
Simple, you connect your PSP to the S25 as you would connect it to your PC. The data you want to transfer to the PSP need to be on the S25 of course, and if that is the case, you're set to go. Let's start with a backup of the MS onto the S25. You enter the Tools menu on the S25, and then click OK on the PSP icon, after which you get the choice to read data on the MS in your PSP or on the HDD of the S25 itself. Let's assume you want to copy a movie from your S25 to the PSP. You select the movie (and any other files you want to copy), hit the Function key and you'll choose the destination folder on the PSP and hit Function again after which the S25 starts copying the data to your MS in the PSP. It really is very simple and straightforward!
Battery life
We did not do a full test of the device, but we were able to copy the contents of a 1GB MS onto the S25 more than 15 times without running out of battery juice. Everything depends on your personal use, just don't leave the S25 connected to the mains power all the time, otherwise the battery will be screwed in no time (this is also a good advice for any kind of electrical products like Mp3 players).
How to copy data from the PC onto the S25
In this case, the S25 is nothing more than an external USB 2.5" HDD case, so you just need to connect it to your PC with the supplied USB cable and a new HDD will appear in your File Explorer after which it's just a matter of dragging & dropping.
So what's in the box?
The box of the S25 is very complete: you get the S25, a protection skin, a small screwdriver, a power adapter (100-240V), an OTG cable for the PSP, another OTG cable (A to USB female) and a USB cable to connect the S25 to a PC. You also get a CD with the manual (20MB). Don't forget that there is no HDD supplied with the S25.
Plus:
Disc space from 20 to 120GB
Cool design
Easy to use
Minus:
Currently impossible to play files straight from the S25
Conclusion:
The S25 is currently the only solution to offer a virtual capacity of more than 100GB for your PSP. You cannot play files directly from the device, but at least you can copy data to and from your PSP wherever and whenever you want
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Rapsody S25 720p HD
