Customer Reviews

Sony Computer Entertainment PSP-2000 AV Cable

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The Good:

+Allows you to play your PSP games on your television
+Very easy to connect and set up

The Bad:

-Your television must support progressive scan or else it won't work
-For some games it brings out the worst in graphics
-The cord is too short
-Twenty dollars is a bit expensive

During the days when the Super Nintendo ruled the world, Nintendo developed what was known as The Super Gameboy. It was where you stuck your gameboy games into a specially made cartridge and they played on your Super Nintendo. The Gamecube also had a variant. The Gameboy Player. These things worked really well to play handheld games on a television. Sony, taking a lesson from Nintendo, decided to do their own. The cable does exactly what it's supposed to but there are a couple of things that just make it a hassle to deal with.

It's easy to work. At the bottom of your PSP is the port, and then you plug the cables into your television. These cables do not work a standard definition television, however. It must be an HDTV and it must support Progressive Scan or else you won't get a picture. When you plug the cables in and connect it to your PSP and you get a picture, it's actually quite crisp. In some games, however, it'll bring out the worst in the graphics. Some games just weren't meant to be on the big screen. Some games you can see more jagged edges that you otherwise wouldn't see on the PSP's small screen.

One big problem, however, is that the game doesn't take up the whole screen. It's basically just a rectangle in the center of the television. It works out, but the menu itself will actually take up the entire screen. It's a little strange, but games play very well. And the PSP acts as your controller. However, this can be a little bothersome to some people.

If you ever suddenly need to take it off the TV you can disconnect from your PSP in the middle of play with no harm done to your television or your PSP.

There is one other major problem with this device. The fact that the cord is incredibly short. It's bad enough it doesn't work on a standard definition TV and that it shows the worst in some graphics and that it doesn't take up the whole screen, but the short cord may be one of the bigger problems. In some cases, you'll be a little unreasonably close, especially if your plugins are on the back of your television. A longer cord would've been nice.

Perhaps one of my bigger complaints is that the list price is simply unreasonable. Twenty dollars is a lot to spend on just a cord. Luckily, there are some sellers who are selling it for much cheaper.

Overall, it does what it's supposed to do, but there's a bit of a cost to getting it there. If you feel like playing your PSP games on your television, then it isn't bad at all.

Picked this up today at the Meteron for $20 and it works nicely. Video is pretty good, not as good as a DVD but not bad. Games work well but are limited to the PSP's native resolution so they will be smaller if you have an HD TV. Also there seems to be a slight delay in controls as shown on the TV as playing Hot Shots Golf everytime I teed off, it seems to be a little late. So for the price, I'm satisfied.

Facts:
- You should know this before hand, only the video output will use your entire TV screen. The games will use only about 60-70% of the screen.
- Also, the games can be output only using this component cable (not the composite cable)

Pros:
- Video quality of CNN podcasts looked great on a 51" TV
- Connecting to the TV and transferring video output to the TV was very easy
- The video controls are rich but OK to use (nothing to do with cable though)

Cons:
- The video quality of the game was bad.
- Madden NFL 08 looked terrible, could hardly make out the plays or the text.

OK yeah, when you play games on the PSP and look at it on the TV its a smaller picture. I have a 32" LCD and I loose about 6" a side in viewing real estate ... but its still about 12x bigger than the PSP screen itself and let me tell you its worth it. You can actually see what you're doing, and when I'm playing God of War: Chains of Olympus I want to see what is going on. Video and pictures don't loose that kind of viewing real estate. I noticed about an inch around viewing a video UMD and I suspect the same to be true for pictures although I currently don't have any jpeg files on my Memory Sticks to look at. I would say all in all its well worth the price ... currently under $20.00 and it will increase your gaming / viewing pleasure of the PSP. My one complaint and the reason for 3 stars instead of 4 stars (which for me is a good review, I rarely give 5 stars) and this is my caveat emptor for this product as well. The videogame output will only work on these cables if you have a progressive scan TV, even without progressive scan you can still watch videos and view images, but to get game video on the TV from the PSP you need progressive scan on your TV and this is not clearly advertised ... this is all it says on Amazon about half way down the page:

Product Description
Used to connect to TV Component-port for Progressive-Scan video display.

This is inaccurate as you only need PS to play games, not videos or images.
If you have progressive scan and you don't mind your game video being smaller than your total TV viewing area (its still a lot bigger than PSP screen) or you have video UMDs that you want to watch on the big screen, then these are the cables you want.

You may be looking at the component cable and wonder which should I get?
Component: Offers the ability to play games on a progressive scan TV (480p, ect.), music, photos, and videos. Overall "better" quality.
D-Terminal: Offers the ability to play music, photos, and videos. Overall "better" quality. Rarely used in the USA. (Do not confuse with VGA ports.)(Not sold in the United states.)
S-Video: Offers the ability to play music, photos, and videos. Overall "good" quality. (Not sold in the Unite States.)
Composite: Offers the ability to play music, photos, and videos. Overall "okay" quality.
On another note, the PSP's native resolution is 480x272, and when you place that on a 720x480 or higher resolution TV, it will never look as sharp. These cables are nice for taking a PSP to someone's house and showing them videos or photos on their TV, or your TV. The ability to play games is good, although sitting far away playing on a large TV will not work well.

This cable is has worked well with my setup. The cable length is approx 8 ft. I am viewing on a 55" Mitsubishi HD and progressive settings. I get a horizontal rectangle in the middle of the screen with approx 4" of black on all sides. I am using a NXG female to female coupler and a 25' component cable in conjunction to the PSP cable and have yet to see any signal loss. I anticipate that watching movies with this setup will be good in quality. The audio transfers well and sounds good through the TV speakers. I would suggest this to anyone who, like me, has a son wanting to play at home with a larger screen size. I noticed that the packaging says" PSP 2000 Only". I have the 3000 PSP model and have had no issues.

When I heard that I could use these cables to play my PSP video games & watch UMDs on my TV, I was so excited and bought them right away, but sadly, they weren't what I expected...
True, these cables allow you to watch UMDs and play video games on your TV with the PSP as the controller, but it's nothing like what you'd expect it to be...
While UMDs play great on your TV, and display in Full Frame or Widescreen, (depending on the UMDs aspect ratio) video games are displayed in a tiny rectangular box that takes up roughly half of the screen. I played it on my Sylvania 20" EDTV, and the display size was about 10 inches, 12 at the very most! It was so small, that it was almost impossible to read the text in the game! And what's more, there's no option to stretch the image to fit your screen! (C'mon even my old GameBoy player for the GameCube could do that!!!)

Put simply, these cables are completely useless unless you own a large (32"-51") TV with component outs, otherwise it's going to be too small to enjoy playing it on the TV.
Sure, you can watch UMDs on your TV with it, but DVDs look better anyway, and you can watch your UMDs on TV with the much cheaper PSP Composite Cable.

NOT RECOMMENDED! Use the money that you were going to use on this cable on a game instead, you'll enjoy it more.

Although the component cable is easy to use and setup, I'd say that its not worth the money. First of all, the viewable size is only about half of the TV, so I have to set my TV on zoom mode for the PSP to play on a decent size (and even with the zoom, it only uses about 3/4 of the TV). Also, the quality of game-play is severely degraded when displayed on the TV. I'd say the games look like something from a nintendo-64, or even worse... I just couldnt believe it. When switching back to the PSP handheld screen, I was relieved at how much better everything looked! The only reason I'm giving this 2 stars instead of 1 is because I played a UMD movie using the A/V cable, and the quality was actually pretty good. It played full screen on the TV, no problems. Unless you plan on using this to turn your PSP into a movie player, I'd say stay away from it. Play your games on the actual PSP handheld system instead.

I bought this cable because I wanted to see my PSP games on a larger screen than the PSP itself. My TV is only a 22", so I wasn't expecting any visual miracles. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the colors were rich and the picture was sharp. The other reason for getting it was because I saw it for about half the price I usually see it in the stores.

Hooking the cable to your PSP and TV is very easy and straightforward. You match all the colored RCA plugs to their counterparts on the back of your TV. Then, you plug the other end into your PSP. After you turn the PSP on and the XMB menu loads up, press and hold the display button on the PSP for about 5 seconds. The screen of the PSP will turn off, then gray with a display icon on it for a second, and then the video is on your TV screen. Until you do that, only the sound will come through your TV, while all video will still show on the PSP screen.

How does it look? I think pretty good. If you're expecting it to be output in high def, you're going to be disappointed. I've heard some people complain that the picture looks bad and that the video for the game doesn't take up the whole screen. I bought this cable already knowing that. I don't think the video looks bad at all. You have to understand this is a PSP, not a PS3. It will not upscale games like a Blu-Ray player, either. The PSP graphically is relatively close in quality to a PS2, so for all those PSP and PS one games you have on your memory sticks and all your UMDs, the larger screen is going to show some blocky edges you may not notice or mind so much on the PSP screen. I put the original Gran Turismo on my PS3 to see how it looked. My reaction was, "This looked really good when it first came out, now, it's kinda primative looking".

I downloaded pictures from my 12MP camera and some videos from PSN, and they look sharp.
Added bonus! I've noticed that when you use the cable to play games, the battery life is extended because the battery of the PSP is not being used to power the screen, just games. Oh, and as for the length of the cable, you won't be sitting across the room from the TV, but I measured about 4 and a half feet from my TV. If I had more room, I could potentially have about 6 feet of distance between me and the TV. I would only recommend you to sit that far back if the TV is sitting on a stand closer to the floor. My TV is on a shelf 3 and a half feet off the floor, so that would cause a problem with anyone that wanted to pass between the TV and myself. In my case, if someone passed between my TV and me, the PSP would be ripped out of my hands, and the TV would more than likely take a nosedive off the shelf. Since the TV is in a small room, that's not an issue.

Overall, I'm happy with it and have no complaints. Before you buy this, make sure your TV is capable of progressive scan and that you have component inputs either on the back or side panels so that you can plug it in. Last thing to note is that the RCA plugs that plug into your TV fit snuggly, but are not hard to unplug like some RCA plugs tend to be. The white and red plugs are for LEFT and RIGHT audio (repectively). Make sure you plug the red plug into the red input, the green to green, and blue to blue, and you'll be playing your PSP and PS one games on your TV in no time. Enjoy!

I bought this product once and tried it on my old big screen tv and couldn't get anything to display. Soon I realized that it was because I did not have component cable out or in as it was an older set. Ok fine my fault, should have read into it a little more. So I returned them and got a refund no problem.

I got a brand new Toshiba hi def for X-mas, and so I re bought the cables, and tried hooking them up. I got everything hooked up properly, but first off there were almost no instructions packaged with the cable on how to make it work, but even once I learned you must hold down the screen light button on the psp, it still did not work. The screen went black, and I could hear the music on the tv, but no picture. I played around with it for awhile but the most I could get was some distorted white lines at the bottom of the screen.

I don't know what the problem could be, but I might have a clue if there were anything remotely helpful packaged with the product. From what I have read in reviews and online, the cable should work just fine with a 3000 model, and I know the new tv I have now can support component. I guess it could be a defective cable, but its just not worth it to me to return it again. I just think its kind of a crappy product, and from what I've read, even if I get it working it won't be worth doing. What a shame.

Now I think I will just go ahead and spring for the PS3 and play that way. No big deal, I'm not angry or crazy over it, but it is a pretty lousy buy. I just can't recommend it as it apparently has some incredibly specific needs which I have failed to meet 2 out of 2 times. Hey, and it was only because I was a dummy one of those times!