I've been reading about Sony's latest PSP, where we can store digital photos, play MP3 music files and video.

Considering they have more features, do you think they can take over these portable DVD players? Or do you think their pricing strategies will put people off and stick to the portable DVD players, since you can buy cheaper DVDs?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4174470.stm

Yes, I think it's still going to be very popular, due to the pirate market. Then once the pirate market picks up, the price will come down again.

I doubt the movie playing option will be very popular. The movies will have to be bought on a propriety format disc (UMD),this means people who own dvds will have to shell out again for the film on UMD. UMD's are not writeable and will not be in the future so unless rental takes off I suspect this feature may be overlooked as a novelty.

Having said that I suspect many people will simply copy compressed films from their pc to a memory stick duo and watch films that way. The average user though will most likely not bother with the film function.

Is it wrong that I'm more excited about the prospect of getting old nes, snes, master system and megadrive roms working on a psp than playing most of the new titles available for it?

Hmmmm, some statistics have come to light which seem to be proving my theories about the popularity of UMD's wrong. Apparently software sales for the psp are around 9 million and UMD's a massive 8.7 million, at this rate they could become more popular than games!

If this continues I doubt it'll be long until there's a home UMD player released. While I appear to have been proved wrong I'm still shocked that this seems to be the case, shows what I know I suppose!

I may be wrong but I think the ps3 may support UMD as well as blu ray discs.

I'm not sure if there will be a need for a seperate UMD player, surely you can link the psp to a screen or av reciever fairly easily hence negating the need?

I read that someone's worked out a way of writing to UMDs. Maybe just a rumour but if it's true then it opens up whole new possibilities for video playback. Personally I'd buy a PSP for gaming mainly - Pro Evo 5 is out on next month. Very, very tempted...

I you have a large memory stick, then it has room to store more than one film. Trouble is, you have to do the conversion yourself from a DVD or recorded TV, on a laptop. For this reason, this aspect will not take over the portable DVD market.

The other way is simply to buy the film on the UMD format for the PSP. Because people will resent buying the film twice I think this will be a niche market, not take over.

Judged as a display, a PSP film is better than many portable DVD players, so if you have the tech knowledge and can be bothered, then some people with a PSP who are about to buy a portable DVD will not do so because of method 1, but such people will be very few, I suspect.