New PSX with PSP compatibility

Following last month's announcement that production of the PSX was to be halted - widely interpreted at the time as the death knell for the PS2-based media centre - Sony has announced the launch of two new versions of the hardware.

The DESR-5700 and DESR-7700 models, which have now been announced on Sony's Japanese website, add only one major feature to the PSX's repertoire, namely the ability to output video onto Memory Sticks in a format that the PSP can read.

That means that consumers will now be able to record television using the PSX and watch the resulting video on their PlayStation Portables - a neat trick, but one that's somewhat crippled by the reportedly slow speed at which the system encodes video for the PSP, which means it could take more than an hour to save a 20 minute TV show onto a Memory Stick.

That feature aside, the PSX range seems to be remaining exactly the same - with the hard drive sizes and other functionality unchanged, and no alteration announced to the price points for the units.

While the launch of two new units is certainly a more positive step than the killing off of the product line that was anticipated after last month's announcement, it seems unlikely that the simple addition of PSP compatibility is going to be enough to get Japanese consumers buying the PSX in droves - not least because software for the PC and Mac to encode PSP video is already widely available.

Source - Switchstyle