movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your PSP; each can also convert video. Kinoma’s Producer ($30; www.kinoma.com), Elgato’s EyeTV, and Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium (?69.99); www.roxio.co.uk) also have presets for the PSP.

The PSP can also play movies in the Universal Medi

Playing video isn’t the strong suit of either Apple’s new iPod or Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). The iPod is primarily a music player, and the PSP is primarily a video-game system. But both play video as well, so it may be beneficial to compare the two, to see what (if anything) Apple can learn from Sony – and vice versa.

The comparison starts with the screen. The new iPod’s 2.5-inch display is colourful and bright; it’s just fine for music videos, home movies, and even the occasional TV show or movie. But the PSP’s 4.3-inch screen is even better – and not just because it’s bigger. Its wide-screen aspect ratio is perfect for movies and videos.

Then there’s storage capacity. The iPod has a 30GB or 60GB hard drive, while the PSP doesn’t have a built-in hard drive at all. Instead, it stores data on Sony’s Memory Stick Pro Duo flash media cards, which max out at 2GB – enough for two or three feature films or several hours of TV recordings, after you’ve compressed and encoded the video for PSP playback.

There are several ways to do that. Two utilities - Nullriver Software’s PSPWare ($15; www.nullriver.com) and RnSK Softronics iPSP ($20; ipsp.kaisakura.com) transfer movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your PSP; each can also convert video. Kinoma’s Producer ($30; www.kinoma.com), Elgato’s EyeTV, and Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium (?69.99); www.roxio.co.uk) also have presets for the PSP.

The PSP can also play movies in the Universal Media

m Sony – and vice versa.

The comparison starts with the screen. The new iPod’s 2.5-inch display is colourful and bright; it’s just fine for music videos, home movies, and even the occasional TV show or movie. But the PSP’s 4.3-inch screen is even better – and not just because it’s bigger. Its wide-screen aspect ratio is perfect for movies and videos.

Then there’s storage capacity. The iPod has a 30GB or 60GB hard drive, while the PSP doesn’t have a built-in hard drive at all. Instead, it stores data on Sony’s Memory Stick Pro Duo flash media cards, which max out at 2GB – enough for two or three feature films or several hours of TV recordings, after you’ve compressed and encoded the video for PSP playback.

There are several ways to do that. Two utilities - Nullriver Software’s PSPWare ($15; www.nullriver.com) and RnSK Softronics iPSP ($20; ipsp.kaisakura.com) transfer movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your PSP; each can also convert video. Kinoma’s Producer ($30; www.kinoma.com), Elgato’s EyeTV, and Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium (?69.99); www.roxio.co.uk) also have presets for the PSP.

The PSP can also play movies in the Universal Medi

-screen aspect ratio is perfect for movies and videos.

Then there’s storage capacity. The iPod has a 30GB or 60GB hard drive, while the PSP doesn’t have a built-in hard drive at all. Instead, it stores data on Sony’s Memory Stick Pro Duo flash media cards, which max out at 2GB – enough for two or three feature films or several hours of TV recordings, after you’ve compressed and encoded the video for PSP playback.

There are several ways to do that. Two utilities - Nullriver Software’s PSPWare ($15; www.nullriver.com) and RnSK Softronics iPSP ($20; ipsp.kaisakura.com) transfer movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your PSP; each can also convert video. Kinoma’s Producer ($30; www.kinoma.com), Elgato’s EyeTV, and Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium (?69.99); www.roxio.co.uk) also have presets for the PSP.

The PSP can also play movies in the Universal Medi

three feature films or several hours of TV recordings, after you’ve compressed and encoded the video for PSP playback.

There are several ways to do that. Two utilities - Nullriver Software’s PSPWare ($15; www.nullriver.com) and RnSK Softronics iPSP ($20; ipsp.kaisakura.com) transfer movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your PSP; each can also convert video. Kinoma’s Producer ($30; www.kinoma.com), Elgato’s EyeTV, and Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium (?69.99); www.roxio.co.uk) also have presets for the PSP.

The PSP can also play movies in the Universal Medi

movies, photos, and music from your Mac to your PSP; each can also convert video. Kinoma’s Producer ($30; www.kinoma.com), Elgato’s EyeTV, and Roxio’s Toast 7 Titanium (?69.99); www.roxio.co.uk) also have presets for the PSP.

The PSP can also play movies in the Universal Media Disc (UMD) format. An increasing number of UMD movies are available at electronics retailers and superstores, for ?10 to ?20. They save you precious card space, and they look better.

While the easiest way to get video onto your iPod is to buy and download music videos and short movies from the iTunes Music Store, you can also move your own video content, either with QuickTime Pro or with a utility such as the open-source Handbrake (handbrake.m0k.org) or Splasm Software’s inexpensive Podner ($10; www.splasm.com).

Podner supports drag-and-drop video conversions, and it even copies the file to iTunes once it’s done, making video conversion almost idiot-proof.

So what could the iPod learn from the PSP? A bigger, wide-screen display would be nice, and also the use of removable media like the PSP, whether blank or with video content already on it; that’s the way we’re used to watching video in our living rooms, so why do the same with portable player?

Combine flash media, UMD support, and the larger screen with the convenience of the iTunes Music Store and the iPod’s big hard drive, and Apple could have a best-of-breed portable player. And if Apple could al