"But I did bloody tell you."

Let's wind the clock back a year three weeks. The new shiny PSP Brite (model 3000) was about to enter the market. Seeing how it was advertised as having superior screen to previous models, I wrote a little post on PSP screens in order to remind people they should remain critical in the face of marketing offensive and check the new thing with their own eyes instead of buying it just because of the buzz on the internet.

When I shared this on Kotaku under a post proudly showing that new screen is better (but of course...) , one commenter called EnigmaNemesis tried to prove me wrong:

You are comparing what some fanboys have said, and was not marketed (2000 vs 1000) to what is cold hard facts about the 3000?

The 3000 does have a much higher color spectrum and less ghosting. The "buzz" is because it is fact.

The discussion continues here (my mistake in replying):

I never ONCE seen in ANY of Sony press releases about the 2000, that it had a better screen than the 1000.

Now that they officially announced the 3000, they advertise that it DOES, because it does.

Sounds to me like you are just complaining just to complain.

Not only has this guy completely missed the point (which was not me "complaining" that new screen is worse, but merely trying to encourage a little bit of skepticism in face of marketing machine), but also has the annoying habit I particularly dislike in discussions - taking opinions for facts. "Cold hard facts"? Yeah, right. It seems like I was not that far off after all.

The new 3000's screens indeed have been reported to be worse than 2000 and the shit has hit the fan. The official Playstation boards are full of people that are not happy at all... Apparently there are issues with scanlines and performance in sunlight - see this post on PSPFanboy (and Sony response) and this video on Exophase. You can also see the effect on the video below (could not embed the other one):

How about those "cold hard facts", eh? The facts are that new screens have problem with scanlines. The facts are that I wrote a post the conclusion of which was to compare things with one's own eyes instead of trusting the hype. The fact is that my old PSP Phat screen is impeccable and compares favourably to both PSP-3000 (Brite) and PSP-2000 (Slim). My opinion (as compared to the fact) is that someone has made a fool of himself here.

So, to wrap it up with obligatory The Dark Knight reference: but I did bloody tell you.

Chaos 126p or Midget with blades

The real fun part of having a website covering something particular (in this case, digital entertainment) is that once you get recognized, you start getting tips on on the subject you specialize in. This morning my informer tipped me on the subject of a certain Half Life 2 mod, called D.I.P.R.I.P. (the abbreviation meaning Die In Pain Rest in Peace, which sounds quite cool, actually). I looked at the mod and was more or less indifferent - some Carmageddon clone, m'kay, well done, but what's so interesting about it? Ah, said my informer, will you look at the cars, please? I looked and then a huge smile appeared on my face.


What you see on the screen above is Chaos 126p, an armoured vehicle from D.I.P.R.I.P.'s dark world. What you probably don't know if you haven't grown up in Poland is that it is (heavily) modified version of Fiat 126p, a small and insanely popular Polish car (meaning manufactured in Poland on FIAT's licence):


They were small and lousy, but due to their low-cost nature and wide-spread availability one could see a lot of them around. The Polish nickname of the car, "Maluch", loosely translates to something along the lines of "kiddie" or "midget", which conveys how they were perceived. Looking at any of them an average person wouldn't probably imagine its battle-hardened version, complete with spikes, guns and whatnot. So seeing this is quite funny for all of us who remember those little bugs, crawling in the grey cities of our youth.

See the mod in motion, complete with Fiat 126p introduction in the clip below:

The list of cars in the mod can be found on D.I.P.R.I.P.'s website and it's worth noting that designs of some others are also based on some other cars from the communist era, such as Warszawa (Warsaw) or Syrena (Mermaid). Kudos for the authors for their creation - it definitely scores a couple originality points from me. Feel free to download the mod via Steam and remember that it's completely free!

Another completely unrelated and superfluous Post Scriptum

For a long time we have planned to draw a comic with my best friend. The story would revolve around vampire hunters and one of our ideas in the graphical layer was their car, an armoured version of Fiat 126p. Now noone is going to believe us it was our original idea...

A word on PSP screens

With the news about the new PSP model just around the corner, I get to hear a lot of buzz concerning its supposedly better and brighter screen. As someone who investigated the question of PSP screens, allow me to elaborate a little bit more on this subject.

That's how much better new screen is going to be... in theory.

When I bought my very first PSP in Japan, Januray 2006, and played it on a shinkansen speeding towards Kyoto and my friend Guillaume, I did notice some ghosting in Lumines, but assumed it was an in-game special effect. Smearing of cars in Ridge Racer did get the alarm bells ringing, though. Yet, the power of this little baby was something unprecedented in videogame world and I was totally under its charm, so I assumed this is an inherent flaw of the system, a price to pay for amazing fluidity of graphics, in short - something I just need to get used to.

Couple weeks later I bought Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories and just then I had my first unpleasant surprise with PSP. Ghosting was so bad in case of this game that it was practically unplayable. Taking turns and seeing blurred shades of buildings crawl across the screen was making me feel nauseous, as if I was hallucinating (remember the effect of spider biting you in Blood? that's exactly how it looked). The horror, the horror.

Some googling revealed that ghosting phenomena indeed occurs to a lot of users, but also that some amount of PSP owners didn't complain about it. I also found some voices claiming that there were different PSP screens on the market. While the annoyance of ghosting depends on individual preference (some people don't mind even severe blurriness), kind of games played (fast games with high contrast ratio definitly expose the effect more) and the perception (some people simply won't notice), I assumed that there might in fact be different screen models out there. It is not a logical thing to use components that are so visible of different quality, but then again, it's Sony we're talking about.

The above constatation coincided with my decision to cross over to the dark side and start using custom firmware, which at the time required locating PSP with 2.0 firmware (famous GTA exploit). I have therefore spent a whole week going from one shop to another, asking vendors to allow me to check PSP firmware and screen. This sounds easy to any citizen of a civilised country, but in Poland it got me a lot of "no, you can't see it" and "no, you can't turn it on" answers, as well as some sniggering and strange looks.

My test case consisted of loading GTA: Liberty City Stories and running with main protagonist wearing dark suit on the background of some bright colour. On my original PSP this resulted in him looking as if he had eight legs, due to long pixel response time. After couple days I have located PSP on which the legs were just slightly blurry under this condition. It also had the correct firmware version, so of course I bought it.

Comparing my two PSPs, European one and Japanese one (sounds like Monty Python's swallow joke), I could see noticeable difference between them - the new one's screen had nicer colours and very little ghosting. I tried to capture it on photo or video, but it is a difficult thing to record. Since Barts News was not yet born, I finally gave up the idea and sold my first PSP. this was the beginning of 2006.

Now, fast forward to September last year, when I bought PSP Slim for my Japanese teacher in Poland. I had read before how the new screen was brighter and with higher contrast, both on respectable blogs and in users' opinions. So when I finally had the opportunity to compare my old PSP Phat and the fresh, new PSP Slim, I was confused - I couldn't see the difference. My impression was that the new screen is a little better, but I just couldn't put my finger on what it really was. Colours? The same, check. Ghosting? A little bit on each screen, check. Brightness? OK, on highest setting Slim was brighter, not enough of a reason to warrant an upgrade on my part. I went to ask my best buddy Guillaume - not only couldn't he see any difference either, but being a reasonable man, he said I must be under heavy influence of marketing if I am tempted to buy this new iteration.

This was like a bucket of cold water poured on my head. Guillaume was in fact right - I so wanted to get my hands on new gadget, that I was seeing things there. Screens were virtually the same, with one being a little brighter. I decided to stick to my faithful, old PSP (which I still own, by the way), which saved me about 20,000 yen. Thanks, G-kun!

Yet, I was still seeing glowing reviews and opinions on the internet, claiming that new PSP-2000 screens are so much better. The only reason for it I could find, other than people getting their minds brainwashed by Sony's marketing department, was that for someone who only had seen and been playing with the worse PSP screen (like my first one) the transition would really be noticeable.


After returning to Poland, I have made a little bit of a research, from websites to guys selling replacement screens on Allegro, Polish equivalent of Ebay. I didn't find much in terms of information, only that some screens were made by Samsung and some by Sharp, but I was unable to confirm which one would be better. I didn't want to open my PSP either, seeing my complete lack of skills with electronic equipment's insides. I have come across "Japanese PSP" myth stating that Japanese PSP screens are better and Chinese are worse - but I have to bust it. I had Japanese PSP with a ton of ghosting and European one made in China with very little ghosting. I have yet to see one that doesn't have ghosting at all, too.

What I managed to secure, though, was a couple of comparison photos of two different Phat PSPs from Faza, a guy I got to know via PC Board. The photos were not that great and didn't really depict ghosting differences, but as I have written above, this was really tricky thing to capture. What one can observe on the photographs, however, is a visible difference in contrast and saturation. As for ghosting, you will have to trust me and Kriomag on that one.

Four shots illustrating the difference between two screen models of PSP Phat.

I didn't use the photos back then, because I didn't want to write a post without any really useful information inside. I have decided to dig them out now, however, because all that buzz about new PSP-3000 reminds me of the same thing happening last year. Yes, there are chances that the new screen is going to be brighter and more colourful, as well as totalle devoid of ghosting. Perhaps. Maybe it's also going to make coffee, provide sexual services and lead us all to the promised land. I prefer to remain sceptical.

The bottomline is: don't be a fanboy or a gadgeteer. Instead of automatically buying the damn thing, do yourself a favour, go to some friendly videogame shop, take your PSP with you and compare the screens before making your decision. Ask yourself if you see a difference in quality that justifies new purchase. Don't trust reviews and forum posts, trust your own eyes and critical thinking. Maybe you also have PSP unit with good screen and are on the verge of burning the upgrade money in vain.

I hope you have found the above information useful. I believe I haven't seen any similar article on the subject, other than simple PSP Phat versus PSP Slim comparisons (sometimes with added Nintendo DS Lite). Remember - don't trust marketing and commercials!

Liquid scaling in Gimp

This is not exactly fresh news per se, but an interesting information nonetheless. What triggered my long overdue post was the information about certain feature coming to Photoshop CS4, the feature in question being content-aware scaling or, more precisely, seam carving.

First of all, have a look at the movie below explaining what this term even means:

Okay, with that out of the way let us continue.

Now, the normal course of action in the software world is that commercial programs (especially famous juggernauts, such as aforementioned Photoshop) introduce new cool features that free software clumsily tries to catch up with. When it finally does, the commercial software puts the pedal to the metal, accelarates and introduces new, more advanced features. Free software then tries to follow, rinse and repeat. That's what happens, right?

Wrong. This is not always the case.

Check this post on Seam Carving being introduced in Photoshop CS4 (you can find more details in this article), then have a look at this article on PolishLinux.org - don't worry, the article is in English. It is quite cool that free Gimp has the same feature available, even though it is not built-in, but requires a plugin. Also, it's free (contrary to Photoshop), but what makes it really uber-cool is that Gimp has had this feature for almost a year now - just compare the dates. A-ha!

Liquid Rescale plugin in action (taken from Focused on Light weblog)

I am not a drooling Free Software or Open Source fanboy, I do realise that it has its fair share disadvantages (and one huge advantage - meaning he price or rather the lack of thereof) and limitations, but as someone coming from a country where for a long time commercial software would cost half of ones salary, I do have a soft spot for free software in general.

I also know that the comparison of two implementations of seam carving algorithm would be necessary to really judge how well they can compete against each other, but I can't help but feel a little spark of mischevous joy seeing Open Source software sometimes leading one step before the commercial software, hence this post.

You can download Liquid Rescale plugin here and see some interesting examples here and in Flickr gallery. Good job, guys!