April 1, 2007

• For all my fellow PSP owning brethren–we, the coolest of the cool–let me give you a word of advice: STAY AWAY FROM PSP BLENDER.

  

  PSP Blender is a website that claims to give its users access to legal downloads of “a wide range of PSP games available for download”, movies, television shows, music, etc., with step-by-step instructions on how to transfer and run the files–all for a one-time payment of $37. Skeptical? Why not ask the “PSP Nerd,” who created a video clip which supposedly proves that PSP Blender is a legitimate site that “really works.”

   

  Notice the terrific positioning of the webcam? You can barely see anything on the PSP Nerd’s screen, other than that yellow circle, with the rest being left up to his narration and your imagination skills. He says it works–and “shows” you how easy it is; I say: yes, it does work–but it’s not worth the $37–and contrary to what the PSP Blender FAQ says, the service does not work on all firmware.

  Before I start complaining the sham that is PSP Blender and the PSP Nerd, here are some terms you might want to familiarize yourself with—you uncool, non-PSP owners. These are my definitions and probably not what computer science intended, but this is how I understand the language so don’t bother correcting me because I won’t listen.

  HOMEBREW: What people call ripping and encoding your PSX games to be compatible with your PSP. I think people are also able to rip and encode games from different video game systems to work with the PSP too.

  FIRMWARE: I kind of look at firmware as versions of Windows–and just like Windows comes in Vista and XP, firmware has it’s own upgrades too. With each new upgrade, Sony fixes the holes and problems of the previous version. For the purposes of playing homebrew games, the PSP has to be downgraded to firmware 1.5, because apparently that’s the one that allows you to play ripped games. Currently, firmware up to 3.02 can be downgraded to 1.5–firmware above 3.02 will have to wait until some genius comes by and makes that possible.

  Anyway, if I’m complaining about PSP Blender, it means I know it doesn’t work; it means I paid the money and tried it out. And I hated it. And you should too.

  I ended up on PSP Blender because I was on Google looking for homebrew programs, and found a few that would work except that I had to downgrade my firmware to 1.5. However, my firmware is 3.11–and if you were paying attention to my little terminology lesson, you’ll know that I was out of luck for a downgrade. But, rather than give up, I trolled around for a website that would allow me to just download games directly to my PSP without dealing with the firmware stuff. I found PSP Blender, was doubtful about the service, found the PSP Nerd’s video, became convinced, and then gave PSP Blender $37.

  I spent half an hour going through the “easy step-by-step instructions” on how to get games onto my PSP, only to find out that I didn’t need to pay any money to begin with. The special software I needed to use to get games? A bittorrent client. The search engines that would help me find specific PSP games? Isohunt. Sh*t I already had on my computer. Oh, and the help page on how to get the downloaded games to run on my PSP was just a link to an online board where someone posted instructions. It wasn’t even written by PSP Blender.

  And I still needed to downgrade my firmware.

  As for the PSP Nerd, this is his website:

  

  Hmm…nothing except for coupons to websites like PSP Blender. Looks like PSP Nerd should actually change his name to “PSP Blender’s Full of Sh*t Coolie”.

  Anyway, I got my money back by writing a scathing e-mail to PSP Blender’s bank. You can avoid the hassle simply by avoiding PSP Blender and following my instructions:

  1. Make sure your PSP has firmware 1.5 or can be downgraded.

  2. Do whatever the websites tell you to do regarding downgrading–I wouldn’t know what to do because I can’t do it.

  3. Download a bittorrent client.

  4. Search for a PSP game.

  5. Download the game.

  6. Search the internet for a website that teaches you how to transfer the game onto your PSP.

  7. Count out $37 and laugh that you still have it, and PSP Blender doesn’t.

  • 6:52 pm
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