The phrase ‘PSP’ it is likely to bring Sony’s portable games console to mind. This is a great device that, apart from playing games, has multimedia features too such as watching videos, viewing photos and browsing the Internet. One thing that it lacks though is out-of-the-box functionality to read books. However, there are some conventional methods available that allow you to read books on your PSP. We will take a look at how this can be done in the section that follows.
- Convert to an image
Using the latest version of JpegBook or PSP EBook Creator for Windows you are able to convert a TXT file into a series of images which you can then view as photos on your PSP. For the Mac you can use PDF2PSP, available for free on sourceforge.net. Converting a TXT file into an e-book using the PSP EBook Creator application is easy, as detailed in the instructions below:
a. Select File > Load text (source) file and choose the TXT file you want to convert
b. Now go to File > Select output folder to choose a location for the images
c. Configure any ebook options you desire, such as ink and page colour, and press Build ebook.
d. Go to the chosen output folder and copy the files over to the PSP Photo folder.PSP EBook Creator also allows you to choose a background for the e-book, as well as preview what it would look like on the PSP screen and select the image compression type. - Save as an HTML file
Another option would be to save your document as an HTML file and view it in the PSP Web Browser. For example, using Microsoft Word, you could go to File > Save As… and choose HTML as a file format. You could then transfer this HTML file onto your PSP and open it using the in-built Web Browser. - View from your e-mail account
Some web based e-mail accounts, such as GMAIL, have an in-built PDF viewer or allow you to read PDF documents as HTML files. When you click on a PDF file in GMAIL for example, it spawns a new page in the Web Browser that displays your PDF document.
All the above are convenient methods that will allow you to read books on your PSP. In the meantime, let’s hope native support for reading e-books on the PSP is not too far away! There is no doubt that this would be a welcomed feature by the PSP community.
