[edit] Controls Despite its movie and music playback capabilities, the PlayStation Portable has primarily gaming-oriented controls (as opposed to the controls typical to television remotes or MP3 players): two shoulder buttons, the PlayStation face buttons (triangle, circle, cross, square), start and select buttons, a digital 4- directional pad, and an analog stick. There is also a row of secondary controls along the underside of the screen, for controlling volume, music settings (either switching the audio off and on in games or selecting different equalizer presets), screen brightness, and accessing the system's main menu. The PlayStation Portable's analog stick, often referred to as the analog "nub", is a circular disc which slides rather than tilts. The PlayStation Portable's analog stick can also be easily removed and replaced with a third party stick. [edit] Demos The first downloadable demo for the PlayStation Portable was for the game LocoRoco. It can be downloaded and booted directly from the Memory Stick Duo and requires firmware 2.70 for the Japanese version and 2.71 for the European and American version. There are also downloadable demos available for Go! Sudoku, Mercury Meltdown, World Tour Soccer 2006, Bounty Hounds and Ape Escape Racers. [edit] Sales and competition Sony PSP pictured above an original Nintendo DS. August, 2006, it is estimated that 3.77 million PlayStation Portable units have been sold in Japan through to 2006, compared to 10 million by the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite.[1] [verification needed] As of October 21, 2005, the PlayStation Portable had shipped 10 million units worldwide. [1] Sony was expecting a large boost in sales by the end of the year with the creation of the PlayStation Portable Giga Pack, which debuted at the start of the holiday season. By hitting 10 million units shipped in 10 months it marked the "fastest penetration speed" of any PlayStation platform. [4] By December 31, 2005 15 million units had been shipped. [1] At its E3 2006 press conference on May 8, 2006, Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, announced the company had shipped 17 million units. [1] On July 31, 2006, a spokesman announced that over 20 million units had been shipped as of July 24 [1] , compared to total sales to retailers of over 21 million for the Nintendo DS. Nintendo announced September 15, 2006 that its competing Nintendo DS consoles hold a 70 per cent market share in that region for eleven consecutive weeks. [5] [edit] Greatest Hits titles Main article: List of Sony Greatest Hits games During E3 2006, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that the Greatest Hits range of budget titles were to be extended to the PSP system. On July 25, 2006, Sony CEA released [6] the first batch of Greatest Hits titles. The PSP Greatest Hits lineup consist of games that have sold 250,000 copies or more and have been out for 9 months. Every PSP game in this lineup will retail for $19.99 each. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe announced at around the same time the availability of a number of titles under the Platinum range for €24.99 each. [edit] Multimedia and codecs MagicGate Memory Stick Slot Because Sony's software is not the only toolset for getting music or movies onto a PlayStation Portable, a cottage industry has grown around offering useful tools for converting and copying files for use on the PlayStation Portable. Some popular alternatives include Media Boss, [7] PlayStation Portable Movie Creator, [8] PlayStation Portable Video Express, [9] Xcopy9, [10] PSPWare [11] , iPlayStation Portable, [12] PlayStation Portable Media Studio, [13] PlayStation Portable Video 9, [14] 3GP Converter, PlayStation Portable Multimedia Extender [15] - all simplify the task of converting and transferring files to and from the PlayStation Portable's Memory Stick. Additionally, some FOSS programs, such as FFmpeg can be used to convert video into a properly sized and formatted PlayStation Portable video file. Using these tools, nearly any digital video file (including movie files ripped from DVDs or digital video recorders like the TiVo) can be played on a PlayStation Portable, after conversion to AVC. [edit] Video capture hardware Alongside the numerous software applications devoted to PlayStation Portable video, there have been hardware devices specifically designed for various PlayStation Portable-centric applications. For example, the Neuros MPEG-4 Video Recorder 2 is an MPEG-4 video recorder specifically designed to put analog video, from standard A/V connections, into a format recognizable by the PlayStation Portable. Rather than simply convert the video file and leave it to the user to transfer the file properly, it records directly into the PlayStation Portable's native file and directory structure, on the memory stick itself. Another example of PlayStation Portable-dedicated hardware units are the various adapters designed perform a reverse process - display the PlayStation Portable's output on a television. These devices have various modes of operation, with some simply using the method of pointing a video camera at the screen. [16] Video file sizes largely depend on the audio and video bit rates. With reasonable settings (a resolution of 320×240, a video bit rate of 500 Kilobits per second, and an audio sampling rate of 22050 kHz) a 22 minute movie file is roughly 55 megabytes. (This is enough for a 30 minute television episode with the commercials removed) This means that a 512 MB Memory Stick can hold approximately nine of these files. A hundred-minute feature film can fit on a 256 MB Memory Stick. Many movie files, both free-to-distribute and pirated, have been encoded for the PlayStation Portable and are available on the internet. Game and movie trailers, in particular, are increasingly available, even from the studio's official site. Sony released firmware 2.00 on July 27, 2005 in Japan and on August 24, 2005 in North America. It was also packaged in the retail product for European and Australian PlayStation Portables. The firmware update added the ability to play MP4 AAC audio files, ATRAC3plus audio files from a Memory Stick Pro Duo, MPEG-4 AVC video files (if encoded using a proprietary Sony encoding), as well as view GIF, Bitmap (BMP), and TIF image files. It also added the ability to send photos wirelessly to another PlayStation Portable system and allowed owners to use an image as background wallpaper. The LocationFree Player functionality was first added to firmware 2.50. [17] Owners of a LocationFree Base Station can play streaming movies over the Internet from anywhere in the world on their PlayStation Portable. PSP with GPS attachment . PlayStation Portable's analog stick can also be easily removed and replaced with a third party stick. [edit] Demos The first downloadable demo for the PlayStation Portable was for the. shipped. [1] At its E3 2006 press conference on May 8, 2006, Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment America, announced the company had shipped 17 million units. [1] On July. Greatest Hits titles Main article: List of Sony Greatest Hits games During E3 2006, Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that the Greatest Hits range of budget titles were to be