IGN said: "While we have not yet been able to encode video for the format here at IGN, the Japanese PortableTV website has made available clips of various Japanese TV shows and media programs in the new AVC format. These samples are not exactly ideal -- for some reason, the video technicians who made the clips did not enhance the quality and contrast ratio for the PSP screen, so they don't look as good as they could with a supervised transfer. The sample movie trailers, in particular, are washed out and dull on the PSP's screen when they shouldn't be. On the other hand, the video quality of PortableTV's shows looks incredibly sharp and clean, making the most of the new format.


Japanese video site WatchImpress has also compiled a number of test samples of the AVC codec, recorded using Sony's new Image Converter 2 Plus software. The side-by-side samples offered on the site (to play on PSP, you will have to rename the files as MAQxxxxx.MP4 for AVC and M4Vxxxxx.mp4 for standard MPEG, with the five x's being numbers) show the slight but still noticeable difference in video quality. At its lowest setting, AVC is still slightly better and more smooth than the highest-quality standard MPEG4 clip. With more professionally-oriented applications (even in IC2+, Sony's applications aren't so hot), even better results are possible with both codecs.


At its best, the new format can do a number on standard Sony MP4 video. You can make clips in PSP Video 9 or other third-party applications that already rival the quality shown in the sample AVC clips, but the finer details should hold up better with the new codec. Text quality in particular looks nice, showing up well on a static background. The AVC samples are less prone to being "swimmy" with pixels on simple-color or static backgrounds. Talking heads and sequences of minor motion seem to strobe and "chunk" up less. And while file sizes and bitrates are still not exactly clear to us yet (programs like PSP Video 9 make videos up to and beyond Sony's pre-set limit of 769 kbps, but when you look up "information" on a PSP, for some reason the final clips say that they are only processed at 2/3s of that), it does seem that users might be able to pack more video per megabyte with AVC if there's this much bitrate legroom left over. So far, the improvements are only minor, but we'd like to see how this new codec looks when it's really put to the test by experienced video makers.


One other big surprise in the new format is a native 16:9 feature. We reported last week that the new AVC format would be limited the same way as the old standard, but that's only half-true. The Memory Stick Video Format used on PSP can make a "widescreen" picture. The only problem is that this still doesn't make PSP-sized videos. Instead, you're making a video that is 320x240, but with instructions inside the video to make the PSP play it back slightly stretched (sort of like an anamorphic movie). The end result is video that automatically fills the PSP screen when viewed in "normal" mode. There are artifacts from the video being stretched out -- it's basically doing what you can already do with every PSP video encoder but Sony's -- but it's good to see that Sony has at least done the right thing and added widescreen support. Now, if only they can go the whole way and add a full 480x272 PSP video mode (and while we're at it, how about allowing us to put our movies in some folders?)"