Well, it’s been a couple of weeks since my purchase of the Component cable for my PSP Slim has arrived. I can now say that its one of , if not THE best purchase I’ve made for the system.

I had been hearing whispers of a mysterious set of cables arriving in Japan for my shiny new PSP Slim, cables that would allow a person to watch movie, play games, view photos etc. straight off the system. Unfortunately these wonders were not yet available in the states.

So I had to sit on my hands like a bitch until people in the industry got off their asses and made things happen. So angry.

Finally they became available. And after a week of searching MANY stores (’sorry man we only got in like, three- hyuck’), I finally get my hands on one. Whee!

Of the three cables offered, the component seemed to be the obvious choice seeing as the composite and S-video allow only movies, nothing else. But if thats all you got, its better than nothing. The setup is easy, just go to settings and switch the output- voila!

The quality of the playback is varied: UMD movies look very close to DVD quality, downloaded videos are dependent on the original quality but if you have a program to manipulate that quality then they can look better than the UMDs, which is VERY cool and possibly the cable’s best feature.

Going online is, well, kinda useless unless you don’t have a PC available, but you can do it nonetheless. Photo quality is pretty much what you would expect, crisp and clean as ever.

The only real disappointment is unfortunately the reason I got the component cables in the first place: the games. Now don’t get me wrong, the games look great and the PSP Slim’s redesigned buttons mimic a real controller VERY well. The problem I have lies in the shrunken down size of the game window. Now I have a pretty respectable 42” 1080i flat panel HDTV and the game screen has gotten no larger than say, 20-25 inches. The size is depending on the game. Perhaps (and hopefully) things will change in the near future to something closer to a full screen. Not that this should stop you from buying the cable, but this is to prepare you for what might be a disappointing surprise.

Overall, I highly recommend the cables, for a price point of around $20, it simply can’t be beat, and it will give you yet another reason to fall even harder in love with the system. Enjoy.