How to Play PSP Games on a VGA PC Monitor

Many gamers find that they prefer to use their PC monitors for their gaming, whether because their VGA monitor offer a bigger or better quality screen or simply for the sake of convenience. While there have been VGA solutions for the Xbox 360, Wii, PS2 and PS3 for some time, until now there’s been no way to play your PSP on a VGA PC screen.

Using the XCM 1080p VGA box along with a PSP Lite (oops, sorry Nintendo) PSP Slim Component cable, not only can you play your PSP games on your monitor, you can do it in high definition. This feature only works on the new PSP Slim model as it allows video output.

The XCM VGA box is designed to convert a HD component signal from a next gen console (PS3, 360 or Wii) into a VGA signal that can be played on a standard monitor, maintaing the high definition format and suffering no picture quality degradation. It also has a passthrough so you can connect your PC to it at the same time and just flick between your console/PC with the switch (if you’re feeling extra techy you can wire up more than one console with a component switch box as well, but there’ll be time for that in another post…)

The great news is that the XCM VGA box works with the PSP Slim using a standard PSP Component cable. The display is a little bordered to reflect the smaller screen used on the PSP but retains the high resolution and vibrant colours that would appear on the PSP itself, there's no picture degradation. It’s a simple eight step process to get your PSP Slim running on your PC screen. Here are the instructions:

1. Connect the PSP Slim Component Cable to the XCM 1080p VGA box.
2. Connect the 1080p VGA USB power cord to your PC
3. Turn on 1080p VGA Box.
4. Turn on PSP Slim.
5. In the PSP menu, select ‘Switch video output’ and set the ‘Display video output on a connected device’.
6. If there is no picture on your monitor, switch ‘input format on/off on the VGA Box.
7. Some monitors don’t support 480i resolution, so you may need to set your PSP to output 480p.
8. Enjoy the games!

To use your PSP Lite on a normal HDTV screen that natively accepts a component input, you just need to plug your PSP Component Cable into your TV and follow this condensed tutorial:

1. Connect the PSP Slim Component Cable from your PSP into your TV.
2. Turn on PSP Slim.
3. In the PSP menu, select ‘Switch video output’ and set the ‘Display video output on a connected device’.
4. For the best quality picture, set your PSP to output 480p.
5. Enjoy the games!