Last revision: 1 Jan 2009

Basic PSP functions
Radio player
Stream compatibility
'Awesome' keyboard
Shoutcast search (Find Music)
Custom station presets (My Music)
Screen capture
Bookmarks
Sleep timer
Forums
Custom themes
Check for updates
Google search
System Information
Using public WiFi Hot Spots
MSN Mobile
Not Enough Memory


Basic PSP Functions

Left shoulder button [L] is used as 'Back' navigation button, right shoulder button [R] is used as 'Forward' navigation button.

To scroll a page or scrollable content, press and hold [SQUARE], then move thumbstick up or down.

To mute press and hold small equaliser button on PSP (with a little music note on it) until the sound is muted. When headphones are connected, you can use this button to change equaliser presets available.

To switch the screen off, press and hold screen button on PSP (with a little screen on it) until the screen goes off. You can use the same button to adjust brightness of the screen.

Use [TRIANGLE] button on PSP to bring the browser menu, you will use that if you have updated radio skin and need to refresh the radio.

For more information of how to get the most of your PSP visit the Official Playstation Online Instruction Manuals.

Radio Player

To shrink or unshrink the top bit of the radio player, move the mouse to the very top of the screen until it turns into hand, then press [X] button on PSP. Please note that some pages may use lock on this function or invoke it automatically.

In order to bring up the main menu page from anywhere within the radio environment, press [START] button on PSP.

This radio application uses official Sony's radio plug-in available with 3.80+ firmware updates, therefore it works on any PSP with 3.80+ firmware. It will work on both official and custom firmware and on both Phat and Slim PSPs as it uses Sony's MPEG streaming plug-in for PSP Browser. It can play .pls, .m3u or .mp3 files when the content is hosted on the Internet. It cannot play local files from a Memory Stick.

EXT button on the radio toolbar will bring up the current playlist. You will have option to save either the whole playlist to your presets or a currently playing stream. In case of multiple streams available you will be able to choose desired stream by clicking on it. If the playlist consists of links to mp3 files then the player will play them sequentially one after another then stop.

Stream compatibility

This radio can only play MPEG streams, and although you can find that many stations use OGG, Real Audio or Windows Media formats to broadcast as well, these formats are not supported. PSP 2000 and PSP 3000 can also play AAC+ stream which offer high quality smaller bandwidth streaming. PSP 1000 will *not* play AAC+ streams therefore the AAC+ streams are excluded from shoutcast search result when using PSP 1000.

'Awesome' keyboard

The player has its own 'qwerty' keyboard which is mainly used with KK's PSP Radio and associated forums. You can also make it to load up for use with your website if viewed from KK's PSP Radio, details are here. You can also type and submit much longer posts with it than with PSP native on-screen keyboard.

For quick 'space' character press [START]
For quick 'backspace' character, press and hold [SQUARE] and then move joystick left.

The Keyboard has 2 modes, normal and 'Smart'. In smart mode: 1 click on CAPS will switch CAPS mode for the next 1 letter then it is going back to small letters, 2 clicks - CAPS stay on until another click on it. It also adds space automatically after .,:?! Characters and capitalises the 1st letter after .?! characters and after the new line (BR).

If you click on the text area above the keyboard you will get PSP's native text input, quite useful for some fine editing, but beware it has a limit, so you can only edit about 250 (or a bit more?) last characters from your input with it.

COPY copies entire text area into clipboard. PASTE does what paste usually does.

When the text area inside keyboard gets filled up, to scroll, place mouse pointer over it, press square and use thumbstick (or directional keys) to scroll it up or down.

X in the top left corner will exit keyboard without altering the value of the text field, where as ENTER will insert what you have typed into the text field.

Shoutcast search (Find Music)

RANDOM - plays random station, SEARCH with an empty search box - brings the list of random stations according to MAX parameter. The number in brackets on Shoutcast search results next to the PLAY button is the number of current listeners of the station. If you can't connect try again if it fails persistently try a different stream or try the same one later.

If you click on EXT button after launching Shoutcast station you may also see the maximum allowed listeners next to current listeners in brackets next to a stream.

Please remember: Shoutcast is a dynamic Internet audio broadcasting database, which means that if you save Shoutcast stream or playlist it might stop working, eventually. You can either search Shoutcast again and save new link for your favourite station or find and save direct stream from the station's website, if available.

Custom station presets (My Music)

This is where you can store your favourite stations. You can either add currently played station to your station presets or enter a known URL to the stream or playlist manually. Click EDIT to do so. Note, if you have nothing saved, the page will open in edit mode already.

To delete an entry, clear the Station info and the Stream URL fields, then SAVE, then FINISH.

You can test your URL entry immediately by pressing on TEST after entering URL. You can assign different categories to your entries and rearrange order in which they appear on the My Music page, all that when in edit mode.

When saving, agree to overwrite and always click FINISH to complete editing.

For automatic saving, when and only when desired station is playing, press EXT on the player button bar and then you will have a choice either to save it in a stream or playlist format if available. This will open My Music in edit mode and automatically fill the necessary fields. Press SAVE and when complete FINISH.

Screen capture

You can now take screenshots while using KK's PSP radio, big thanks to FreePlay for discovering the function and the usage.

To take a screenshot, click on -Take Screenshot- in Menu under Sleep Timer. This will activate screen capture. To capture, press and hold right shoulder button [R] and then press [START] button (Start button is also used to deactivate screen capture). After screenshot is taken it is saved in PICTURE/RADIOPLAYER SCREENSHOT directory in .bmp format and could be viewed from XMB in the Photo menu.

You can take screen captures of webpages loaded into PSP browser via Bookmarks or via Google search results.

Bookmarks

Radio version of PSP browser has no option to save or load bookmarks, but with 'Bookmarks' link within the radio you can load your bookmarks, previously saved elsewhere. To bookmark a page use the *regular* PSP web browser to go to a web address then Bookmark it in the usual way. You can then load your bookmarks from KK's PSP Radio. To return to the main menu press [START].

Sleep timer

Enter time in minutes into provided box. First click on SET starts the timer with the set parameter, another click on SET with the same parameter brings confirm box with how much time left to activation and you can cancel the timer from there. Click on SET with a different parameter sets a new timer. When the timer runs out PSP will shut down.

Forums

Use forums to communicate with other users. The forums are optimised for use with PSP and have some only radio related features that would be available if you browse these forums from within the radio. There are 3 buttons available in posting form:



Post a stream. Pastes [stream][/stream] tags. If you insert a link in between, when clicked, PSP will attempt to play that link.



Current station. Same as above only it will paste stream tags and info for the station that is currently playing in PSP Radio player, thus making it easier to share favourite streams.



Current song. Will paste information about the song that is currently playing in PSP Radio player.

Custom themes

There is 1 custom theme available at the moment. To install it, download and save the following 3 files:

* backgroundIMG.pspr Background graphics for the player head bit
* animationIMG.pspr Animated visualiser (comes on when stream is playing)
* customCSSJS.pspr The style file (changes colours and buttons for now)

then press [TRIANGLE] on PSP and select refresh for the theme to install.

To revert back to default theme save *this file* and then refresh the radio.

Check for updates

This will check for available updates and if there are will prompt you for update.

Google search

This is a custom Google search. You can either search pspradio.co.uk or the World Wide Web. PSP Browser has limited memory therefore be warned you may occasionally run out of memory when browsing the Internet and will need to restart the radio.

System information

Shows some system information, which is relevant to the radio player.

Using public WiFi Hot Spots

Some public WiFi spots, free or not free, use web login system to authenticate the user. PSP has an option to 'Start Web Browser" when configuring network connection to deal with it. This is particular useful if you're trying to use Go!Messenger or PSN Store, it will bring the browser upon connection and let you log in via webpage. Then you can close the browser and your application would be able to use established Internet connection.

With the radio it is even simpler and you don't need 'Start the browser' option. Click on Forums button and instead of forums it will load the authentication page for the Hot Spot you're trying to use. Log in, then hit Forums again, and you have your connection.

In the UK in McDonalds you can use free WiFi called 'The Cloud' and the free login option is in the top right corner.

MSN Mobile

Sometimes MSN page generates errors and doesn't let you log in and use the messenger. This is what you need to do.

Exit the radio and start normal Internet browser. Click [TRIANGLE] and click on Settings. Select Clear Cache and then Clear Cookies. Exit the browser and start radio again. This should cure the problem.

Not Enough Memory

This would probably happen to you earlier or later, after viewing some images or trying to load full graphics pages. Best thing to do is to quit Internet radio, launch RSS Channel application then quit it and launch Internet Radio again. This usually clears the memory.







If you still have questions, ask them on the forums!

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