I'm digging my PSP. I've been playing videos on it, games on it, having a great time with it. I generally use my iPod for music, but I thought I'd try out the ol' PSP to see if it'd be a good substitute in a pinch.
I grabbed a couple of files at random from my iTunes collection and dropped them into the PSP's "MUSIC" folder. One file was an MP3, one file was an M4A (AAC). Fired up the PSP, headed over to the music section, and started playing.
The MP3 played fine. It also displayed the artist name, track title, and cover art for the song playing. Very cool - I've spent a lot of tme getting my song metadata updated so it's nice to see something using it.
The M4A (AAC) also played fine... but it didn't display any of the metadata, just the name of the song file. Lame.
I contacted Sony support and, after several rounds of email (where they helpfully copy-and-pasted a long discussion of how to get music to play on the PSP - not the problem at all), I got on the phone with a support person who didn't really know what the word "metadata" means.
After explaining the situation in great detail and using very small words, the support representative walked me around in circles for a while until I realized one of two things must be true: either the PSP supports it and the rep still has no idea what I'm talking about, or the PSP doesn't support it and the rep isn't allowed to say so. ("There must be a problem with your song file, sir." No, there's not - it plays fine, iTunes sees the metadata, iPod sees the metadata, Xbox 360 sees the metadata... either the PSP doesn't support it or it reads it from a different place in the song file than every other player I've got.)
I finally cornered the rep and got her to admit the PSP doesn't support it. This morning I
filed a question/comment on the issue with Sony requesting an update to the PSP system software to allow display of the AAC metadata. Hopefully they'll resolve it for the next release.